Oh the Horror!

I experienced the horror of an unexpected sewing disaster last week. It was also potentially an expensive disaster (and still is)!

So, what awful expreience could possibly befall a sewist? 

Not enough fabric? 

Cutting a hole while trimming/ slicing buttonholes?

Melting fabric with a too hot iron?

Fabric shrinking once the garment was made?

I have all these happen to me in the past - but this was not the issue I faced recently.

I'll begin at the beginning...

Waaaay back, like summer 2019, I was on a course in london and happeneed to spot this beautiful bamboo silk in a shop close to where the course was being held, but at £18 per metre it was out of my budget at the time. I put a couple of metres of this fabric on my Christmas list for last year and Santa delivered the beautiful soft and drapy fabric.

I knew it was precious and would need careful handling. I consided what I would make with it very, very carefully. I wanted a shirt with a bow, so I settled on the Saraste shirt from breaking the pattern and added a separate tie, that could be used as a bow. I washed my fabric and made up the shirt, completing it just as lockdown started. You can read all about the make in this blog post.

Not much call for shirts during lockdown, so it didn't get worn until a couple of weeks ago. Worn, popped in the wash on the recommended cycle (the same way I'd washed it before making), and it came out with the collar looking like this!

I was horrified. I wasn't sure how this had happened. I had trimmed the seams, but not too much. I hadn't top-stitched the collar as I wanted a nice flat smooth edge. That turned out to be a big mistake. The undercollar had shredded by at least a cm in some parts. I considered recutting the collar, but I knew that would compromise the collar stand. My option was to try to mend it. On the plus side it was mostly the undercollar that had shredded.

 

I carefully unpicked the outer edge of the collar, where most of the shredding was. I pressed thefabric as flat as possible and reinforced the damaged area with a strip of light fusible interfacing. I couldn't just trim it back as the damaged area was too deep and would have left the collar too narrow. Instead I cut a bias strip from some of the left over fabric, it was long enough to go the full length of the collar edge. I stitched this over the damaged area and pressed it to give enough width to complete the edge and seam.

 

The edge of the collar was folded to the inside and topstitched fully around the edge. The undercollar has a little ridge where the biast strip is, but I'm hoping that it will hold. The edge is not really as neat as I would like and I don't know how it will stand up to futher washing. I also had to  fold by baby hem over again and sew it a thrird time as it had frayed slighty on places there too. However I was not going to ditch a shirt that cost £40 without trying to save it, especially as I've only worn the blooming thing once.

 

Lesson learnt - interface the heck out of fine fabrics and top stitch ALL collars - even if you don't want to.

What's your sewing nightmare?