Paracord Wrap Bottle

I will show you how to make a wrap for a strait-walled aluminum water bottle out of 550 cord/paracord.  I will be using some decorative knots that are fairly easy to master during the process.  We will be using a modified Chinese Good luck knot and a Cross Knot.

You will need the following:

-An aluminum water bottle
-Four  stands of paracord each measuring 112" inches (448" total) or shorter depending on what you do at step 6.
-A lighter (for melting the ends of the paracords closed)
-Scissors or knife
-About 4-6 Hours

The water bottle I chose to use was a generic aluminum water bottle I got a Kohl's Department store for about $5 two years ago.  It was a good candidate for this project because it is strait-walled and has a large mouth.  Feel free to use one that has curves to it, it will just be a bit harder to get a tight weave on it since you will have to weave it while it is on the bottle.

First we will start the Chinese Good Luck knot for the base knot.  Take the four strands of paracord and fold them in half.  Put a 90 degree bend in the middle and roll the ends up to make it shorter if you want.  Then Just follow the steps below.  Make sure cinch it up tight before continuing on to the next steps.

Now we have 8 stands.  

Step 1:  Take two of the strands that are next to each other and make an S shape out of the cord having the right-most one cross over the left strand bringing the bottom half of the S under the left strand.  

Step 2:  Bring the left strand underneath the S and feed it between the two cords at the very top to the left of itself.

Step 3:  Now feed the same end through the bottom of the S in step 1 and pull it tight.

Now repeat 3 more times to have 4 cross knots evenly spaced from the Chinese Knot.

Now that we have four knots that come over the bottom of the water bottle we can begin the diamond pattern of the weave.

Take the right strand and the left strand from knots that are next to each other and make a cross knot between them.  Leave about 1" between the knots to get a good symmetrical pattern.  Now repeat three more times again with the knots next to it.

Now just keep repeating the diamond pattern until you reach the desired length that you would like.

At this point you can do one of two things you can either end the weave here and just tie some cross knots closer together to have them squeeze the neck of the bottle or you can continue on and make a handle for it and also have a weave you can slide off if you needed to ever wash to bottle.  I am going to go with the latter of the two options.

We are just going to narrow the weave down to two 2 groups of 4 strands now for the handles.  To do this just take two of the strands and now treat them as one strand and make another cross knot further up.  I have 2" of cord from the small cross knot to the large knot to begin the handle.

Now just make the cross knots really close to each other and you will get a thick flat handle.

Joining the strands together can be quit tricky.  What I did is combine two cross knots at the top.  After I tied two cross knots as you can see in the second picture I took all 8 of the cords and feed them up through the square hole that is in the center with the strands facing upwards.  I trimmed them evenly and then fused all of the ends together with the lighter.  Not as pretty as I wanted the finish knot to be but I could not think of another way to bring the ends together.

And you are finished.  I decided to make that wrap removable just in-case you wanted to wash the water bottle and you would not have to wait for the weave to dry.  Thinking about it you could make that same type of  weave for a wine bottle or any other type of container if you wanted to tote it around with you.