Friendship Bracelet Making

Friendship Bracelet Making is the craft of creating and exchanging friendship bracelets, decorative bracelets given by one person to another as a symbol of friendship, most often handmade from embroidery floss or thread using a form of macrame built on a simple half hitch knot, with the amount of thread varying by pattern, from as few as two strings for a plain double chain knot to three or more for a thicker candy stripe design. Although decorative knotted bands of this kind are ancient, and some can be traced to China between 481 and 221 BC, the hobby's modern popularity is generally traced to the indigenous peoples of Central and South America, and its resurgence in the United States dates to the 1970s and 1980s, when the bracelets were worn during protests over the disappearances of Mayan and peasant activists in Guatemala and were carried into the United States by religious groups active in political rallies. Because they are unisex, friendship bracelets are commonly worn and made by both boys and girls, and the hobby has since spread throughout the world as a popular pastime, fashion accessory and form of folk art. Friendship Bracelet Making is a distinct pursuit from the live Kumihimo and Scoubidou hobbies also practiced on this atlas: kumihimo is a Japanese cord braiding technique traditionally worked on a foam or wooden disk or a marudai stand, and scoubidou uses flat plastic lace rather than the embroidery floss and half hitch knotting that defines a friendship bracelet.