Big purple bow

Recently I have been admiring the trend of having big bows on tops and dresses.

An old issue of cloth magazine had a tutorial on stencilling a bow onto a t-shirt.

Source: Cloth Magazine

I liked this and knew I wanted to put a bow on one of my plain t-shirts, but wanted to actually put a real bow on my top, not just stencil something on. 

So then I went browsing at wardrobe refashion, in the hope of inspiration.  And low and behold I came across a post by Bethany, and as soon as I saw it knew that a lace bow was exactly what I wanted.

And even better she had a tutorial on her blog [yes!!].  But alas and alack I’m not sure if the blog had moved or been deleted, but I couldn’t find it [Nooooo!!!!].

So I wasn’t sure what to do, as I didn’t quite have the confidence to try and make something up myself.  But then a couple if days ago read Lucy’s post on her blog Tricky Seams, and saw she had done something very similar except with ribbon.

Lucy's cool ribbon top

I really liked her version of this trend, and the fact that she had been inspired by the same thing, seemed more than coincidental to me!  I was meant to make a lace bow top.  So finally I decided, “Enough procrastinating woman, just do it already!”

So I did.  I went out and bought some lace.  I’d tried to get navy blue lace, as the top I wanted to embellish was blue, but couldn’t find any so went with a dark purple.  I’m so glad I did as I don’t think blue would have shown up too well.  The top I was using was a stretchy cotton so I was a bit worried about sewing onto it, in case it went all squiffy, but I went slowly and carefully and it went ok.

But anyway here is the finished article:

Close up [sorry I know the pics are rubbish!]:

I'm actually pretty happy with it!