Little Mister Bowties

My brother was married in March.  All of the nephews and my brother wore bow ties for the wedding.  They looked adorable.  Since then, my boys only want to wear bow ties to church.  For Easter, I wanted to make them coordinating ties in spring colors.

I found this great tutorial on Delia Creates.  I followed her directions, except for one major step.  I didn't measure their necks with their collared shirt on, instead I just estimated.  This resulted in much too small bow ties.  As in, this wouldn't even fit Mr. Three's baby neck, too small.

This ended up being a good mistake because I had to modify the pattern to make them fit and I think it actually made them better.  Instead of attaching the swimsuit hook to the ends of the fabric, I added approximately 3 inches of elastic to one end of the tie.  I sandwiched the elastic between the layers of fabric and zig zag stitched it several times to secure the elastic and minimize fabric fraying.  I folded the exposed end of the elastic into a loop and zig zag stitched it in place.  I attached the swimsuit hook to the other end of the bowtie fabric and zig zag stitched it in place.  This made the tie easily removable (without having to re-tie the bow each time), and gave it the extra length and stretch to fit all three of my boys' necks.

 

I love these dapper boys!

 

Check in later in the week (hopefully) for a quick tutorial for turning the tie scraps into a cute flower pin for the girls (or in my case, for me, since I don't have any daughters :)).