Spiderweb Collar

Hi everybody, welcome to our live tutorial. My name is Brenda KB Anderson. I'm a sewing instructor, crochet instructor, sometimes knitting instructor, and I really love designing small projects for people to make, and I love teaching them to you guys during these live events. So hello, um, I'm glad you guys are here. This is, of course this is a live event, so if you guys have any questions, if something I'm saying or doing isn't very clear, definitely put that in the chat.

Um, if you have any suggestions for future live event topics, put that in the chat too. I always check those out. I love getting inspiration from you guys. Um, yeah, and so today I'm gonna be showing you how to make this adorable collar. So this is the spiderweb collar which features these little tabs.

These are optional, these little tabs. There's one in the back and then two in the front just off to the sides. Where, um, it kind of gets fastened together in the very front, um, and those tabs can be pinned into whatever top that you are gonna be wearing with, you know, for your spooky attire. So this color is a fun, really fun little piece that features a lot of hand embroidery on here, but it's very simple and straightforward. So even if you haven't done any hand embroidery before, this is a great beginner piece to start out on.

Um, and I will be talking you through some sort of modifications too if you would really rather sew this by a sewing machine, which you can do. Um, the edges of this collar are stitched by a sewing machine, but you don't have to do it that way. If you don't have a sewing machine and you want to hand sew it, you can absolutely do that. This is, this doesn't require a lot of sewing time, you know, on the sewing machine, so this is a great project for those of you who don't have a machine and you want to kind of venture into hand sewing some things, um, yeah, and this is a great project for that. So I designed this project because, um, I really, I love celebrating Halloween and I love spooky attire and I thought this would be a really nice, basically just like an accessory that kind of changes the whole look of your outfit.

So as soon as you put it on, you have that witchy spookiness and it's just this tiny little collar that you need to make, um, and I, and I did, you know, I did, as I said before, I did hand stitch this all these little running stitches. Here, and then there's a satin stitch and a little bit of chain stitch embroidery for the spider legs. Um, I kind of waffle between doing this by hand, doing this by machine. I ended up doing it by hand because I just preferred how it looked. I like the sort of, um, little imperfections in hand stitching it.

It just sort of reminded me more of like the strands of a spider web that you can kind of see gleaming in the sun, how they, you know, kind of have a little twist to them sometimes, or like you know, you can see almost little beads of light on them. So that's why I went this route, but it'll still look really cool if you, you know, you're running out of time or you don't like, um, hand sewing and you just really rather do this by machine, you can totally do this by machine. Um, as well. So we'll be talking about that as we go through. All right.

Um, so, oh, we've got some hellos coming in. Awesome. We have a hello from San Diego. Hi. And another, another hi in Kansas City.

Oh, we got a Utah. Hi. Um, and, and yeah, hello from Utah. Awesome. I love Utah.

Um, I love camping and there's so many gorgeous national parks there and state parks and all kinds of other parks as well. I mean, Utah is just a beautiful place. OK, so, um. OK, so let's start by talking about our materials. So there is a download available for everybody.

It's free for everyone, um, so you can go ahead and download that that has the pattern inside of it as well as all the instructions are all written out in case you don't feel like taking notes, um, and. It also has a list of your materials which I'll be going through as well, so that'll be a helpful little packet for you and you can see here there's a few little process photos um in case you find that helpful as well, so you can kind of see the little close up shots of the, of the project. Um, so there's that and part of your download, like the last four or five pages of your download, um, are the pattern, pattern pieces I should say. So your pattern is going to take a little bit of assembly because you're going to print it out on your regular printer paper, and you've got four pieces that you're going to tape together. And just move this over to the side here.

so you can see here, I'll place it this way. you're gonna be matching up. Here we go. Matching up all of your letters, and what I mean by matching up your letters, there are all these little circled letters on your pages. There we go.

So you've got A's here, B's here, C's here, D's here. You just put them right next to each other and that's gonna tell you exactly where they sit. Um, try to remember when you print out these pages to print them out borderless so that way your lines go all the way to the edge of your, your piece. If there's a space like I forgot to do that on this piece. You can see how my lines don't go all the way.

