f you've ever turned a necktie over and looked closely at the back, you've probably noticed the long seam running almost the entire length of it. It's not exactly the part of a tie that gets much attention, but how that seam is finished is one of the choices that goes into making a necktie.
Some ties are sewn closed by machine. Others are stitched closed by hand.
At Momako Designs, I actually do both. My adult neckties are finished with a hand-stitched back seam, while my children's neckties are machine-sewn. It isn't a matter of handmade versus not handmade — they're both made by me in my sewing room. They're simply constructed differently.
What does a hand-stitched necktie mean?
First, it doesn't mean I sit down with a needle and thread and sew the entire necktie by hand.
A sewing machine is still very much involved.
For my adult neckties, the fabric is cut, sewn, pressed, folded around the interfacing, and shaped into a tie. Once everything is where it belongs, the long opening down the back is closed with hand stitching.
Those stitches hold the tie together without fastening all of its layers as rigidly as a traditional machine-sewn seam would.
It's a detail that's mostly hidden once the tie is finished, but it's an intentional part of how I construct them.
Why hand-stitch the back seam?
Think about everything you do to a necktie when you wear it. It gets wrapped around your neck, crossed over itself, pulled through a knot, tightened, loosened, and eventually untied again.
A tie needs a little room to move.
Hand stitching that long back seam allows the folded layers to shift slightly as the tie is handled rather than securing everything tightly together along the entire length.
It also takes considerably longer than putting that seam under my presser foot and sewing straight down it — which would certainly make my life easier.
But for my adult ties, I like the way the hand-stitched construction works, so it's a step I've chosen to keep.
What about machine-sewn neckties?
Machine sewing isn't the opposite of handmade, and it doesn't automatically make a necktie lower quality.
My children's neckties are machine-sewn.
They're pre-tied rather than tied and untied every time they're worn, so they're constructed differently from my adult neckties. Machine stitching makes sense for the way they're designed and used.
And that's really the distinction that gets lost when handmade products are discussed sometimes. The goal isn't to avoid a sewing machine at all costs. It's to choose the construction method that makes sense for what you're making.
I use sewing machines every day. They're pretty important around here.
Can you tell the difference by looking at one?
Probably not from across the room.
Most of what distinguishes the construction is happening on the back of the tie, while the part everyone actually sees is the print, the shape, and the knot.
That's one of the things I like about details like this. They don't have to be decorative or immediately noticeable to be worth doing.
Someone might own one of my neckties for years without thinking much about the stitches running along the back. I'll still know they're there.
So, which is better?
Neither — at least not simply because one was sewn by hand and the other by machine.
A hand-stitched tie isn't automatically a good tie, and a machine-sewn tie isn't automatically a bad one. Materials, construction, design, and how well something is made all matter more than whether every stitch came from a person's hand.
For Momako Designs, the choice comes down to the tie itself. Adult neckties are finished by hand because that construction suits a tie that's knotted and untied. Children's neckties are machine-sewn because they're pre-tied and constructed for a different purpose.
Both are still handmade on Kauaʻi. One just involves a little more quality time with my needle and thread.
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