CANDYLICIOUS BOWTIES | Props for Uncle Jon

Uncle Jon & Auntie Gin taking a lovely selfie. LOL! He picked a candy cane striped bowtie. So cool for a VP!!

I've totally neglected to blog about so many things, so bear with me as I catch up to the missing three months! First up, Uncle Jon needed some bowties for his team to wear for his office annual dinner and the theme was Candylicious, so here's a simple tute on making one of those pin on ties that are totally not your conventional ties. I've had so much fun doing these.

The bowties were made from one gigantic piece of material I've stashed aside for a fun project. The rainbow effect on the material made my job easy peasy, since all you need to do is cut a long strip off it and you have variegated colours all the way.

The best thing about this, is that you'll never have the same colours on each piece. How about that for originality!?

I did a sample with this shiny material. As you can see, the bow tie has 2 main body pieces. I cut one wider than the other so that the top piece is slightly smaller. The bigger piece at the bottom will be visible on the sides. I also ironed interfacing for the bottom bigger piece. This will ensure your bow tie is sturdier.

Inverting the bigger piece with the interfacing can be a real challenge. So use a pincher plier but please clean it first!

The inverted pieces. The joining is at the centre so that it will not appear on any sides of the bow tie. I left the opening at the centre for the inversion. No need to seal these as the middle part of the bow tie will cover the hole anyway.

Gather the two pieces together in neat folds. Making sure you have one tidy hill in the middle.

Hold on tight and start sewing the middle together. This is done by hand!

Because you are sewing through many many layers of fabric, the pincher plier works wonders here.

There!

Now for the middle part. I made tubes from the long strip of cloth I cut just now for the main body.

Some mix and match. Quite therapeutic.

Here, you'll notice that the bottom piece is slightly larger than the top piece. The colour peeking through makes a lot of difference. So give the top piece half a cm more.

The tube for the middle.

Slipped on to slide to the middle.

It looks loose here, wait, we're not done yet. Some hand sewing is required after this.

I use these alligator 2 prong clips, initially for hair bows, but these clips are wonderful to use. Just slide the middle through the collar button and it holds very well. You don't even feel it.

Getting there, but not done yet...

With the alligator clip in place, now I hand stitch the middle so that it has that natural knot of a bowtie. Brilliant, no!?

Ta-da! I love it when they all come together. So yummy looking!!!

This is for a girl colleague. I used the same strip of fabric and made a cute corsage. All in the same candylicious theme! It's one of those simple ribbon roses that you twist and fold and secure to a felt backing. Handsewn it all together and have a little netting for a softer effect. This is with a pin and hair clip sewn together at the back. In case if she wears it on her hair or jacket for that night.

I delivered this in a box with individual black card stands.

Candylicious!