hive mind - shortening neckties?

[anotheranon]

A search for "shorten necktie" has netted me tips for hiding the long end but no diagrams of where to snip the thing to take off a few inches. I'm reluctant to fly blind because the ties in question are nice silk and bias cut, which is a recipe for things going wrong. Anyone care to share?

Comments

[nminusone.livejournal.com]

Seems like you'd want to cut a chunk out of the middle, so that the sewing scar will be at the back of your neck when wearing it. Just guessing tho.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Take length off the back of the tie.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Is the back the skinny end?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yes. If you want to preserve the tie's overall length, you can just tuck that back part up inside itself and whip stitch it in place. This is the time honored way of making a man's tie fit a boy.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Second the take-a-bit-out-of-the-middle suggestion (provided your mode of wear means the splice will be hidden by a collar. Knot the tie with the wide end at your preferred length (and with the knot you plan to use, of course, since different knots use up different lengths of ties), mark the centre back neck point, and cut a chunk out there, then seam the two pieces together.

Alternatively, if the back neck portion will be exposed during wearing or the tie wouldn't have matched-width ends to join if you did that (for instance, if you want to wear the wide end really short and thus midneck is in the still-tapering portion), you could unpick the centre-seam and hem at the narrow end, trim off the amount you want to shorten by, re-hem, and then whipstitch the centre seam back together. Bonus how-to pictures for making perfect reconstructed tie end!

Edited to add: Damn, it's been centuries since I wore neckties (very fashionable when I was in high school/college), and thus I'd forgotten this detail until I scrolled through the full how-to link ... there's good odds that your tie already has a cross seam somewhere near the middle, joining the wide and narrow ends. Probably simplest to take it apart there, shorten the narrow end, and then rejoin.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I wear them as ties and as scarves - not necessarily with a button down, either. I'll take a look and see if they're already pieced and shorten there, if not, take from the skinny end.