Tied up

I had this idea that I wanted to make Evan a tie to wear for his Easter outfit.  I used some left over fabric from a previous project, and thought it would be easy to just stitch some fabric together, add some elastic to it, and voila!  I'd have a cute, handmade, quick and easy tie!  NOT!  It ended up being nearly a four hour project!  I blame my neurotic perfectionism.  I started by researching a couple internet sites and watching a few tutorials online.  Most of what I read and saw, though, was on how to turn a men's tie into a children's tie.  Not what I necessarily wanted to do.  So, I tried to make-up my own method.

The actual tie wasn't so hard.  That only took me a few minutes to do.  Stitch the edges of some fabric together, turn it inside out, create a "dimple" at the top, stitch it in place - done!  The tricky part is the knot at the top.  I was trying desperately to find a simple way to add the knot without any stitching showing or any seams.  It actually looked pretty good, but being the perfectionist I am, I wanted to back of the tie (which nobody was going to really see) to be seam-less, too.  I couldn't figure this one out!  After re-doing the knot about four times, I was somewhat satisfied and finished the tie.  Here it is:

Kind of cute, huh?  I'm open for suggestions on how to do the knot . . .