Garter (the noun, not the adjective)
The last time I made one of these, I made it in white:
My future sister-in-law has chosen a very modern and quite fetching wedding gown. It is white, with a red ribbon lacing up the back corset-style. It looks something like this but I don't know if that is the exact gown.
She asked for a red garter with white ribbon, and I was more than happy to comply! Misti Alpaca laceweight yarn in bright, true red made for fun knitting and a soft, fuzzy twist on tradition.
The pattern is the "Knitted Lace Wedding Garter" by Diane Willett and can be found here.
It has been soaked and stretched and starched, and is now awaiting the finishing touches. A red backing needs to be hand sewn on, the ends grafted together, and the ribbon and elastic woven through the eyelets. Believe it or not, it was this last step that gave me a huge headache the last time I made one of these. The pattern instructions say to weave the ribbon through the eyelets and then to insert the elastic between the lace and the backing. However I found that when this was done, the elastic would gather up the lace nicely but would NOT gather the ribbon. This resulted in the ribbon poking way outside the eyelets, looking just like that ribbon hard candy that you can find at Christmas time. Not being very good at sewing, I was in a tizzy at the thought of having to hand sew the ribbon down somehow. Then my Dad's wife came up with the great idea of actually sewing the ribbon and elastic together and weaving both through the eyelets as one piece. It gathers the ribbon in a very feminine manner, and looks fantastic stretched or at rest.
I am waiting for my stepmother to sew up a couple lengths of ribbon and elastic on her machine and will post a picture of the finished garter once it's ready to be wrapped for the wedding shower.