That doesn't mean the pattern stops here. It means the pattern actually should have gone over to the very edge of the paper there. So when you butt up your pages, just make sure you're actually butting up the edges of the pages and your piece will be just fine. Even if you forget to, you know, to print that little part out, you can just connect the lines there and it's no big deal. So you're gonna uh, you're gonna tape it all together like through here, here and here.

And then cut it apart. So tape it first, then you can cut it apart on the collar piece, which is this piece here, you're going to cut right uh right on that line, just directly on that outside line, cutting on this line as well. And you may notice most of the lines are pretty dark. The reason that I made sure they were dark is so that we can trace by looking right through our fabric. I'll show you that in just a minute, um.

But there is a lighter line right here up at the neckline. You don't have to trace that line. I'm just pointing this out so you can see it in your in your um pattern before you cut it out just in case you cut off a little bit of that that darker line, but this line right here is just a little bit different because we don't need to trace that line onto our fabric, just that neck line. If you do, it's no big deal, um, but we'll talk more about that in a little bit. So you've got this piece.

This is the collar, and then you have this little piece. This is for the tabs. So I wrote on here that you just need to cut one out per tab. So on my collar, I put three tabs on there. I've got one tab on each side of that little, um, fastening hook and eye at the very front and then one tab in the back.

You might decide you don't want any tabs. You don't have to have any tabs. It'll still stay on you. I just thought it would be nice if you had tabs to secure it in place in case you're moving around, maybe you're dancing on Halloween and you don't want your collar to shift at all or if you have like a larger neckline and I'll talk about altering this in just a minute in case you do, then you might need tabs to kind of keep it exactly over that neckline, you know, so it's not shifting around on you. Um, so you can decide how many tabs you want.

If you want to make it like mine, you can just cut out three. So you would cut out three of these rectangles. So you're just going to be cutting out this paper piece just for now. We'll cut them out of the fabric in just a little bit. And then this little pattern piece here, this is for a little pad basically in, um, for the spider head and body so it's raised up a little bit.

There's a thickness here to this spider, um, it's a little bit padded and also when you cut this out of, we're gonna be cutting it out of, um, out of this felt. It's, um, will keep you from seeing any little cracks of white through there, you know, because you're gonna cut it out of this is actually dark gray because I thought you might be able to see it better, but you can cut it out of black. That way, when you do your satin stitch on top of it, um, you know, it just makes it a little bit easier to cover everything up. You don't, you won't see like little cracks of the light white shining through. OK, so basically, you have three pattern pieces.

Once you tape everything together and cut it out. You've got the collar, you've got the little spider body, and you've got the tab. And if you're me, you'll wait to cut these two out until you actually need them because those little pattern pieces will just get lost in your house because that's what happens at my house. OK, so you get your collar piece all fastened all put together, all cut out, all taped together. It should look like this.

OK. Just move these over to the side here. Here we go. Um, and then you're going to go ahead and trace the stitching lines, the hand stitching lines onto your fabric. So I, I did this a couple different ways in my samples.

I traced it onto the fabric first because I thought, oh, people might have thicker fabric than me and they might not be able to see the lines through as well. Let me see. I'm just gonna rearrange just a little bit here so you guys can see what I'm doing. Oh, actually, let's just take a moment and go through the rest of the materials really quickly. Uh, sorry, I got a little sidetracked there.

So you've got, you'll need about half a yard of fabric. So I'm using this, this is just like a sort of an off-white shirting. It's like a medium weight woven cotton fabric, um, but you can, I mean really you can use almost anything. I wouldn't, I probably would not use a knit on this just because you're gonna be doing all this hand stitching, but if there happens to be a knit you really, really want to use, once you interface it. It's probably going to be fine, um, so you could try that if you want to, but maybe just keep in the back of your head.

You just have to kind of make sure, you know, every step of the way it seems to be going OK because I haven't tested it out on a knit, but um, I'm just using this medium weight cotton. You could use a quilter's cotton, um, you could use muslin would be great, um, you could use like a satin if you wanted to. That would be kind of spooky and fun. Um, you only need about half a yard of that, and then you'll need a piece of fusible interfacing that will be big enough for your collar. So just make sure, oops.

dropped my thread here. just make sure you know that your interfacing is large enough for that collar piece that's been put together. So, you know, about a half a yard of interfacing, but it just depends on how wide your interfacing is. Um, so you'll need that. you'll also need.

little tiny chunk of felt as I mentioned earlier, so just a little square, you know, you're only going to be cutting out this teeny tiny little piece out of your felt, um, so you'll need just a little scrap of that. you'll need 4 little skeins or 4 of these little um embroidery skeins um of embroidery floss. So this is just a black embroidery floss here. Of course, you're gonna need a thread that matches your fabric for your sewing machine or hand sewing. Um, and then you're going to need one set of these little hook and eye closures.

