Apron Sew Along Part 2 Peter Pan with Lace

Adding lace or piping to the Peter Pan collar is a great way to personalize your apron. The red Christmas fabric I found had a lace motif, so naturally I wanted to play on that. If you choose flat lace like I did, you will have to add ease to it. I ran it though the machine with a long stitch and pulled it a bit to slightly gather it. I stitched it to the right side of the upper collar with the lace edge on the inside - it will turn to the outside later and it is then you will need the ease to go around the curves. It is stitched on the 3/8" seam allowance. The lightweight interfacing is also stitched in here on the wrong side of the collar.

The next step is to stitch the under collar rights sides together with this piece. I pin it in place on top of this, then I turn everything over and stitch from the interfacing side, so I can stitch over the top of the previous stitching. I lifted up the upper collar so you can see the layers in the photo above.

When everything is stitched together, grade and clip the seam. Grading is simply cutting off half of the seam allowance from one of the fabrics so that the seam allowance is not bulky. Clipping is cutting triangle shaped pieces with the point coming close to the seam. This reduces the bulk in any curved seam.

Understitching will help the collar lay right. From the right side of the under collar, I stitch close to the seam, stitching the seam allowance to the undercollar. I press with my fingers as I go. Getting a presser foot into the curve of the collar is a trick. You need to use your smallest presser foot. I used my freemotion embroidery foot. Not ideal because I have to feed the fabric myself, but it is the smallest foot I have and I can get into the curve with it. Better than stitching by hand for me.

After the understitching, I press the collar. If you are making the Peter Pan collar without lace, you still do all of these steps, just without the lace. If you are doing the collar with piping, don't worry about gathering, the piping will stretch around the curves. I would empty the cord out of the ends of the piping, so the first 3/8" of piping and the last 3/8" of piping are empty of cording. If you use cording, grade the cording during the grading step.
Press the seam allowance under the neck edge of the collar and the under collar as shown here:

I hope this post is helpful to you. Let me know if you have questions!  Next up will be the reversible collar.