This summer I am volunteering at Camp Judy Layne in Kentucky for a week. I grew up in Kentucky and went to CJL Girl Scout camp every summer for years. Girl Scouts and this camp made me who I am and I have many fond memories and friends from more than 45 years ago. I will be helping with arts and crafts and also teaching wet felting to the campers. In preparation, I decided I needed to make some friendship bracelets to give away. Here is the tutorial that I found on Instagram for “Jellyfish” bracelets (Kumihimo).

Kumihimo means gathered threads and was historically used for samurai armor ties. The round ones that are made with this technique are kakugumi. The seven color bracelets are considered lucky and ward off misfortune. Mainly, I wanted something simple and easy to make.

I started with some wool yarn that I had in my stash and made a few bracelets. But I thought they were a bit too “hairy” and might be itchy for some people to wear. Suddenly, I remembered the embroidery threads that I got from my mom. There were a bunch of #3 perle cotton threads that I rarely use in my stitching/embroidery. She had already cut most of them into lengths and I found that I could make two bracelets from the cut lengths.

The nice thing about the Instagram tutorial was that the disc used was made from cardboard and was simple to create. There are Kumihimo discs that you can purchase with more slits and you can create more intricate patterns, but this was something that can be reproduced to teach the girls at camp.

Here’s the top of the circle once the threads are “loaded”. If you put similar colors together as shown above when you start, the pattern is different than if you randomly place the colors.

And here’s why it’s called a jellyfish bracelet. It definitely looks like a jellyfish when you’re making it. The directions are quite easy and it is a simple pattern. The bracelet slowly developing is quite satisfying to see.

Here are my finished bracelets so far. You can see the “fatter” ones on the right are the wool yarn bracelets. I think I will use small rubber bands to connect them although I will also look into a sliding square knot closure. But I was supposed to leave long ends for that type of closure which I didn’t do.

Here’s the difference in the patterns using this method. The bracelet on the left is loaded with the orange threads together and the blue threads together. The one on the right is random blue and orange mixed when loading.  I have been making these at night while watching television. Not sure how many I will get finished but it’s been a relaxing activity.