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Support an excellent songwriter - Dylan Sneed

So this is really cool, there's a website that helps musicians raise money to record their albums.  I wish that had been around when I recorded my album (which you can buy the hardcopy here and download from itunes here).  This songwriter, Dylan Sneed is an excellent musician and songwriter who puts on a great show every time we see him.  In October, I had the privilege of playing a house concert  with him.  So do me a favor and check his page out.  He's a full time DIY musician and I'm sure none of us know how hard that can be.  But Dylan seems like the kind of guy who can't really do anything else - not because he's not talented, but because he's so passionate about music. And that's the kind of music we need to be listening to and it's the kind of music worth supporting. 

Patch Wool Scarf Now Available

After so many requests from gentlemen who have seen my husband's scarf that I made him for Christmas, I've decided to list this scarf on my store and make it available to you for the rest of the winter.  It's a timeless design and the fabric is high quality 100% wool and lined with soft corduroy.  I've made 5 available on my online store so please go there and snatch them up.  

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If you love this scarf but aren't able to buy it at the time, please pass on the word on your favorite style forums and blogs.  You're welcome to use my images but please link back to this site or my store.  And as always, Thank-you for the support!

Edited 2-13 - The first five scarves sold within a couple of days so I've listed just a few more.  

The Happy Pink Bow Tie

This may be my favorite picture that has been e-mailed to me thus far.  I just love how this gentleman makes a hot pink and purple tie look manly.  What he may or may not know is that this tie was made with a pair of 100% silk women's pants that I found at the thrift store.  I think this fabric is much happier as a bow tie.

Please send me your photos of yourself wearing your Cordial Churchman bow ties.  I love to see them!

New Madras and seersucker bow ties listed

I've just listed about 23 new bow ties on my website. Please check them out. Here's some of my favorite new madras ties.

Patch Wool and Harris Tweed Scarves

So in the past few months, I've made 3 scarves.  One gentleman came to me in the fall begging me to make him a patch tweed scarf and after a bit if coaxing, I agreed to patch together my first scarf.  It was pretty big - almost six feet long and a 12 inches wide.  But since he's in a colder climate, he wanted some heft around his neck. Here's a picture he sent me of himself wearing the scarf.

Then I thought I'd use some more of the wool that I had on hand to make my husband a christmas gift. This time I used a brown corduroy fabric on the reverse side to reduce some of the bulk. I'm sure you'll recognize much of this fabric from my bow ties.



I think he liked it.

My next patch scarf project has a rather interesting story. Another customer of mine had sent me some tweed he had acquired from Vintage Whistles, an online vintage clothing ship in the UK. All of the fabric was cut from un-wearable Harris Tweed jackets. He wanted me to make him some bow ties and a patch tweed scarf.

It was sortof funny working with vintage fabric from another country.  I was constantly sneezing from either the fibers or the foreign dust in the fabric.  Even when I was at the post office mailing them away, I kept on sneezing and the lady behind me kept blessing me.  I said "Oh, I'm just allergic to this thing that I'm mailing."  After I said that I realized that she probably thought I was absolutely batty.  I hope he likes the scarf and the bow tie though.  I'm not sure how he'll get those suckers tied into a bow, but that's his problem, not mine!  

As you may notice, I'm on a bit of a blogging streak!  Tomorrow I'm going to give you a sneek peek of the Indian madras fabrics I have for my spring/summer collection of bow ties.  

Custom Tartan Bow Tie

Over christmas season, I had quite a few girlfriends and wives who wanted to buy bow ties for their loved ones. Here is one such bow tie. She ordered the Sutherland wool tartan from a scottish weaver and mailed it to me to turn into a bow tie and pocket square.

While I don't have intentions of selling pocket squares, sometimes I say yes when asked. Usually I tell people to buy them from Kent Wang who makes especially wonderful pocket squares, but this was an unusual circumstance because it was custom fabric.  It's kindof fun to make these because it gets me away from my sewing machine.   

He actually wrote a comment here on the blog when he received it:

Ellie,
I just got my Christmas gift from my girlfriend- the Ancient Sutherland Tartan bow and pocket square. Fantastic work, again.
I'll be sure to send a picture when I get to wearing it.
Thanks and happy holidays!

Let's hope he sends me the picture.  I'd love to see it!

I made this pocket square while watching Last Days Of Disco on hulu.  I'm kindof a sucker for those Whit Stillman movies although since there's so much dialogue, sometimes it takes me an extra viewing or two to catch it all.

Welcome to January

December went by in quite a whirl. Christmas was a very lovely time and we greatly enjoyed the magic of the holidays. I worked very hard to get caught up and there was actually a few hours on Dec 30th when I was completely caught up with my bow ties orders and my house was clean! It really was a miracle.

