Seersucker Ties

Before any talk of ties... let's talk Meredith:

She has been officially stable for three days! Phew and praise the Lord. Yesterday night they closed up her chest (they left it open for three days because the new heart was leaking and they needed to fix those). She got back from surgery at 10pm last night. Chuck, her boyfriend, saw her for a bit yesterday and said that she could communicate by mouthing words. She still has a breathing tube in so she isn't speaking yet. Thank you for praying for us... she sure needed it, and still does. She's got a looong road of recovery ahead of her.

Onto Seersucker... not a natural transition but what would be from a heart transplant? Nothing.

So, here's a pic of my boy with his tie blowing in the mind... he wouldn't look at the camera. :) 

Photo taken yesterday at Tuck's Point, where we had our rehearsal dinner.

I had this vision of making AJ and Drew matching ties for Easter. I found some inexpensive seersucker fabric at Joann Fabric and gave AJ the choice of a green, pink, blue or yellow tie. He chose yellow so for a total cost of $3.99 (thanks to a coupon) I walked out of the store with half a yard of the seersucker fabric I'd need for my guys.

I wanted to make a pattern and knew the best trick would probably be to take apart one of AJ's old ties that he didn't want anymore. This purple Nautica tie was in the giveaway bin and when I opened it up I saw the way it was all sewn up and I found a sturdy piece of fabric inside to stabilize the tie.

Of course, after I opened it up AJ told me he wanted a square tie instead... so I didn't end up using the stabilizing fabric for his tie, I wanted to save it until I was making him a normal pointy tie. So I took one of his square ties and laid it out on the fabric to make a pattern. (I did some guesswork on how long to make Drew's... it turned out 34.5 inches long and I would have made it an inch or two longer.)

I took a pencil and drew dashed lines down the side of the tie.

If you look at a tie closely you'll notice that there is always a seam halfway up any tie. I wanted to make sure that my seams would line up correctly so I lined them up like this:

Then I sewed along the dashed lines... keep in mind at this point the fabric is inside out. This photo shows one side complete and the other sewn but waiting to be turned inside out.

Probably the trickiest part of this tie was just turning it inside out because it's so skinny.

But then I got smart... I mean, this is what kabob holders are for, right? :) It was perfect to wiggle the fabric out of the tight little areas where my fingers weren't fitting in easily.

Both sides are now sewn and turned inside out but I still had the unfinished ends:

My apologies for no photos of what it looks like sewn up... All I did was turn the fabric in so you couldn't see a rough edge and I did a little hand stitch with white thread the width of the fabric. It took about five minutes, no joke.

Here are the finished products after about an hour and a half of work... let me just say that I'm not an expert at tying ties. I went onto a website to find out how to do it about 30 seconds before I took these photos. Hence the loose knots. :)

I did Drew's tie in the seersucker sideways and did it lengthwise for AJ's. I definitely like Drew's better.

My little model was sick on Easter and just about had a bird when I tried to make him and AJ take a photo together so instead of showing you the photo where AJ is practically wrestling him to get him to sit still I decided to do a little photo shoot of him yesterday in his tie. Again, remember, I can't really tie it well and he doesn't love having things tightly around his neck so it's loooose. :)

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