Today I thought I would do a bit of an experiment and compare different ways to tie ribbon bows.

There are three methods which I wanted to compare:

The Fork, The Knot and The Cut.

So let’s get started!

#1. The Fork.

This is a larger version of something which has been all over Pinterest and Tumblr. I have no idea who invented this originally but here’s a site with a pdf which is fairly self explanatory.

For the big version you just need 4 fingers and some ribbon.

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Wrap a piece of ribbon around your fingers like this and hold in place:How-To-Make-Ribbon-Bows-VioletLeBeaux-868

Poke the top end between your middle fingers at the bottom.

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Poke the other end through the the fingers at the top.

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From the back it looks like this:

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Tie the two ends in a knot so they hold it in place.

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Wiggle it off your fingers.

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Even it out and this is the front:

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And back:

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Not bad and it’s very easy to get a lot of bows done quickly which are completely even. It can be a bit fiddly though.

The Knot.

Take a piece of ribbon and fold the end in to the middle.

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Fold the other end to the middle too:

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Now grab the folded ends and tie them in a knot.

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It makes an upside down bow.

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Pull the ends tightly and even it out.

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That’s the knot! It’s a very simple way to get a bow but the tail pieces come from different sides of the bow which I’m not a big fan of.

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The Cut

This version kind of cheats by using 3 pieces of ribbon instead of one. I’ve already done a more detailed tutorial on this one so if you need instructions check out my ribbon bow tutorial here.

This is the end result, it’s the perfect shape but it takes so much longer to do.

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So looking at them side by side I like The Cut the most but I think the Fork is best when you need to do them in bulk. What do you guys think?? Which is your favorite?

Here they are in the order of Fork, Knot and Cut:

How-To-Make-Ribbon-Bows-VioletLeBeaux-875How-To-Make-Ribbon-Bows-VioletLeBeaux-882How-To-Make-Ribbon-Bows-VioletLeBeaux-883

I’m so weird about bows, I can’t believe I actually just wrote a post comparing them XD