DIY Tulle Wedding Pew Bows

One of my projects for my niece's wedding is to make pew bows out of tulle.  First, let me start by saying I'm not overly fond of working with tulle.  It sticks together and doesn't cooperate like I wish it would.  I found a great site with step-by-step instructions and pictures (which always makes everything easier if you're a visual person).  I won't repeat the instructions here but will only note where I modified something.

I used the 12" measurement for my bows and went with the suggested five loops on each side.  However, when I finished, I decided it needed to be fuller so the next time I went with ten loops on each side.  Because the tulle was hard to work with, I decided to go back to the five loops and then join two bows together for fullness.  That worked better for me than making ten loops at a time. It also gave me four tails instead of two which I preferred.

On the website, she suggested using corsage pins.  However, I didn't have any so I used regular pins and found there was an advantage to doing so.  I could easily slip the tulle over the pins and that way I didn't have to pull the pins in and out of the board numerous times.

 Now that I had my bow made, I needed to add my centerpiece.  As I've said in earlier posts, the colors for the wedding are red and yellow.  I found a really long piece of lace at the flea market for a couple of dollars.  At the time, I didn't know what I was going to do with it but when I measured, I had enough to cut into pieces for the center of my pew bows.  Each piece is 26" long.  I also bought some red tulle and cut a 26" piece.  I then cut it down the middle because I didn't want it to be wider than my lace.  Since my niece is having a vintage theme, I wanted to use a piece of jewelry in the middle of the pew bow, and I found some really beautiful sparkly earrings that would work.  I also bought some small red satin flowers from a seller on Etsy that I planned to use.  The only other item I needed for the bows was some floral stem wire. I used 22 guage.  The thicker wire was too hard to wrap.

I took the piece of floral wire and weaved it through the end of the lace and red tulle.

Then, I scrunched the material to the middle of the wire and wrapped it around into a circle.  I wrapped the two wire ends together.

 My next step was to thread the five flowers and the earring onto one of the wires.  I put on two flowers, the earring, and then the three remaining flowers.  The nice thing about these flowers is that they have green loops on each side, so threading was easy.

Then I wrapped the flowers and earring in a circle around the middle and brought the end of the wire to join the other wire in the back and again wrapped the two wires together.  It was easy to position the flowers because they were a little loose.

 I put my two tulle bows together and wrapped the wire of the centerpiece around them.

 Then, I pulled and prodded the tulle and the centerpiece until I thought it looked nice.  And voilà - my finished pew bow.