A Totally Tom Tie

A longstanding conundrum for the Cashmerettes is how to sew things for the menfolk in our lives, once they already have an ipad/laptop case. So recently I went on a mission!

The mission started at Mood Fabrics in New York City, where (where else?!) they have a tie silk section! Most exciting. Tie silks are very heavy and instantly look like a tie even when you’re holding them. Most of the fabrics were really horrible: gold stripes and whatnot. But this lovely purple with dragons jumped out at me:

So onto tie making! I used this PurlBee tutorial, which is a pretty excellent free pattern. It’s definitely on the skinny-tie side, but apparently that’s what what the kids are doing these days.

Here are the three main outside bits of the tie, which you cut on the bias:

A wodgeful of interfacing goes on the inside, and then you sew in bits of lining just at the ends – a nice cheat.

Iron and fold it up and it almost looks like a tie already!

Then there’s a bit of handstitching – doing the blind “ladder” stitch which is pretty nifty because it’s entirely invisible. Here you can see the stitches:

And voila! They are gone.

And here’s the final thing! It was actually remarkably quick: but an evening’s worth.

So this dry-run tie was made for Cashmerette devotee and sibling, Tom, for his birthday last week. And he wore it out to our friend’s ordination at St Paul’s – most fancy.

Here is the demonstration that it does indeed work!