Buttons and Bows

I was trying to get this set of bows finished for yesterday's 'I Love Yarn Day' post but had to go another way.  They are pictured here with the set of flowers I finished and posted pictures of last Sunday but since then I rummaged through my Mom's vintage buttons and found a set of pearl like buttons to set in their centers.

The bows are made from a rectangle about the size of the smaller bookmarks I've made--4"X1"-- which is then slip stitched end to end to form a ring that is folded with the seam on center of back and then the center is pinched together and something wrapped around it.  I chose to use two short chains wrapped around and slip stitched to the back.

I made these patterns up as I went based on a number of pictures I'd seen.  The blue one was my first and took me two days of experimenting to get right to my satisfaction.  I then wrote out the pattern and started to follow it exactly but as I reached the end of row 1 decided to mix it up by making each one different.  Three of them--the blue, lilac and yellow are each some variation of fillet alternating with HDC and SC rows.  The coral is rows of bobbles and the pale pink is two rounds of a version of the shell--2XDC + 2CH + 2XDC in single stich then CH 2 and skip 2 stitches.

One of the tricks I learned by accident when I discovered I'd made the blue one too short and then decided to add an extension by adding a row of quadruple crochet on the end before slip stitching to the other end.  When I then centered that quadruple row on the back and pinched it together I found the bow to be less bulky and easier to bind with the wrapped chain. So I made the rest too short with the QC row on purpose.

Both the bows and the flowers are made with Aunt Lydia's bamboo size 10.  I've placed the crochet hook on the right and the marble on the left as indicators of size.  The flowers might cover a 50 cent piece but I didn't have one to test that theory.