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Pride Friendship Bracelets

06/16/2020 04:39:05 PM

Jun16

Jen Szlasa

Each year for Pride Shabbat, we like to bring an accessible craft to the community. We try to make sure there are varying levels of difficulty to keep people of all ages engaged. Last year we accomplished that with a variety of designs to create your own rainbow yarmulke. This year, I’ll outline friendship bracelets, three ways. The first will be the simplest method: a 6-strand rainbow candy stripe. The second will be a 12-strand chevron. The third will be an alphabet pattern spelling out LOVE–AHAVAH in rainbow colors. Feel free to scroll down to whichever pattern/level of difficulty you’d prefer.

First up, you’ll need some string. My favorite is DMC, and here are the color IDs if you’re looking for an easy way to order online. They also have great photos of the entire palette on their website if you’re looking for a precise shade. Local shops can easily retrieve the floss by color name/ID for curbside pickup.

Candy Stripe

Start by cutting about 3 feet of each color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Tie a knot at the end.

At this point, I sometimes include a safety pin in the knot to clip the bracelet to my clothing and keep it taut as I tie the knots. For this demo, I’ll be using a clipboard, which achieves the same goal.

If you’re adding a safety pin, do so now, and attach it to a pant leg to keep the bracelet in place and with you on the go. Alternative methods of securing the knot include the clipboard below or just taping the bracelet to your work surface. Spread out the colors, red to violet.

For the candy stripe, you’ll be using the same knot over and over again. It looks like this: arrange the two strings in the shape of a 4 by bringing the left string over the right and wrapping it underneath the right string (see figure below). Then repeat this same process again with those strings. This completes the “forward knot.” This knot swaps the position of the two colors so you can work a stripe across the whole bracelet. The entire bracelet will consist of forward knots with each color working your way from red to violet in succession.

Forward knot: Take the red string, and tuck it under the orange string, then pull the knot tight, all the way to the top of the bracelet.

The knots may not look perfect on your first row. Don’t worry about it! Keep going one color at a time.

Once you get through the rainbow once, just keep repeating until the bracelet reaches your desired length!

Rainbow Chevron

This will be largely the same as the candy stripe, but with a second knot variety and more strings to track. You’ll want to slightly more than double the length of string that was used for the first bracelet since they’ll be halved to make the pattern—approximately 7 feet should work. Again, you’ll want one of each color of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Tie a knot roughly the same as before, but leave a loop to help with tying the bracelet later.

Fasten the bracelet:

Arrange your strings in rainbow order starting from the middle. This will result in the red appearing to be the top once the chevron forms.

Start tying the forward knot across the strings from left to right. The first row of knots is the most important because it sets the order of the remaining strands. Start by tying violet over blue, then green, then yellow, then orange, then red.

Then tie a backward knot starting at the right-hand side and working your way through the same colors from right to left: blue, green, yellow, orange, red. If you need help visualizing the backward knot, I’ve included it below for the red string.

At this point, you’ll have your two violet strands in the middle. It doesn’t matter what knot you tie here since both strands are the same color. Continue the pattern with the remaining strings.

Forward knot:

Backward knot:

LOVE–AHAVAH Alphabet Pattern

This last pattern is for an alphabet-style bracelet. Unlike the other patterns, this one consists of one very long string weaving back and forth across rows of background colors. Cut each color of the rainbow plus two black strands about 3 feet long. Measure about 9 feet of black string as the leading strand. Tie a knot at the top and fasten like the other examples. Arrange in rainbow order with one black strand on each far side and the long strand at the left.

Start with the leading (long black) string, tying forward knots across the rainbow strands left to right, slightly angling the knots to keep the line straight. Then tie backwards knots from right to left to establish the foreground color. The colored knots appear by tying a knot in the opposite direction to the leading strand. For example, for the L, start with a forward knot tied with the leading strand, then tie backward knots with each of the rainbow colors (red, then orange, then yellow, etc.) to get the vertical line of the L. Then tie a forward and a backward knot with the long background strand on the right black strand. Work your way back from right to left tying backward knots using the leading strand, tying a forward knot with the red to start the horizontal part of the L. Continue with this method to complete the entire words: LOVE–AHAVAH

Friendship bracelet pattern: I flipped the rainbow on my bracelet, but both orientations work great!

I went ahead and added a candy stripe at the end just for a fun flourish. Feel free to get creative with the pattern once you learn the basic knots!

April 29, 2025 1 Iyar 5785