Dabbling in DIY
How-to make your own lace collar
I’ll be honest with you: I’m a bit of a princess. I’d much rather curl up with my Macbook and trusty credit card in hand and indulge in a little (read: a LOT of) online shopping than struggling with a piece of thread and needle.
Don’t get me wrong – the idea of creating your clothes is out-of-this-world cute, but my perfectionist, impatient nature does not condone DIY.
However, I recently began university and honestly, being a university student is like being on a perpetual shopping spree… Without the addition of adorbs new items to your wardrobe. I don’t even understand where my money even goes, I mean how does – Argh, I guess that’s a rant for another time.
I decided to ease my (poor, uncreative and totally inartistic) self into the world of DIY by modifying one of my plain white shirts. The lace collar has been a personal favourite of mine for a while. It seemed perfect to attempt my own lace collar – I mean, what did I have to lose? (Except for my precious blood! Thank you fat fingers and needles.)
You’ll need:
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An old (or new if you’re the opposite of “strapped-for-cash”) shirt
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Lace (Cut it off a old dress or simply buy a length of lace at Lincraft or something.)
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Beads or pearls or anything that jazzes your shirt up!
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Needle and thread (duh!)
Pre-Step 1 (if this applies to you):
If you want to wear your (soon-to-be) lace collar with other shirts, just chop the collar off your shirt first! You can neaten the edges with a pair of sharp scissors.
Actual Step 1:
This is the actual crafty bit. Help. I spent a (long) while trying to thread my damn needle, so if you’re having trouble: girl, I feel yo pain and my fingers sympathise.
When the needle is threaded, sew the lace along the collar. I had trouble with the first shirt collar (I switched white shirts – some of you with keen eyes might have noticed the different tags in the pictures!) because it was incredibly starched and I could not force the needle through the material.
Optional Step 2:
With the lace in place, I decided to activate my creative genius (what genius?) and sew a cluster of beads in a triangular shape on the tip of my collar.
It wasn’t too difficult to add them on – just one stitch through the bead and a knot at the back on the underside of the collar, and voila! Extra glam!
It took less than an hour to make this collar (although threading took an unfathomable amount of time). It’s cheaper and far more satisfying to DIY than to watch money drain out of your bank account. So get on it and let me know how it goes!
What are your favourite little DIY projects? Let us know so we can try them out!
It would be handy if you had thread the same colour as your lace, so then the neatness of your stitching doesn’t matter. I did not have purple thread (but pink is cute too!), so I had to make it as neat as my fat fingers allowed.
And that’s kind of it. One step. Simple! However, if you’re like me and you like adding extra decoration to sparkle things up…
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