megan nielsen design diary

Oh i love this collar. Peter pan collars make me weak, and this one is my all time favourite. It has a little bit of roll in it, and sits beautifully on the shoulders. i love it :)

Lets look at how to put it together, with a few tips!

Once you’ve cut out your collar pieces, it’s time to attach interfacing. If your fabric is quite stiff, you could probably skip this step – but to be honest i almost never do. The most important thing is that you use a very lightweight interfacing. If you use a regular weight or something very stiff, you are going to end up with bat wings around your neck :) Personally i favour the lightest weight fusible.

Now lay your collars on top of each other with right sides facing each other, and pin in place.

Sew!

Now it’s time to notch the heck outta that curve or you could grade the seam allowance right back. But my personal trick to getting a perfect curve, is pinking shears. I grade the seam allowance back using them, and that way the whole thing is notched and graded. So sneaky :) I love this method

Turn it the right way round and press! Do not skip the pressing or i will yell at you :) I’m serious, people who don’t press their collars make me cry – it’s the quickest way to make your collar suck, and make it completely obvious you made your shirt. Don’t skip the pressing! pretty please :)

(i ran out of camera battery with the blue collar, so now i’m switching to the pointed collar top to finish the tutorial, hope you don’t mind!)

Now we pin the collar to the top. The important thing here is to make sure the edge of the collar butts right up to the intersection of the placket basting stitches and the neckline staystitching.

Sew in place. I forgot to take a photo of this step – but after that you’ll need to trim the seam allowance back to 1/4″ and notch. Otherwise, you can use my pinking shears trick again :) I freaking love that trick

Now to one of favourite methods – bias tape as facing.

Take your bias tape and iron out one of the folded edges. Pin it around the neckline, and sew in the ditch (roughtly 1/4″ from the edge).

Please take note: we are doing all of this on the right side of the fabric.

Now fold the bias tape towards the inside of the top (wrong side of the fabric) enclosing the raw edges. Iron it down, and pin in place.

When you pin in place make sure the collar is out the way. We are not using the bias tape as a binding, we are using it as a facing, so we want it to lay flat on the inside of the top and not be visible from the outside.

Sew in place

Press and you’re done!! It should now look like the photo above on the inside, and look like the photo below on the outside

I can’t wait to add the placket!!

Get ready because tomorrow we’ll be learning one of the methods for inserting the placket :) so fun!!