 the most anticipated portion of the sew-a-long. This is going to the collar stand and the collar. Truth be told, I'm tempted to make this part of the sew-a-long two separate videos. There's not an obvious place where I can break up the instructions, but I feel like this portion of the garment sewing is the one that needs to be the most precise. I wanna give you guys a lot of tips and a lot of help and I don't want you to feel super overwhelmed or super rushed or anything like that. So I think I'm gonna break this video up into two days. You will have part one today, part two tomorrow and then you'll be finished with your dress altogether. So exciting, but I just wanna make sure that we can go over the collar and the collar stand in plenty of detail and also give you enough time assuming that you're sewing every day after you watch this video, enough time to really spend on all these steps because patience, precision, taking your time, all of that stuff is really important when it comes to the collar stand and the collar. The way things go together, the order of operations and what you do at the sewing machine are all critical. So let's jump into part one and start working on our collar. All right, the sun is setting. So it is time to wrap this up. I know you guys are eager to as well. We are gonna be working on the collar. The very last step here, I don't know how I feel about that because like I've talked about before, this is such a precious little area with all of the bias and even though we have the stay stitching in there, I'm eager to see if this has stretched out any. Hopefully it hasn't. We're gonna just all think good thoughts about that but that was the order of the instructions on the pattern. If I find that there is an issue with this stretching out, I'll make sure to notate that in my pattern review. Okay, what do we have? We have one collar interfaced. We have another collar non-interfaced and this is like the pointy part of our collar. Then we have our collar stand interfaced. One collar stand uninterfaced, okay? And how these get attached to the neckline is really critical. The thing to remember is that two interfaced pieces do not touch each other. So it alternates uninterfaced collar stand, interfaced collar stand, uninterfaced collar, interface collar or maybe it's the other way. I don't know, but the point is that the uninterfaced collar stand side is what gets placed with the interfaced collar side. That's all you really have to remember. I'm gonna show you the right construction method but if ever you're doing another shirt dress and I'm not around, just remember that. That's the most important thing. Okay, so we are going to be preparing our collar first. Let me unbutton a couple of these and clipping to our stay stitching. So all around these little curves, we are just gonna place a whole bunch of little like notches kinda. You don't need a ton and you are clipping two but not through that original stay stitching that we did. Oh, so many days ago. Okay, good enough. All right, now we are going to take interfaced, they're calling it a neck band. They also, for future reference, they also refer to the interfaced one as like just the neck band. The uninterface gets called the neck band facing. So I'm gonna do my best to use those terms, that way you guys can follow along. But we're taking the neck band, AKA the interface collar stand and we're gonna be placing it right sides together, the little curved edge facing down or toward you and then you place the edge of your placket along that three eighths inch mark, okay? And start pinning this, going around the neckline, matching up symbols. So this is how you know what's going on. So there is a dot, this marks the shoulder seam, this marks the center back and then there's two notches on either side of that and then the other shoulder seam and then yes, here is our little marking. That got matched up with the fold of the placket. All right, so here's my little three set of notches, notch, then center back and then another notch. And the thing about this and why it's so tricky is because you're basically taking a curve that's like this and a curve that's like this and you're trying to get them to come together, right? It is a little bit challenging, but it's worth it because that, putting those two things together like that is what is gonna get the garment to fit around your neck so beautifully. It's what's gonna get it to kind of like hug the nape of your neck so beautifully. So that's why we wanna take great care and doing this little tricky bit because in the end, the fit is gonna be so good. Okay, so I've got all my major things marked or pin like so, okay? And this is also why we clipped into those notches. So if we need to clip into the seam allowance more, we absolutely can. But the idea is that we are gonna get this that is smaller than this to lay in there flat. So I do think that I need a few more notches. This time I'm just gonna do like little clips and see if we can't get it to spread out just a little bit more. Okay, there we go. And the other thing to remember, just like when you're working with princess seams, we're not trying to get the raw edges necessarily to match, we're trying to get the seam line to match, which is 3 eighths of an inch inside the raw edge. So I'll show you what I mean by that. A little bit too, like what we looked at when we did the sleeve, same situation. So when you look at this, you can see that one is flat and one is bumpy, that's on the raw edge. At the seam allowance though, they all line up and you will kind of just have to trust me until we get to the sewing machine. But it will come together, I promise. All right, so we're just repeating, we're just coming around the other side and kind of filling it in as we go to. So we are going to be stitching this line and you're just starting here, stitching all the way around. Remember, we've got a five eighth, I mean, I'm sorry, a three eighths inch seam allowance here. All right, so we've got our three eighths inch seam allowance sewn, the neck band sewn, that looks really good. We're gonna set this aside and while we're at the machine, we're gonna go ahead and sew our collar pieces right sides together and you're gonna be sewing the little angled edges and this really long edge here. And it's just like a one to one situation, just sew around the three edges of the collar. Again, at a three eighths inch seam allowance. When you get to the corner of this collar, instead of pivoting and heading straight back this way, kind of only pivot to a 90, like I'm sorry, a 45 degree angle, stitch two stitches and then come back the other way. And I know this seems so counterintuitive, but that is how you're gonna get really pretty pointed collars, beautiful. So see, I know it seems like there's no way that's gonna make a point, but that's the trick it does. So I'll be back at the cutting table. Okay, so now we are going to be layering our seam. Both of these seams that we just sewed, they want us to layer them, which is just a little trick for kind of creating a less bulky seam allowance. You are gonna trim back the seam allowance of the collar, leaving the garments seam allowance, it's full three eighths of an inch. This can get really tricky, obviously, because it's already small and you don't wanna cut your garment. I love serrated scissors for this. These are from Kai. I have a whole video on serrated scissors. If you're interested in learning more, be sure to go check that out. But basically it just ever so slightly grips what it's cutting. I don't really know how to explain it, but it grips what it's cutting and doesn't slip and just allows you to do these little like fiddly cutting things really, really easily. So I'm gonna take my time, stop talking to you guys and cut this entire neckline, cutting back one, trimming back one seam allowance. Same situation on the collar itself. We are gonna be trimming back the interfaced side of the collar. So now we're gonna go to the iron. We are going to press the seam allowances of the neckband cord, the neckband. So all the seam allowances are gonna go up into this collar. Then this thing gets turned right side out. We are going to take a chopstick or any turning tool and get that point of your collar. And I just kind of want, I know you guys are doubting me. I don't know why, but I know you are. I can feel it. So I just wanna show you how pretty that point is. Well, I'll work it a little bit more with the iron, but it does make a really beautiful pointed collar when you like blunt edge the point a little bit. All right, let's stop it there. Let's take a little break, well overnight, a break overnight where you can watch this video over again if you need to and really, really pay attention to what you're doing with these steps with the collar. I'll be back tomorrow to show you how to finish the collar and then your dress is done so exciting. But take your time. You've got this. I believe in you and I'll see you tomorrow.