I’m Redesigning Pattern 7487 This Time, NO FOLD!

I’m going back to friendship-bracelets.net pattern #7487—but I don’t want to make the same bracelet again.

Last time, I took this ribbon-inspired design and created a fold in the middle. I really liked how that turned out, but if I’m going to revisit the idea, I want to do something DIFFERENT.

So this time, the ribbons are going straight down the entire bracelet!

In this video, I’m working through the pattern design from scratch, reusing parts of my previous version while figuring out how to remove the fold, reshape the edges, and make those colored sections look even more like ribbons.

You’ll also see one of the tricks I use when designing patterns with multiple shades:

🌈 START WITH THE RAINBOW!

Even if the finished bracelet is going to use completely different colors, designing with red, orange, yellow, green, etc. makes it much easier to keep track of the color order.

If I eventually decide to use shades of blue, earth tones, or another gradient, I can simply look at the pattern and translate each rainbow color into the corresponding shade.

Much easier than trying to distinguish between five nearly identical colors while designing!

I haven’t completely decided on the final colors yet. Shades of blue are definitely tempting, but we’ll see…

There’s also another version coming.

Mandy has her OWN idea for how this pattern should be changed, so eventually we’re going to make both versions and compare them.

Kevin vs. Mandy. 😬

Which ribbon design will win?

For now, I need to actually make this one!

I finished it…and I genuinely can’t decide how I feel about this friendship bracelet. 🤔🧵

This started with pattern #7487 from friendship-bracelets.net, but at this point I’ve changed so much that it’s really become something completely different.

For this version, I reduced the center from THREE strands of each color to TWO and tried another experiment I’ve been wanting to play with:

Could I actually SHAPE the sides of the bracelet?

Instead of simply knotting across the off-white sections, I wrapped the strings in a similar way to how I create my clean starts and endings. The idea was to pull those sections inward and create little dips along the edges.

And…it worked.

Sort of. 😂

You can definitely see the curves, and they give the bracelet a really unusual shape. I just don’t know if they helped create the RIBBON effect I was originally trying to achieve.

The previous folded version looked like ribbons to me immediately.

This one?

I’m not convinced.

It could be the design. It could be the colors. The light blue may simply be too close to the beige background.

So I need your opinion:

👉 DOES IT LOOK LIKE RIBBONS?

Even if the experiment didn’t work exactly as planned, I still think it produced a pretty and unusual bracelet—and sometimes that’s the whole point of experimenting!

This is also a relatively approachable pattern. There aren’t any direction-changing knots in the main design, so you’re mostly working with left and right knots.

⏱️ KNOTTING TIME: About 1 hour 20 minutes
🧵 STRINGS: 12
📈 DIFFICULTY: Beginner-friendly overall, with an unusual edge technique

And we’re not finished with this experiment yet!

Mandy has an idea for HER version: expand the design to 16 strings and add a border around the entire bracelet.

So next we get to find out…

Was Mandy’s idea better than mine? 😬😂

If you make this bracelet in different colors, PLEASE share it with me on Discord. I’d especially love to see whether stronger color contrast makes the ribbon illusion more obvious.

🌐 Find more friendship bracelet tutorials, patterns, and projects at akaawol.com

A huge THANK YOU to my YouTube Members for helping keep this channel going and making these experiments possible!

👍 If you enjoyed the video, hit the Like button.

And let me know below: success, failure…or somewhere in between?

Thanks for watching, and as always…

Don’t get your strings in a bunch!

#akaawol #FriendshipBracelets #FriendshipBracelet #BraceletMaking #BraceletPattern #BraceletTutorial #Knots #DIYJewelry #JewelryMaking #Craft