The collar.

*sigh*

Where do I begin to tell a story of how finicky a collar can be? A true painful story that is older than a week? Where do I start?

(Extra points to you if you know which tune you are supposed to use when singing the above words!)

The rolled collar was the part of this entire project that I was most dreading. The practice one had not gone well at all, and I didn’t want to mess up the real one.

Jay tried to help by using his CNC laser to cut out my pattern so that the curve would be perfect.

First I cut out the pieces from the rayon material.

Then I used the same pattern to cut out pieces of interfacing. Rayon doesn’t have much body to it and I needed the collar to stand up a bit on its own. I didn’t want it too stiff, but it definitely was going to need help.

This was iron-on interfacing so I spent a long length of time adhering the interfacing to the collar material. That seemed to take forever. Then, with my book laying open at my feet, I began to slowly follow each step in order to get this collar to work perfectly.

Things did not go so well…

I went to sew the two pieces together and realized that yet again I had messed it up so that the seam would end up being on the OUTSIDE of the collar. At this point it was 10 p.m. so I decided to toss it off to the side for the night. I was so frustrated with myself that I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I proceeded to watch a cheesy movie on The Hallmark Channel… for another two hours (it was a late night!).

The next morning we rushed home from church so that I could get started on this again. I was so close to being done! And I had just enough material left to make one more attempt at it. So, once again, I cut out the material, the interfacing and adhered them to each other. I then started the process of sewing the two pieces together. As I was pinning them I decided to look at the collar from the night before so that I could do the OPPOSITE of what I had done. Except… as I looked at the ‘bad’ one I realized that it wasn’t bad at all! It was perfectly fine! WHAT HAD I BEEN THINKING??!! Now I had just wasted four hours in finishing this stupid chasuble! (Two hours watching the cheesy movie after I got irritated and then another two hours making a second collar).

Since I was farther along on the ‘bad’ collar I tossed aside the one I had started that morning and continued following the steps in the book. Eventually the collar was sewn to the body of the chasuble and I hand-stitched the overlapping piece of collar in place to give it a nice finished edge on the inside. Finally, it was done!

WOO-HOO!!!

Once again I asked my model to show it off.

I reminded him that the priest would be wearing this.

The collar turned out okay. And I was told that I was the only one who could see the imperfections.

Our priest seemed happy with it. I did tell him that he would definitely need to bless this vestment before wearing it because I had done a LOT of cursing at it while sewing. He chuckled and said he thought it would be okay.

And thus ends the Chasuble Project. Thank goodness!