Yorkie Bow Tie: Christmas Elegance For Your Pet

Some yorkies are naturally and instinctively elegant and, for these, personal embellishment is a joy – especially this Christmas season.

Other yorkies are more down-to-earth and therefore a little shyer about fashion, and a little more modest about display. However, they have innate character and poise, and just need very slight encouragement to push them into the world of glamour.

With imagination and flair, you can create amazing accessories for your pet – the Christmas Yorkie with smart evening coats, wooly winter jackets, chic collars, robust handkerchiefs and many more outfits to set your yorkie off to perfection.

The coat isn’t the end of the fashion story, of course: there are complementary accoutrements that the well-dressed-Christmas-Yorkie-about-town will need as standard.

Hats – to fend off the rain – are a start, and a scarf is always practical. On a summer evening, by contrast, your yorkie’s thoughts will turn from the functional towards simple self-adornment – perhaps with something as simple as a fancy bow tie.

To make a yorkie bow tie, you will need:

12x12in white cotton fabric, small embroidery hoop, soft pencil, gold-colored outliner pen

Fabric paints: red, green, yellow, lilac, blue, orange, and brown, or any color you wish to use

Scissors, 8x8in purple cotton fabric, pins, needle and matching threads, and a small piece of Velcro

Fasten the white fabric into the hoop. Using a soft pencil, mark out a rectangle measuring 3x51/2 in for the bow and another rectangle measuring 4x1 ½ in for the central band. Leave room for seam allowances between the rectangles.

Draw a pattern then paint over with the gold outliner pen and leave to dry.

Using the fabric paints, fill in the shapes with your chosen colors. Color just outside the rectangles, too. When dry, cut out the rectangles, leaving a 5/8-in allowance. Then cut rectangles to the same size from the purple fabric.

Fold the edges under 5/8in on the painted fabric and 1/2in on the purple onto the wrong side. Pin the two rectangles together, wrong sides facing, and sew them together. Repeat for the central band.

Sew two rows of gathering threads along the center of the bow. Gather to make it approximately 1in deep. Sew the central band to the gathered bow tie with machine or hand stitches.

Finally, sew Velcro to the central bands at either end to finish, Fasten to your yorkie’s collar.