Faux Mandarin Collar
Quick Tip
November 24, 2020 | By Julia Xiong
Happy Hmong New Year 2020/21!
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Of course with Quarantine, I found myself experimenting with different projects. I saw this photo on Pinterest.
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Just from a personal guess this appears to be a little Hmong Vietnamese girl. Her clothes are reminiscent of those in the Hmong Flower tribe. They're well known for having these types of print and color. I was really drawn to her mandarin collar and was wondering if I could turn a regular T-shirt into a mandarin collar.
At my local Goodwill, I was able to thrift a velvet dark green dress from GAP and a woven scarf. I also cut up an old pair of black rayon pants to use as bias tape for where the collar closure would be.
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What I Learned:
With velvet fabric, you want to be extra sure that you're sewing on the right lines. If you remove any wrong stitches, it will definitely show up on the fabric. *sigh* Mistakes were made.
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This is definitely a draping situation as well, which means you need a friend or a mannequin (which I did not). Draping and pining the scarf onto myself (while wearing the dress) was incredibly difficult as I couldn't get the right shape I wanted.
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In hindsight, I should have ironed on some interfacing to thicken up the scarf/collar.
I definitely have plans on doing this technique again. It turned out OKAY. Messing up my stitching on velvet fabric was definitely my downfall. My vision for the dress wasn't that great and so I might turn it into a top instead and maybe do a matching headband with the bottom of the dress.
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This was a part of my Hmong New Year 2021 post.