Good morning, I'm Morgan Donner and today
I am excited to share with you my absolute all-time favorite, number one,
fingerloop braid pattern! There are already a number of really great YouTube
tutorials on how to do fingerloop braiding, but I haven't seen any on my
particular favorite pattern, so I figured I'd show you that today! Without much ado,
let's get into it! So we're gonna start out here with a total of six strings, four of one color, one of another, one of another. The more observant of you might
note that each of my 'loops' is actually two! For our purposes, pretend
each of them is just one. I doubled up because I wanted to hopefully make it a
little bit more visible for you guys. Do forgive the state of my table here, it's
a work table which means it sees a lot of rough wear and tear. Putting all of
your loops together and keeping them nice and taut, we want them to all be
exactly the same length! I'm going to get to the end here - I'm gonna actually hold
on to this end, because I'm pretty sure that that way is nice and neat, and I'm
going to toss this end into a knot. We need to go ahead and secure this end
down, keep it from moving around on us! And for that, I have this handy-dandy
table clamp! So you can get all sorts of clamps in many varieties, I'll try to
link some below, but this is the one I happen to have, I think it came as part
of an embroidery kit of some kind? Next we're gonna want to secure this
bundle to our table clamp and you could just I guess toss it down but then once
you've made your braid you'll end up having to cut this off at least with my
particular table clamp solution here, so what I like to do is actually make a
separate little loop holder. I'm just gonna grab some excess string I have and
then tie this into a little loop. I don't know the name of this technique (I
guarantee it has a name) but what I do is let my fingers in, pull them up and
around, and then together! So we're gonna slip that over the knot,
pull it tight, and then you can hook this around your clamp. Whenever
we're done, you can very easily undo that little "knot" there, and won't have to
sacrifice any of your braids to get it off of your clamp! All right, so I've got
my loops tied to my table here (I don't know if you can actually see it from where you are) We are all ready to start braiding, do get comfortable, you're gonna
be here a little while! So I want to separate out my different colors here, my
different loops. I'll kind of jdooosh around here with my different
loops until I've got them all detangled from each other ... So to start off with,
we're going to take the color that we have four of, in my case it's red, and
we're gonna put that on the middle two fingers on each hand. Then you have your
two leftover colors, one's gonna go on your index, the other is gonna go on your
pinky of the right hand. It doesn't really matter which one's which, they're
gonna get switched throughout this process. Just a really quick aside I
don't necessarily recommend this as your very first braid to try, as I mentioned
there's lots of videos showing really good starter braids, and I will make sure
to link those below, as well as Fingerloop.org, which is a really great website
to learn how to do this. There's also a book "Tak V Bowes Departed" (I think that's the right name) and that's a really great one too I've lost my copy
otherwise I would have shown you a picture of the cover but I'll link to
that below as well. So our index finger is going to be doing a lot of the
grabbing today, I'm going to take my index finger and go through this first
loop, I know that's kind of tricky! Here, let me move it this way .... so I kind
of move my middle finger back here so that I can go through that first loop
and then also through the second. I realize that's tricky, (I did say this is
probably not a good beginner braid!) but I have my index finger through those two
braids and then using my thumb to help the grabbing and kind of hold it
open for a second. I'm going to take this bottom loop
reversed. If I was taking it exactly as it was, I would just let go of it and
then take it, but instead I actually want to take it upside down. So I'm grabbing from the bottom, coming in through - I have my loop! There we go! I've successfully transferred the loop through onto my right hand. Four over here,
two over here, then we're going to lower this one down one, so I'm going to just
shift that down ... there we go! So now I'm going to reach through using the one
that I just removed it from, gonna reach through with my middle finger and grab
the ring finger on the other side also reversed so I'm grabbing the bottom I'm
not just doing a simple transfer instead I'm grabbing through the bottom ... there we go!