We spent almost all of Christmas week playing with our new set of wooden blocks and train track expansion packs from IKEA.  I'm finally learning that if I make up a train track wide enough for both of my boys to lay inside, they tend to get along great and play trains for a long time.  I just love these classic wooden toys.

One of the handmade christmas gifts this year was this funny robot towel robe that I made for Deacon.  He's always very particular about his towel not falling off after his baths and this solves all of his problems.  But I agree that it's pretty funny looking!  When I showed it to Andy, he just laughed and said it was cool, but one of the most ridiculous things he's ever seen!  I felt vindicated when Deacon wanted to wear it for about 24 hours straight the first time he go to use it.

I just used an old towel and some robot fabric I had for the appliques.  You can find the extremely simple tutorial HERE.  I think we'll get some good use out of it this summer at the pool too.  

I've been thinking about this poor little blog and my lack of attention to it over the past few months. I have plans for so many blog posts to write over the next few weeks. I have lots of new bow ties to share too. I'm planning to have my online Store ready for spring by the beginning of February. You're going to really love all of the beautiful madras and seersuckers I have for summer.  Join the MAILING LIST for an e-mail reminder when the store is updated, and if you have any ideas for what you would like to see in my online store for the spring, please e-mail me at ellielaveer@gmail.com.

Feedback from You

I really have the greatest customers ever.  I love it when you e-mail me when you receive your ties.  It makes me smile to know that you're so happy with your bow ties.  Here's a couple of e-mails I received in the past couple weeks:

"I received my Madras Plaid bow tie in the post today, and I couldn't stop smiling —it's perfect! Looking forward to wearing it to my holiday party on Friday. Thank you so much!"

"Hello Ellie, my lovely tweed bow tie arrived today here in the UK. I shall wear it at my next gig here in the North of England, gosh it is cold here at the moment, just as well i have this nice warm tweed tie! My wife said the tie makes me look cute :-)"

And here's a couple recent photos of very handsome gentlemen wearing bow ties (and one neck tie) that I've made. These first two are from some customers that wanted matching ties for an anniversary party. Aren't they so dapper?

Here's a neighbor of mine who may be one of a handful of guys in his high school who can tie a bow tie. He's a big USC Gamecocks fan so this bow tie was right up his alley.

Thank-you everyone for sending me pictures and feedback. I love it so much. It's so helpful to know what you like and what you want. And to see how other people besides my husband look in these bow ties.

Wool, Silk, Gingham and Corduroy/Velvet Bow Ties

I've just finished a bit of a marathon in the bow tie factory.  When the kids went to bed, I went to my studio and made 10 bow ties!  That's a lot for a Saturday night.  I'm just excited because I've recently gotten some new fabrics to play around with.

Here's an new houndstooth that I'm in love with.  This tie is made in the narrow butterfly style.  I'm already trying to think of something I can make for myself with this fabric - maybe a scarf.  I really love everything about it.

This bow tie is a nice lightweight 100% wool tie with dark purple/blue, red and beige.  I kept going back and forth on this fabric, but I'm glad it made its way into my bag.  I'm already wishing I'd bought more than 1 yard.

I purchased these three gingham fabrics from a friend of mine.  The first two are University of Clemson and University of South Carolina colors.  Two big rivals here in our state.  While I don't really want to get too much into the college/novelty ties, I think it's fun to offer these.  The cool thing is that you don't really have to be a fan of these teams to wear these ties.  The red gingham is a seersucker fabric that I'm just in love with.  It's the nicest seersucker I've ever felt.  And I have lots of experience with seersucker.

These next five are all silk and were converted from neck ties.  I'm going to get these up on the store as soon as I can get my model aka husband to try them on.  

And now here's the real unique one:

This here is a ribless corduroy bow tie.  To me, it feels just like a velvet bow tie, but the fabric was more workable for making a bow tie, in my opinion.  I've actually had a few requests for this style bow tie already.  I'm not sure I want to make any quite like this; but I'm up for a bit of experimentation.  I'm still not sure what Andy thinks of it.  Here's more of a southern gentleman trad style.  Plus I think this is more of a northern city look than a southern  style tie (but I could very well be wrong!).

Check up with my online STORE to buy these and more bow ties.  

Sunday's best.

I thought I'd share these cute pictures we snapped on Sunday evening after church. My boys are so adorable - all three of them.

D has on a candy cane bow tie and O has one that I made out of a men's neck tie.  Andy never wears a bow tie to Sunday church because it looks really weird with his preaching robe.  You wouldn't believe what a feat it is to get these boys dressed for church on Sundays.  Especially since O (almost 2) runs as fast as he can in the other direction when you try and put clothes on him.  You'd never know how wild he is looking at that sweet smile.