As we’ve said more than once in the Craft Corner column, inspiration often comes to us in the most unexpected places. This week’s column was born in – of all places – a doctor’s office.
While waiting in the examination room for our doctor to arrive, we spied a mobile hanging from the ceiling.
Can you guess what the theme was? Here’s a clue: Boop boop dittem dattem whattem chu!
OK, so it’s not the best clue in the world, but bear with us – we’ve been waiting to work this line into a column for decades.
For those not familiar with the famous (or infamous) song lyric, it’s from “Three Little Fishes,” the 1939 Kay Kyser classic.
Moving on: The mobile consisted of a half-dozen little fish, woven out of colorful satin ribbon.
We tried to get a better look at the weaving, but when the doctor arrived we forgot all about the mobile until later that day.
Woven ribbon fish are a staple of kids’ craft classes, but we’ve never made them before. Certain that we could find instructions online, we did a search and came up with several potential sites.
Alas, all three proved useless.
The first site contained a photograph of a finished fish but the instructions were written only and not at all easy to follow.
Site No. 2 was easier to follow, but the finished fish was not the fish we were looking for.
The third site was the most promising, as it offered fairly clear written instructions along with photo illustrations, but when we tried to follow the steps, the photos weren’t clear enough to show us what was going on, even with the help of the written procedure.
After trying to figure out the process for about an hour, we gave up and decided to improvise by making up our own procedure. Ours differs from the traditional in that we use six short lengths of ribbon rather than two long lengths, and our fish are flat instead of puffy.
So for those Craft Corner readers who don’t know how to weave ribbon fish the old-fashioned way, here are our instructions, including photos, which we hope will be easier to follow than the ones we found online.
Step 1: Cut six equal lengths of satin or grosgrain ribbon (any width you choose), using two or three colors, and fold them in half.
Step 2: Lay one length of ribbon on a flat surface, then lay three lengths across it in an alternating over-under pattern. Add a tiny dot of hard-to-hold, quick-dry tacky glue at each overlap to hold the ribbon in place.
Remember that you need to think about both sides of the fish, so don’t glue until both sides are in the over-under pattern.
Step 3: Weave the remaining two lengths of ribbon over-under the three lengths attached to the first length, completing the woven design. Dot with glue to hold in place.
Trim the ends of the ribbon to form fins as desired, and add googly eyes to both sides.
A word about glue: You’ll need to use a hard-to-hold, quick-drying glue to accommodate the texture of the ribbon. Regular glue just won’t hold the slick-finished ribbon properly.
Also, you may notice in our photograph of the finished fishies that the dot of glue shows through the ribbon, but this is because we photographed our fish before the glue had dried completely.
Once dry, the spots were nearly invisible, but if you’re bothered by even a hint of a spot, just think of them as scales on the fish.
You can use the finished fishies in a variety of ways: a mobile, such as the one that inspired us; as story illustrations on a flannel board, by adding a small piece of Velcro to one side; as additions to handmade greeting cards or scrapbook pages; or as fun summer jewelry, such as pins, earrings, pendants or hairclips, by adding the appropriate findings.
We still want to learn how to weave the ribbon fish according to the traditional method and will continue looking for instructions online and in books or other craft resource materials.
If you want to try the traditional method yourself, do an online search for “woven ribbon fish” and you should come up with a few options. Some of those we found were dead ends (the sites were locked or not operating), but we did manage to find the three mentioned above.
Contact Jonetta Coffin at jrocoffin@aol.com.
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