crocheted bow ties

I haven't had a good crochet project for a long time. I saw a picture on one of the blogs I read occasionally of a little girl with a crocheted bow in her hair, and I thought it was so adorable. Since I have no need of hair bows at my house, I decided to make some bow ties instead! I wish I had a great tutorial for you, but I don't. But if you can do a single crochet, you can make these. 

 

First, chain 25-35 (however large you want your bow tie to be. For Hank, I did 26)

row 1: skip 1st chain, single crochet in all remaining chain stitches. chain one

row 2: single crochet in all stitches. chain one

row 3: single crochet in all stitches. chain one, then leave yourself between 6-8 inches of yarn, cut off extra and pull through chained stitch to make a knot.

 

Bring side without knot in to center of crochet. Bring side with knot in to center, overlapping the other side by about 1/2 inch. Wrap remaining yarn tightly until almost all wound up, then tuck under to keep it closed.  

Voila! You have a small bow tie. (For larger ties, do more rows. Everything else is the same.) This is the back of mine, so you can see how the last little bit of yarn is tucked under.

 

I made lots of bow ties. So many colors to choose from! After I had finished a plethora of bow ties, I needed a simple way to attach them to a onesie so they would be interchangeable. My friend Alisha suggested buttons. Perfect!

 

Simply measure how far apart the centers of the bow is on either side of the wrapped yarn on your bow ties. Mine were about 2 inches. I found the center of a plain white onesie, marked off an inch on each side, and sewed on two buttons.

 Dapper Hank in his button shirt.

 

 Then you just slip the buttons through a hole in the crochet to attach the bow tie to the shirt. So easy!

 And that's it!

 Here's Hank before church a couple weeks ago sporting his green bow tie. He also has orange, pink, light blue, dark blue, yellow and teal.

 Jed loved the pink bow tie so much that I made him a big one of his own. He was THRILLED! To make a bow tie that can go under a collar, measure your child's neck, then chain enough stitches to go around. Crochet 2 rows and fasten off. When wrapping the center of the bow tie, stick one end of your neck piece under the yarn as you wrap to attach it.

Sew a button on the opposite side as shown (sorry that pink button is so hard to see. It's on the right hand side), then wrap the neck piece under the collar of your child's shirt and attach. Easy to do and super cute, and you can change them every week.