Reversing it, pulling it through, ta-da! Alright, last tricky step here is we're
going to exchange our two different colors, in this case: white and green. It doesn't really matter whether I go green over white or if I go white over green. As long as I do it the same way every time, it doesn't matter! The way I like to do it is green over white ... grab that, and pull! Now something I
haven't really mentioned because I've been kind of focused on showing the
steps, is you do want to tighten by pulling this taut each time and there we
go! We want to try and do that between pretty much every string movement,
particularly ones where the string exchanges hands so something to keep in
mind! And we want to start the same way we did the beginning, which means that
these ones need to walk down ... come on, here we go,
it's actually kind of hard to do it loose, .... I guess I don't know
why I'm trying to do it loose! And then this one middle finger .... there we go! I think I am a little bit too close to the camera here,
but unfortunately once you've got stuff on your fingers it's a little bit hard
to move things around, so bear with me as I'm very kind of up close and personal
here! So that is one round down, now just do that about fifty - eighty - hundred
more times and then you have a completed braid! So I keep on
wanting to say things like 'index' and what have you, but I need to stick with
the names A, B, C, and D! Need to remember that! Same here: A B C D. Hopefully
the slight angle change will help you guys out a little bit. A is gonna go
through B and C, it's gonna come over here and take the left C reversed. Move the left B down to C then through C we're gonna steal C off the other hand! Now we need to always remember to exchange A on left and D on the right:
that is what's going to get our pretty pretty pattern at the end! And then these
need to walk down. A, through B, through C, take C reversed! Move C down on the left
hand, steal C from the other hand, and then switch A and D. Then reset so we are just like we
were at the beginning! *Success noises* Now you can set down your loops, it's tricky
though. So make sure that you remember how you
set them down. If I have to set down, I always go "Claws Down"/
hands down. I try and spread my fingers out and carefully place my strings. So I can see that I've got my three loops, I know that I put them down in the same starting position, never set them down in some
random 'middle of your steps', that's no good! Set them down the same way that you
would pick them up at the very very beginning. And now when I need to pick
these back up, I can grab my three loops and put them on my fingers and continue
going about my business! I thought you guys might appreciate "a how I do the
pulling apart motion", which I wasn't necessarily super clear on earlier. Each
time I transfer bows from one hand to the other, I go ahead and do this sort of
finger-wiggly, pushy-outy, movement! This is actually something that can be very
handy to have a extra set of hands for, because you can have one person at one
end, sitting here doing the loop manipulation and you'll have another
person at the far end where the strings come together constantly beating it back
with a stick or something: that way you always have a very tight braid which is
pretty nice! Whenever you're doing it all by yourself, like I am today, there is a
little bit of a tendency to end up with slightly looser braid at the beginning,
and then a slightly tighter braid by the end! Because you get more leverage as you go along. I totally thought that this was going to be more of a "chat with me for a
bit" - video but turns out I kind of need to
concentrate on what I'm doing a little bit, so apparently I can't really hold
much of a conversation while I'm concentrating on what I'm doing! This would, however, be a really great time to put on a podcast or audio book! #notsponsored I genuinely really enjoy listening to a bunch of different
podcasts and audiobooks! Do you guys have any particular favorite podcasts that
you want to recommend? I'm always always looking to check out some more! Nope, nope!
No, don't grab that one! Yeah see, I can't talk and braid at the same time
apparently! I keep finding myself getting distracted
and almost grabbing the wrong string. If you do accidentally end up grabbing the
wrong string or you drop a string and you're not sure if you picked it back up
correctly, which happens, definitely! It's not a big deal - yes, your pattern is gonna
be a little interrupted, you might see a slight deviation in the pattern if you
were to look at the finished braid, but that's fine!
It'll still be a perfectly functional braid in the end, which is all that
matters right? It's looking pretty! I don't know if you guys can see it .... you know what, what am i doing? I should show you guys a close-up of what I'm all
about here! I keep touting this as my favorite braid and I haven't even gone through the trouble of showing you what it looks like! My string bits are just
about done, you can see I've about run out of room here. I think I might just
call that good enough! So here is the end of our cord
hopefully that's focusing there we go I really really love this pattern I just I
dig the contrast of the the edges it's kind of actually a nicely compact and
stiff bit of cord now let's see let's compare our beginning in our end here
okay not not too bad so here's the end and here's the beginning you can see
that like I said that first centimeter or two is always going to be a little
off and iffy but we're actually not too bad you can see that occasionally I do
make mistakes you can see here I must have messed something up I'm kind of my
white stitch is sort of sunken back down in there somehow I also did something
funny here see how that section is a little bit skinnier than the rest around
it I must have done something something funny there with my loops little
imperfections will happen but you know this is still a perfectly usable length
of cord and will suit my purposes just fine so do stay tuned for the next video
in a week or two where I show what I'm actually making this braid for have a
great day guys
