Sewing Tips: Putting Interfacing Into a Shirt Placket

Video Transcript

" Hello! I’m Stephany from Stephany’s Simply Sewing. On behalf of expertvillage.com, I’d like to show you how to put some interfacing into a men’s shirt placket. Now, the placket is that part that the buttons and the buttonholes go through, and it’s generally a separate piece. I’ve already cut out my placket and pinned my interfacing to the wrong side of my fabric. I’m going to stitch it on once again, putting the tails of my thread to the rear of my machine, and I’m not going to quite go 5/8 of an inch, just a smidge before that so that my stitching is not right on that line. Then I will simply stitch. When you some to pins, you can sew over them. Most of the time your stitch or your needle will slide from over the top of the pin, but beware that you could catch one and you will break a needle or bend a pin. Interfacing serves a really important part of your garment. It helps provide a bit of stiffness in your garment and body. Generally, you’ll find interfacing in plackets, waistbands, cuffs, and collars. You want to choose your interfacing to match your fabric. In other words, if you have a lightweight fabric, you’ll want to use a lightweight facing. If you have a knit fabric, you’ll want to use a knit interfacing. For my purposes, this is a men’s shirt and it does have quite a bit of body to the interfacing so he has that nice starched finished look to him. After I have sewn my seam, I’m going to take those middle sized pair of scissors that I have, and I’m going to cut away this portion of my interfacing. The reason why I like to do this is because it does eliminate some of the bulk. I have folded back my seam allowance, and I’m simply cutting along this edge. That is how you interface a men’s placket. "