Learning from a photo to make a Friendship Bracelet pattern

I found this cute little bracelet on Instagram and realized it would make for a great lesson on using graph paper and figuring out a design yourself.

We begin here with graph paper

Here I’ve made a graph suited for 7 colors (I’ll teach how to do that soon) And I’ve started with the easiest part, the white. I didn’t actually use white because it’s just like the background and making easier to understand is more important than using exact colors.

Here I started with red (only because it’s my favorite color, really any would have worked) Next to keep the rainbow look I’ll have to choose a color next to red on the color wheel. (purple or orange)

I choose purple and following the directions that the red had provided took the design further out.

Adding the blue makes even more of the pattern easier to understand.

As I was adding the green I realized I was getting to the top of my graph paper I had made. Not to worry, I have a plan.

See I’m also carrying the colors downwards as well. The main goal at this point is to gain the color sequence at the top so we can begin knotting.

By the time the yellow is added the only path left is clearly the orange and we have all we need to start the bracelet.

At this point, there is no reason to continue. You can continue this as many times as needed for the length you want.

To cover a few things you can’t see from a post like this

I’ve been making bracelets for 30 years and it comes a bit easy to me. If when breaking down a pattern you can’t tell where a string goes because you can’t see it any longer, it’s ok just work out what you can see and let things fall into place. These skills take practice, but once you figure out how to make a design you see you’ll find making a variation becomes easy. At that point, you might never ask for a pattern again.

I’d like to thank @the_maddiest for permission in using her image to do this tutorial. Go check out her stuff and buy something. It’s nice when you help an artist.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions of what you’d like me to cover next, please add your thoughts in the section below. I’d love to hear from you and it could help make this site more useful for other knotters too!