How To: Sew a dress shirt collar

By using sewing pattern Simplicity 4670, the author of this tutorial video takes you through the steps needed to produce a great shirt collar. First you should attach interfacing to one piece of the shirt collar. Here you will be using fusible interfacing and taking the facing to the shirt collar iron the interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric. Sew a guide line that is 5/8ths of an inch wide along the notched edge of the shirt collar's facing piece. At the dot markings of the collar clip notches that reach in 5/8ths of an inch. Fold the section between the slashes in and secure with pins before pressing. Remove the pins and trim (using scissors) the excess from the pressed under seam of 1/2 and inch leaving 1/4 inch of fabric. Take the collar pieces (the collar and the collar facing) and place them right sides together and pin around the edges. Sew the collar pieces together, leave the notched edge open. Clip the corners and grade the seams by trimming them a little, turn right side out. Press. Clip the curves of the neck edge of the shirt you are going to attach the collar to. Match the markings on the color, notches and dots, to the like markings on the neck edge of the shirt and attach the collar to the neck edge with pins, leave the folded under area and do not attach to anything with the pins. Baste collar to shirt neck edge, keeping the folded under edge free of the sewing needle. Pin shirt neck facing to shirt neck over newly attached collar with right sides of shirt neck and neck facing together. Sew on shirt front facing, sew the back collar seam between the shoulders with the facing left open away from the stitching. Clip corners and curves and grade seams. Iron facing and collar, pin collar facing down and stitch closed. Optionally, add 1/4 inch top stitching to collar's outer edge. This completes the collar.