Monday, January 8, 2007

SWAP #5: Beige Blouse - Continued

This was a stormy day. The first snow since early December, and more like freezing rain. Nasty to be out, so my plans for the day were cancelled. One would expect to spend the day in fabulous sewing, or at least in doing chores from the back burner. However, this was not to be so. Mostly frittered it away, and then finally decided to tackle the errant BB (beige blouse) collar.

I think this collar is giving me grief because of the interfacing. It is just too heavy and inflexible for what is required to fit the collar. The muslin collar went in much more easily.

The method used is to attach the stand to the collar, then sew the outside edges of the collar together. The under-collar stand is sewed to the back neck, then the front 2 collar pieces are sandwiched between the shirt front and the turned back facing. Sounds good in theory, but there is some interesting curve matching involved.

I finally got it reasonably in place only to discover that the front facing was not hanging right on one side. Took that side out, and re-did it only to find out that the bit of shirt that extends beyond the collar in the front is not the same on both sides. More obvious in real life than in the picture. There is something funny going on at the shoulder seam on the "bad" side. Once I fix that, maybe the edge will move back enough to match the "good" side. Back to the drawing board.

The lesson from this is to start at the front and fix the collar edge in place then work to get everything else to fit right. The other lesson is to use very fine interfacing, or at least not fusible. Then, there is the lesson that if one is to put those circles of stitching to help the collar stand up in the back they should NOT be on the undercollar, as this will show when the upper collar is standing!! DUH. The circles should be at the back neck of the upper collar, where they won't show regardless of whether the collar is up or down. Also, they should be very neat compared to what I did when I was thinking they would never show at any time.

Learning is such fun!!!

Tonight I will be at my tai chi class, so will not likely get to tackle the collar again. I think it needs to be totally taken off and reapplied. I am wondering if I should cut the seam back to maybe 3/8" and work from there. I think the side partially interfaced seam allowance is part of the problem. If the whole thing is apart, I can hopefully get all the seams the same width and start over. How I hate ripping stuff out - especially when I should have been able to do it right in the first place.

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