Bouchard Originals: A Bow Tie Bonanza

A few weeks ago, my buddy Ken (from PA) posted a photo of himself on Facebook absolutely ROCKING a super cool bow tie. I guess I never realized he was into bow ties, so I immediately commented saying that. It turned into a little conversation about bow ties and I found myself offering to make some for him. You may remember the "Bow Ties by Bouche" that I made for Brance a couple of years ago. Of course, Brance will always be a source of bow tie inspiration, but it's fun to have another cool guy who is into that kind of look.

Since it's super easy and quick to make a bow tie, I decided to make a lot of them, not only for Ken and Brance, but also for the Professor. After all, the ability to rock a bow tie was one of the criteria that earned him his nickname. I dug through my stash of fabric and pulled out anything and everything that would possibly work as a bow tie:

There was a LOT to choose from, but the most exciting thing was noticing how well so many of those fabrics worked together. I started cutting and before I knew it, I had over a dozen designs worked out:

One great thing about bow ties is that they use a very small amount of fabric, so I was able to use some random scraps I had lying around to cut out the pattern pieces. You may recognize that green and white floral print from Kate's dress that I made a few years ago. If you haven't been reading my blog long enough to remember that post, then you better get yourself over to those archives and start reading. You know I have over 1,000 posts on here, right? (And I plan on bragging about that for a while, by the way.) But I digress...

You can't really tell in the first photo because the fabrics are lined up perfectly, but in the second one (with the green and white print), you can see that there's a bright purple solid fabric underneath the green. Well, that's because I had a brilliant idea to make bow ties with two different fabrics. In some cases, it was a combination of two prints, in others it was a print with a coordinating solid like this:

And in some it was a combination of a print with a contrasting solid like the green and purple pictured above. In any case, it was really fun to put the different fabric combinations together. I ended up with some more traditional bow ties that were made with just one fabric, as well as a handful of combo-bow ties. Fortunately, between Ken, Brance and the Professor, I knew all my hard work would be time well spent. (Actually, to make over a dozen bow ties only took about an hour, so even if it was a waste, it was a small waste.)

Bow Tie Bonanza!!!

The music-themed bow ties are for the Professor. Since he's an elementary school music teacher, they're appropriate. I also made him a two-sided bow tie using that graphic black and white stripe fabric and the bright gold swirly pattern. It's the colors of his alma mater, Appalachian State University. You never know when you need formal wear to match your university, right? The rest will go to Ken and Brance, and the three in the upper right corner went to someone I've never even met- my friend Tim's partner. I hope he likes them! 

Unfortunately, I have no photos yet of the bow ties as part of an outfit, or even tied into an actual bow. I tried tying one on myself just for the purpose of snapping a photo, but it ended up looking like this: 

Not my best work. I think I should leave the bow tie tying (and wearing) up to the gents.

So, if you want to see these bow ties in all their glory, keep checking back. Ken has promised to snap photos of the outfits he puts together with his ties. Brance tends to use his all the time for auditions (he's a professional actor), and sometimes sends me photos, too. The Professor might be the hardest one to capture in these bow ties, but maybe I can convince him to wear one to the wedding we're attending together next weekend. We'll see...