So I chose white to go with my, with my white fabric here. I really prefer that over using the shiny silver, but if that's what you got, that'll work just fine. The only reason I prefer it is because sometimes that shininess can kind of glint and you can sort of see it a little bit better. So I, like these painted ones for something that's going to blend in with the white. So it's just a little, here, let me pull them out so you guys can see in case you've never used these before.

They're just called a hook and eye. So you have, that's the hook side, and then here's the eye side right there, a little loop. OK, so you'll just need one set of those closures. Um, and then you're gonna need, of course, an embroidery needle to go with your embroidery floss, um, and then sharp scissors are helpful because we're gonna be doing some little snipping for when we're turning our work, um, right side out, and we have these tight little corners to turn. So sharp scissors are very helpful.

Um, let's see, I think that's it. Let me just double check. Oh, and an embroidery hoop is also very helpful. If you don't have an embroidery hoop, you can still embroider it by just kind of hanging on to it, but you just won't have the tension on your embroidery hoop, so you'll just have to be more careful as you're embroidering that you're not pulling your stitches too tight. Let's see.

Oh, and some sewing pins or quilter's pins I like to use. I think that's it. OK. All right, so. OK, so back to the tracing thing.

Now, um, when I first did this, I thought, OK, I'll have everybody just trace it onto. Just the fabric first because you can see, see even on camera you can still see through. You can see all those lines on my white fabric here that you can go ahead and just trace with a pencil. So I trace it that way and then on my second For the collar, I forgot and I fused the interfacing to the back, and I could still see through well enough on my fabric to go ahead and trace. So, which, you know, if you're it.

It might be a little bit easier to trace onto something that already has the interfacing on because it's not going to be, you know, it's gonna be stiffened a little bit, so you can do your tracing that way, be a little bit easier, but just double-check and make sure you can actually see through both layers at the same time. So you can just go ahead and lay your interfacing down and also lay your fabric on top of that and then see if you can see those lines. See, I still can see them. They're not quite as clean as before. Um, another thing, too, is if you're having trouble seeing these, you can tape your pattern piece to the window.

If it's a bright day outside, you could just tape it to the window and then tape your fabric on top of that. Just use like that painter's tape to tape it on there, and then you can trace; you'll be able to see it. It'll be like a light table, basically. You can see the light coming through. It'll make those lines even easier to see.

So, um, also, in case there are those of you who want to make this in black with like white stitching or, or, or darker, darker color, um, it's gonna be hard; you're not gonna be able to see through your fabric. So what you're gonna have to do is you're gonna have to, um, you know, you can mark with the pattern piece on the outside, you can mark your collar, shape the outline of the collar, and then you can just kind of freehand these pieces in here, let me show you. I mean, I just made these lines up, right? These, so you can kind of eyeball it as well. You can just have this sitting next to it, and then you can, you know, draw the outside shape on your darker piece, and then you can just draw a line from here connecting to that point.

So draw all those lines in first. And then you can just kind of eyeball some of these curved lines and draw them on your fabric. Just make them look, you know, like similarish to this if you'd like, um, and then the spider you might, um, you might, you could also use a transfer, um, let's see, that transfer paper with the little tracing wheel, Um, tracing paper, if you want, but I just have a hard time with that. So, I think it's easier just to kind of look at it and freehand it. Um, instead, and you can use this little spider body.

You can place that onto the piece that you traced out, and you can trace around that, and then you can just kind of freehand some legs that look similar to mine. So that's just a note for those of you who are not able to see through your fabric if you're using a darker fabric or something like that. Otherwise, you could just trace it right through your fabric and you've got it all laid out for you. OK, so we're going to go ahead and I've got a piece that's prepped here with the interfacing on the back. Um, so I've already fused a piece of interfacing to the wrong side of my fabric here, so I can go ahead and just lay that down on top of my collar piece and go ahead and trace.

