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November 12, 2008

Turning Collars

Anyone remember that? My mother always turned my dad's work-shirt collars, and sometimes even his good shirt collar...note the singular. It is a frugal skill and not to be scoffed at considering a nice shirt is $20-40.00 dollars these days. My husband loves the 8.5 ounce flannel shirts that Carhartt puts out, real quality, and a small is a small and a medium is a medium. I'm not sure there is any kind of sizing guideline anymore anywhere.

Anyway, my point, and I do have one is this old denim jacket. It's raggedy enough to probably be worth several hundred dollars in some countries, but I'm unimpressed. Every time he wears it I always say "enjoy your coat, it won't be here tomorrow" or some such threat...of course it's his coat and not my place to get rid of it. But it's fun to pull his chain.

Saturday was his 60th birthday and he was kind of under the weather and we are watching our pennies with magnifying glass as he has been out of work more or less since September. So I looked at his coat, and his pitiful little face there in bed and thought "I can do something to bring a smile, surely I can".

So I sewed a great patch on the front, then worked on the collar for awhile. Rather than turn the collar in this case I carefully separated the threads and laid Steam-A-Seam in the worn fold, smoothed the threads down, pressed well, and then with a pale blue thread zig-zagged over the threadbare collar fold. It came out so soft and nice! Then to top it off I restitched the underarm seams. It should last another 10-20 years, then I'll see what's required. Who said romance is dead? There are so many ways to say I love you...

Tuesday Blessings
Yoga night!
Jessie, Ike, Conway
Pembroke, Xing-xing, Xavier
Indiana, Trinity, Freckles, all my four footed companions

6 comments:

The Numismatist said...

I love this post! I haven't ever turned a collar but I do know how to darn socks. Would I ever do it? Probably not.

Right now I have a pair of pants for SIL, a jacket hood for DGS and jeans for DD, all waiting to be mended. Also, I just finished turning some knee socks into cast covers for Littlest DGD. Mending is my least favorite, but those old comfortable clothes cannot be replaced.

Now tell me, how do you turn a collar? And I hope he gets feeling better soon.

Sharyn Mallow Woerz said...

People don't mend much of anything anymore do they? That's why button jars are a thing of the past, stuff gets donated rather than de-buttoned and ragbagged.

To turn a collar you unstitch it from the shirt, turn it over and restitch, really simple, one seam, new collar. Only drawback is the collar button buttons on the opposite side forever more. :) Sharyn

The Numismatist said...

My running jacket has a broken zipper. For three weeks it has been held together on the bottom with a safety pin so it won't come apart forever. All I need to do is whipstitch the bottom to fix it. Maybe someday....

I've never heard of turning a collar before your post. Sounds easy but I'm still not gonna do it! The button problem alone would drive me batty.

I have a large jar of buttons that the grandkids play with. It doesn't look as neat as your collection.

BizarreQuilter said...

Happy Birthday to your DH!! There is nothing warmer than a thoughtful gift of time and the crafting of your own hands.

I haven't turned a collar, but I think my DH would like that. His flannel shirts just get comfy when the collar goes.

Grandma Shell said...

My MIL used to turn collars AND cuffs. Not me. I won't even mend jeans anymore. Fortunately, the company DH works for buys his jeans asa perk. So when they get ragged, back to the Artex man LOL

Lindah said...

A great expression of love! A good investment of time! I just noticed my denim jacket collar is fraying. Imagine! After only 20 years! No button involved...hmmm...perfect candidate for turning. Our stuff gets darned and patched and re-seamed. Until her death at 98 this summer, my MIL's old doubleknit poly dresses got re-seamed at the rate of about 1 every other week. I even used poly thread. Don't know what she did to them. The doubleknit never wears out, though.