Zipper Bow Tutorials Part One: White Flower Zipper Bow

ZIPPER BOW TUTORIALS PART ONE:

WHITE FLOWER ZIPPER BOW

Remember zipper bows are cute on adults too!

For this tutorial you will need:

small circle of felt (no bigger than a quarter)

scissors

zipper (I like to use a longer zipper on these kinds of bows. It's possible with a shorter zipper but much harder)

Needle and thread

Glue gun and glue sticks

A ribbon lined alligator clip (click here for tutorial)

We will start with your small circle of felt. Felt makes a great base for any bow because it doesn't move around a lot, it doesn't fray and hot glue sticks to it really well.

For this bow your circle shouldn't be bigger than a quater. In fact I actually cut mine down to about a dime size. Either one works.

Then you will take one end of your zipper and place it in the center of your felt. Put one stitch in it. In this picture I made my first needle insertion through the top and found that once I made a full stitch and came back through my thread got in the way of what I was doing. So I am going to suggest you make your first needle insertion through the bottom side of your felt. One full stitch means that you will go up and through from the bottom of your felt and then back through top to the bottom keeping your needle and thread out of your way. After securing your zipper to your felt. play around to see how many petals you can make with the length of your zipper. I usually try to make about five.

After you know how big you want your petals to be make your first petal loop and secure it down with a stitch.

Make your second petal straight across from the first and secure it down with a stitch.

Then you will make your 3rd, 4th, and 5th petals. Securing each down with a stitch. I have included picture so you can see how I did mine.

3rd petal

4th petal

and 5th petal.

Now you are going to tie off your thread to the back of your felt. If you know how to tie it off skip the next two pictures. If you don't keep reading.

Put your needle through a small piece of felt and DON'T pull it all the way through.

stop when you have a small loop like this and pass your needle through that loop and pull it all the way tight. Do this 2 or 3 times to make sure it's secure.

Trim up the felt on the back side of your bow if you need to. You don't want to be able to see any of the felt when you are looking at the front of your flower.

Now turn it over.

Your petal should look like this.

Now at this point you can do one of two things. You can cut off the excess zipper and put a cute button or old piece of jewelry in the middle like so...

or you can roll the excess zip to make a zipper center like this...

If you want to make a rolled zipper center take the opposite end of the zipper you have been working with, shown here...

and begin rolling it toward the center. Every turn you make put a small dot of glue from your glue gun so that it stays in place.

Once you have rolled it as much as you can it will look like this

Then you are going to take your glue gun and put a glob of hot glue in the center

Try too make sure the side of your zipper bow does not touch the glue until you are ready. Once you have your glob of glue take the end of the zipper that you rolled and twist it so that the teeth are facing you and the end with no teeth is in the glue. It should be standing straight up.

Your bow should now look like this...

Cute right? You can either leave it how it is if you like it or you can add another layer of petals. At this point I thought my zipper flower needed more so I decided to make another layer of petals. So you are going to start all over with a small piece of felt, the other half of your zipper and your needle and thread.

Continue all previous steps, making each petal and stitching it down until you have 5 petals EXCEPT this time you will want your petals to be just a tiny bit larger than your first row of petals you already made.

You will end up here. Cut off any excess zipper. Then put a glob of glue in the center of your 2nd layer of petals and place your first layer on top. TIP: when positioning my first layer onto my second layer, I like to make sure none of my petals are directly laying of top of each other. This way the flower looks more full and like it has more petals.

This is what your end result will look like!

If your want you can further embellish it will lace and feathers but since these were the only zippers I had that did have metal teeth I decided to leave them. Now you will need to add an alligator clip to the back of your bow. Click here for that tutorial

Cute as can be!