If you've never fused interfacing on before, just a little tip for those of you who have never done that, you will just want to place your fabric down on your ironing board. And then, you'll have that right side facing down. Now, in a lot of fabrics, it won't matter right side versus wrong side. The right side just means that's the side you want to see when you're done with your project, but you'll put it right side down and then you'll put your interfacing down and just make sure your interfacing is smaller than your piece of fabric because, like right here, for example. We've got the interfacing sticking out over the sides of the fabric.

When you put your iron on here to fuse it on, that gooey stuff that's going to be sticking to your fabric is going to get stuck to your ironing board and it's going to be all gummy and hard to clean, so we don't want to do that. So just make sure you trim all the way around your piece and then go ahead and fuse it. And I like to start at the center and then work my way out so that way it kind of gets smoothed out. Um, and you're just going to follow the instructions on your fusible interfacing, but for me, usually I place my iron there, I wait for 10 seconds or so and pick it up, move it over to the next spot 10 seconds or so, you know, move it over to the next spot 10 seconds or so, um. Yeah, and then it should be, you know, you'll know when it's good.

If it's not melting through, your interfacing you don't want your iron to be too hot. Um, but also, your interfacing should be stuck to the back of your fabric. OK. So, I've got interfacing already fused to the back of this fabric here. So, I've got it fused right on there.

I don't know if you can see the difference between the fabric. Here's the fabric, here's the interfacing. And I'm gonna go ahead and place my collar underneath it. Like that. And then you can go ahead and use just a pencil to trace all of your lines.

Oh, and I should mention. I kind of, excuse me. I rough cut this piece out just so I wouldn't have like this big giant piece. Um, but for you guys, keep in mind that you're gonna want to be able to put this into an embroidery hoop, so you're probably going to want to make your piece of fabric even bigger if you can, um. And I'll show you some little tips on hooping it if you don't have quite enough fabric we'll talk about that in a little bit when I start to hoop um my little section over there.

So if you're looking at this, um, just take this with a grain of salt like it would be better if there was more fabric around all of the edges of your. Collar when you cut if you're gonna kind of rough cut out a piece and then fuse the interfacing to the back of it make it larger than you think you need, because when you put it in the hoop you still wanna be able to fit all of that inside, you know, have it reach all the way to the edges of the hoop. OK, so you're just gonna trace all of the lines. So, I'm gonna do this fairly quickly here, so you guys can see what I'm doing. So, I usually go around the outer edges, and it would be good if you put, like, you know, some pattern weights.

On there, or I wouldn't pin it because I feel like pinning it makes it wrinkle. Um, pattern weights are probably better if you don't own pattern weights. You, I bet you you have a can of beans or soup or something like that. You can just place it on there and you can move them if they're in your way. But basically, you're just gonna be tracing along all the edges here.

And I'm just sliding this around because I want, you know, I want you guys to be able to see on camera what I'm doing, but you would not be moving this. You would just be leaving it on your table. Because every time you move it around, you risk sliding your paper pattern piece. Now here is that lighter line in the pattern. So, to remind you, you could do like a little dashed line here.

I usually do like a little horizontal line at the top of each of these. Vertical line. So here's a vertical line. Here's a vertical line. I just do like a little line right there, and that tells me, oh, that's where the top edge of the collar is going to be.

OK. So if you wanted to do this in a wash-away marker or something else like that, you certainly could. I just like using a pencil because I have had struggles with those wash-away or fade-away markers leaving residue or kind of bleeding into things, um, and so since we're gonna be embroidering right on top of this with black, I just draw it in pencil. Plus, also it's a costume, you guys. I used to work in a costume shop.

Well, for many years I worked in a costume shop, but when I was in, college, I worked in a costume shop, and my costume shop manager would always say, it's only a costume, you guys, it's only a costume. Just to kind of like get us to lighten up every once in a while. OK, so you're gonna trace all of the lines, including the spider and the legs, all of the bits. OK, so you're gonna be tracing all of these lines all the way around, basically tracing everything. And when you trace those spider legs, um, well, I.

