Cape Collar

 Moving along on the melton wool cape, I constructed the collar and facings and attached them to the cape body. Not an easy task. The instructions on this Vogue V2924 Vogue American Designer Donna Karan, copyright 2006, leave a lot to be desired, or should I say a lot to figure out that was left out.

After stitching bias tape to a portion of the collar, and also to the facings, I sewed the collar to the facings. Then the instructions said to sew grosgrain ribbon to the outside collar edge and tapering to nothing at the large circles. 

Done and the grosgrain looked pretty good around the curve.

After turning in the seam allowance on the collar and opening facing edges, I pressed and basted close to the pressed edges. Easy.

Then the instructions said to pin collar, facings to the cape and baste through all thicknesses as preparation to stitching them together through all thicknesses. So I pinned and pinned trying to line it all up, especially the two layers of grosgrain on the collar...

I basted them together only to find (as I had thought) that it was almost impossible to line up well and it was too thick. Okay, the thinking cap needed to be put on....

So I removed the basting and decided the only way was to slip stitch them together by hand and THEN topstitch as the directions instructed. Control is the issue here...controlling the edges so they line up and stay lined up!

Above is the facing stitching: one bite in the grosgrain ribbon seam of the cape front and one bite in the edge of the facing using the camel colored thread. It didn't take long because it was a straight line. But the collar was another story.

I switched to black thread. I had to take a stitch in one side on the grosgrain seam and then the next one in the other collar's grosgrain seam. Each grosgrain edge is a different width as per the instructions. It was not fun, but the results were worth the effort. After pressing and compressing the seams with the clapper It looks good. Tomorrow I'll machine topstitch it all. There is no mention in the instructions of hand stitching the collar seams together inside the cape (which is a technique used in tailoring on jackets and coats), or tacking the center back collar to the center back seam, but I'll do that, too. I'm "reading between the lines" on this project!!