Monday, July 4, 2011

ribbon necklace



I made this one for Catherine's birthday. 


While doing a bit of cleaning in preparation for Catherine's visit on Thursday, and I came across my pile of supplies for ribbon necklaces. This discovery reminded me that I've been meaning to post something about the ribbon necklace forever. And since I'm always looking for an excuse to abandon cleaning, I decided to declare time-out for a project. No real skill necessary, but the end result is quite nice.



The supply list really isn't very long: ribbons and a necklace chain, needle and thread, pliers and a bit of patience. 


For this particular project, you'll want a necklace that's easy to disassemble in the middle. I found my necklace at Macy's on clearance and chose it because upon examination, I was like, Yeah, I can totally take that apart.
Use your pliers to open the jump rings. Feel free to discard the bits you've removed. 


Iron your ribbons and cut to the desired length (mine are about 8 inches long). You'll also need two smaller pieces of ribbon to secure the ribbon bunch to the necklace chain (3 inches or thereabouts)--set these aside for the moment. Gather up the long ribbons and sew them together at both ends. Three or four passes with the needle should do it. 


Take one of the smaller pieces of ribbon and loop it through the last link of the necklace chain. 


Tuck the end of the longer ribbons inside the shorter ribbon and sew them together. 


You'll finish this end of the necklace by wrapping the shorter (black) ribbon around the longer bundle of ribbons.
Wrap a couple times, nice and tight. 



You don't need to use the entire length of the shorter (black) ribbon. Once I have the wrapped end neat and tight, I fold a bit under and make a couple passes with the needle. Then I cut the wrapping ribbon, tuck the end under the fold, and sew closed. 


The back side (with the fold) doesn't have to be utterly perfect, just secure. Once you've sewn the fold shut, knot off your thread. It's pretty easy to keep your stitches hidden if you choose your colors wisely.
This is what the fold side looks like:


And here's the front side:



Feel free to cut away any stray bits of ribbon fluff. 

Repeat the steps for the other side of the necklace, and voila! A ribbon necklace! 


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