Peter Pan Collar |

Since I looked through all the clothes I own, and after realised how many of them I never wear, I decided to see which ones I could make into garments I would wear.

A few years ago, I bought 3 tops – I think from New Look – in blue, green and cream and at the time I liked them, but I’d gone off them recently, mostly because they were too tight on my neck and felt a bit strangle-y! Here they are before:

They all look like this on the back. The blue and cream ones were a little big (the green one is a size smaller).

The first thing I did was to unpick the collar from them all:

(I won’t post 3 identical photos of the collars off!)

I decided to just hem the neckline of the cream one. But for the green and blue ones I decided to make little peter pan collars for them – the blue one from its own collar and the green one from the cream collar, for a contrast.

I used the collar from my refashioned dress as a pattern. I had to sew the collars down all the way around as they kept rolling up. The only other change I made was to take in the cream one by about an inch – the blue one turned out to not be as big in the end. I’m pretty pleased with all of the results as I now have 3 tops I can wear!

The back of the cream one – I sewed one of the buttons and button loops from the original collar back on as a fastening.

Close up of the neck hem – you can just about make out the interesting stitch I used on my sewing machine!

And a close-up of the collar:

I think the green one is my favourite:

The back:

I thought I would share this goofy photo to finish…..

Back in February, I bought a new dress from H&M. I say I bought it. It was actually free as it was only £5 in their sale and I had a £5 voucher. I really like peter pan collars so I liked this dress when I spotted it and it was a small, so perfect. It has little beads/ ‘pearls’ on the collar (not sure you can see it on the photos) and is a 60s-style shift dress. I did wear it once as it came, but I felt a bit too dressed up and it’s a big old expanse of cream!

So I decided to take off the collar (thanks to an idea from a friend on Facebook)….

….and dyed it green! (minus the collar)

I dyed a skirt at the same time and here they are sloshing about in all their newly green glory!

The skirt ended up a better colour, I think, because it was darker before. Also probably has something to do with their respective fabric contents. The stitching didn’t dye, which I was prepared for as the packet said it wouldn’t work on polyester thread. I kinda like it with the highlighted stitching!

Here is the closest photo I could get to their real-ish colour (dress on the left, skirt on the right):

I added some darts to make the dress more fitted and sewed the collar back on and I’m pretty pleased with the result. When I wore it to work, I got lots of unsolicited compliments!

This is the back (with the facing sticking out, grrr!). The darts aren’t perfect, but I couldn’t be bothered to re-do them! It doesn’t look amazing from the back, but for a free dress, I’m not too bothered!