Weddingbee Blog

(Cropped photo by RAD Photography)

It’s about time I shared our bouts with you! I gave you a sneak peek of them when I was on Bee TV, and shared my inspiration here. A few weeks prior to the wedding I had not yet settled on the lace bouts, so I flipped through some choices with Mr. Sunbeam and I was surprised when he chose the lacy ones! Woot - lace theme! So during the last two weeks before the wedding, between the favor bags and bouts, I was sewing like a mad woman.

I purchased some lace from a craft store intending to use it for the bouquets, but since it was fairly stiff, it could make nice flowers for the bouts instead. And so, the sewing began.

All I did was fold some lace accordion-style and sewed a few times along one side, then folded a bit more and the sewed edges again. When I thought I had enough, I sewed the cut edges of the lace together, and then sewed the sewn edges together in a sort of haphazard way to create a nice circular flower. I then kinda went wild with thread and just pinned down lace in the middle area here and there to make a flat center area.

I ordered more lace in bunches via Etsy, but the amounts of each lace I received varied widely and I assumed this was because the lace was ’vintage’. I was sorta disappointed when the seller ended up giving me two pieces of the same lace in different bunches, which made me think she was cutting it from a long reel. Given the opportunity, I would have preferred a few long cuts of lace instead of short cuts from different lace trims, but the seller didn’t give me that option. Anyway, my point is that the few lace pieces I preferred to make flowers out of just didn’t have enough length to go around. I did finally settle on second a wider lace that was slightly more cream to create a second larger flower for each of the bouts, and I repeated the process above.

The flowers were cute but rather plain, so I decided to give them a little more character. I added a lace flower cut from a large lace motif (see below) to the center of the smaller flowers. Then for the larger lace flowers, I cut a few flower shapes from tulle and sewed these to the center of their centers.

Finally, I sewed on half of a snap button fastener to add a contrasting manly middle to each flower.

With the flowers complete it was time to start assembling. I could have used hot glue for these steps, but I was in sewing mode. To create stems I purchased black radio wire for girth. I took the wire and cut a few 3″ pieces. I folded each piece in half and sewed the folded end of a wire to the back of the flowers, one small and one large (I just held them up to the wire, put them roughly into the places I desired, and started sewing). Again, I was haphazard with my sewing and stitched the flowers together as well, to keep them in the proper place. Next I took black ribbon and wrapped it around the top of the radio wire. A quick stitch secured it in place, then I wrapped the rest of the wire and sewed a quick knot at the bottom to secure the ribbon.

Finally I added Guinea feathers, which my father picked up for me at the last minute! I tried to find them in the city. OK, I could have tried harder, but some stores were out because it was steelhead season. If I had to do the assembling over, I would wrap the quill of the feathers to the bouts as I added the black ribbon, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to add them, so that step was already finished. Instead, I secured each feather in place with a bit of sewing thread, and topped them off with a dab of craft glue for good measure. Here were the final products in action:

(cropped photo by RAD Photographer)

I think they are so cute, but I am partial. I wish Mr. Sunbeam had wanted one so I could have a leftover bout, but he was so into his pocket square! I also wish I had asked someone to specifically capture the bouts, because so far I haven’t seen many stellar photos of them on the guys.

Are you making your bouts? Will you use fresh flowers, or perhaps a combination of materials?