A Helpful Tip! Collars and Stands

 Right now I am working on a yarn dyed linen/cotton big shirt with a stand collar, my ode to the classic workshirt. I made a denim workshirt some years back and have worn it to death and will continue to use it around the house and in the garden. Love that shirt. This is it right here.  It was made from McCalls 6613, great, classic, unisex "bigshirt"  pattern.

The pattern has now been re-issued as a Butterick and has a different vibe being sent out on the cover. I think they would sell more patterns with the original cover photo. What do you think? Current cover below. I think the shape of View A is being made to look very A line, aka, tent-ish. It really is cut straight down from the armscye. 

It is now being marketed as the, are you ready for this? Butterick Mister and Mrs. Fitted Shirt on Amazon. Those Amazonians need some help with their pattern marketing. There is NO FIT on this pattern, anywhere! It is a big ole shirt.  There is not  a dart anywhere on this shirt to be sewn. It is a perfect match to the original McCall when I laid them on top of each other, sold as unisex. I was referred on the McCalls site to this Butterick pattern as its actual replacement. Oy,,,,,  rant over. 

Back to my handy dandy tip. This is a traditional collar with a stand. I use to sew quite a few of these but  have pretty much put them aside the last few years.  I needed to brush up on my skills for collars with stands. I remember Nancy Zieman literally drawing out the stitching line on that last inch on each side of the stand part of the collar. Doing that really helped me get equally sized matching shapes, once turned, and without points, something I was having a hard time with.  Today I went to work on this detail of my shirt. My cutting table was messy with bits and pieces of all sorts of sewing detritis. As I picked up some leftovers of oaktag, it occurred to me, why not make a template for the collar stand out of the oaktag? It could be a permanent, easily  trace-around-able object and kept with the pattern in the envelope for the next blouse iteration. Yes!! Why, I could even do this with every stand collar I ever make again, just paper clip the templates to the pattern piece for the stand and tuck those little templates right into the pattern envelope ! Here is how I went about it:

* I simply traced the last 4 or 5 inches of the collar stand pattern piece on to a piece of oak tag with a light pencil and the help of a curved acrylic ruler. 

* I marked thru the tissue to get my large and small dots, center front lines an notches. I used my eyelet cutter to mark my dots. Making holes makes them reusable. The dark hole is my "large" hole. I cut two of these  stand pieces out, one to copy the entire pattern piece end and one to make a template for the stitching lines. On the first piece we have marked all the needed markings and the template is used to match the cutting lines of the fabric and make the markings accurately. 

*On the second piece of oaktag we will measure a 5/8th inch seam allowance out and cut the seam allowance off. 

This piece will be used to mark the stitching line but can also be used to fussy cut the interfacing which I did not do here, just eyeballed it. 

* I will paper clip the collar stand pattern piece and the oaktag templates together when done using them and put them into the pattern envelope until the next time.  Fingers crossed! We'll see how the finished product affects accuracy. This is such a fussy area.....Bunny

We were lucky to be in the Azores when the hydrangeas were in full bloom. They were truly spectacular and miles and miles of roads are lined like this one. This is a simple farm road as seen everywhere. The hydrangeas run from the deepest purple to plums and bright blues and baby blues, breathtaking.  They are everywhere....Bunny