Sewing a Collar: Finishing the Collar Stand

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Stephany from Stephany’s Simply Sewing on behalf of expertvillage.com. I’d like to show you the balance of how we have attached our collar stand to our shirt bodice. We did sew it on, and what I have done is went ahead and I pressed it, because remember pressing is very important to have a smooth finished product. Then what I did is have turned the inside seam, pressed it up this way towards the top of the collar, and then I have put the other side of the collar stand down and tucked this raw edge in. I’ve pinned my way around, making sure that I have evenly and completely enclosed this raw seam and have not exceeded or put this seam past the seam that I have already made, which attached the collar stand to the shirt. Once again, you’re going to want to kind of work it so that you end up having a bit of a curve in that otherwise straight seam. Once you have this completely pinned down, you’re ready to attach it. There are 2 ways to attach it. The first way to attach it would be to hand stitch it down. The other way to attach is to machine stitch it. I’m going to show you how we machine stitch it. This is a technique that we’ve already used in many of our construction techniques already with the topstitching, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to topstitch our collar stand from the wrong side and topstitch it down. It will show on the right side, but when we have our shirt finished and we turn our collar down it won’t show. So let’s do a few moments and I will show you how that looks when we are topstitching our collar stand down. Once again, to prevent tangles and knots, we want to pull our thread tails back. I’m going to go ahead and position my needle in my machine using my hand wheel to be sure I’m starting where it’s appropriate. And put my presser foot down, hanging on to my tail so I don’t end up with a mess or a knot. I’m going to begin sewing. Now, because this seam is not crossed by another seam, I’m going to back stitch to secure those stitches before continuing. I’m going to carefully stitch my way down to the other end of this particular seam, and that will be how we attach our collar stand to our shirt. "