Leather Hair Bows Tutorial

I’ve had a bit of a love affair with leather lately. The wonderful thing about it is, there are so many different textures, thicknesses, and colors, and the applications are endless. Lucky for me, my dad is a hunter, going to South Africa every year and also hunting buffalo, deer, and elk closer to home. He gave me a few tanned hides, and I got to work making things. I sew a lot of cotton fabric for quilting, so using leather was a whole new world to me. After some trial and error (leather is not very forgiving in some aspects) I came up with a few easy projects that were simple and oh so fabulous- one of which were these adorable little leather bows.

What you’ll need:

• Leather- I used some soft buffalo hide and deer hide- both of which are relatively thin and pliable.
• Scissors- Make sure they aren’t wimpy ones!
• Glue gun- I really tried to make this a needle-and-thread operation, but after breaking needs and using pliers and poking holes in my table I tried the glue gun, and it was a screaming success!
• Some hair ties/clips/bobby pins
• Scrap fabric or felt- I tried both and preferred the felt, but use whatever you’ve got on hand.
• Thread- for the wrap around and secure.

First cut some rectangles of leather, I made my all different sizes, from teeny baby ones to bigger five-inch ones. Cute a smaller strip for the middle part, eyeballing and using personal preference.

Fold your leather so it puckers in the middle. There are a few different ways to do this, so try some different things and see what works best for you.

Using your thread, wrap the middle a few times and secure with a knot. You might remember this from my bow-tie tutorial, but this time I could not get the needle through the leather, so I just wrapped it tight and tied a knot!

Secure one end of your skinny strip with glue, then wrap the other end until it meets the other side and glue it as well.

Now your bow is done and you need to make a way to secure it to a barrette, headband, clip, or bobby pin. I used a tube of fabric or felt, gluing it first and then gluing it to the bow. 

Make the tube just big enough to slide in your clip and wider than your skinny strip to make the bow more secure.

It’s just that easy!

So darling on little girls and chic enough for you to wear as well!

I also thought this would be amazing as a boy’s bow tie too, so maybe I’ll try that next!