Actually go through and trace the spider body first like this, and then when I traced the spider legs, I actually traced it in pencil but with two lines right next to each other, so I could really tell the difference between the spider legs and between the the strands of the web, so that later when you're doing your embroidery stitches, you don't get confused about what's what, because it is a little bit, you know, there's a lot of lines going through there, um, and you need to know what's what when you start to embroider it. OK, so you're gonna get that all traced out and ready to go, and then we're gonna put it in a hoop so that we can embroider. And let me let's see, oh, it must be under Here. Here it is. OK, so this one has already been partially embroidered, so just ignore this little embroidery bit over here for right now, um, but when you hoop it up, let's say you cut it kind of close, you know, you didn't quite have enough fabric.

We're gonna be placing this behind. It's for me, I found that it was OK if I had a little gap like that when I placed my hoop on. It didn't really bother me when I had like a little gap like this, isn't quite wide enough here. That was OK with me. But if your gap is really big, you could hand sew a little scrap, um, just kind of do a little basting stitch, hand sew a little scrap on where you need it to be.

Um, so you know this might happen if, you know, if you like me just cut it out around and you weren't thinking about it going in and fitting into the hoop, although this could also happen if you were trying to save space when you're cutting something out, you just don't have enough, you don't want to waste a bunch of fabric around your, your, um,  collar piece. So you could just add one little strip in there and then you can go ahead and put that in the hoop as well. I'm gonna move this over just a little bit here. And I find for me, I like to have it just a little bit loose, uh, just because it helps me to go in and out and in and out when we're doing the running stitch or the back stitch, sorry. Stitch or the back stitch, sorry.

I'll show you that in just a minute here. Get that nice and tight, but I don't want this like as taut and tight as a drum. I wanna be able to move it just a little bit, um, but this is one of those things that is probably different for different people. Um, but you'll find as you're working on it, just keep in mind, you may want it tighter, you may want it looser, you can kind of adjust that as you go. All right, so you can start anywhere on here.

Um, just note, let me pull the collar in here. All of the lines are done, all the lines of the web are done with a back stitch, which I'm going to show you in just a minute. So all of the web lines all the way around the back, those are all done with the back stitch. And then the legs are done with the chain stitch embroidery, and the body is done with this like a satin stitch embroidery. OK.

So there's 3 different stitches that we're going to be doing. And we're gonna start by filling in the web with the back stitch. OK? So I'm just gonna come in, so I just got a strand of embroidery floss. I'm just going to be using one strand thick, OK?

Um. and just kind of letting, you know, I have it folded through my needle, but I'm only going to be stitching with one strand at a time. So, I'm gonna be coming in from the backside, right at this point here. Actually, I'm gonna draw this just a little darker. In case you guys can't see that very well.

OK. So, I'm coming in from the back here at the corner, and I'm gonna pull and just sort of leave maybe a couple inches, and I'm gonna hold it with my hand just so it's out of the way for a little bit, and I'm gonna take a tiny stitch right next to it. I'm just kind of anchoring it at the corner here. All right, and now I'm gonna come up. like a quarter of an inch or a little bit less away from that little tip.

Right there. And then I'm going to come back in this direction. So every time here I'll hold it this way because this might make more sense to you. um, as I'm stitching it as a right-handed stitcher, I'm always holding my needle pointing to the left. So I'm going to go one step back from where my needle came out and then 2 steps forward.

So, so I'm putting my needle in one step back, then I'm not and then I'm passing over where my thread came out and then I'm coming out. Basically equidistant from this point here to that is the same as here to here. OK. And those are, uh, you know, it just depends on how big you want to make those back stitches, but I was doing mine about, you know, 1/4 of an inch or just ever so slightly less than that. There we go.

And so we'll go in again here. And then we'll go out again here. and so this is why I like to have this loose, so I can actually stitch in and out. If, if you prefer to stitch with this a little bit tighter, what you can do is you can push your needle in. So we're going one step back.

And you can go ahead and pull it all the way through, and then you can come out. A stitch in front right here. Like that, and then go one stitch back. See how I'm, right now I'm pulling it all the way through as I go in. If it gets stuck, you just have to kind of back it up a little bit there.

And then I come in in front. Right there. OK, so this is taking more motions, but you may find that it's easier to do. As opposed to, let me get this out on the front here. So this is on the front.

OK. I stopped hanging on to that. We, you can also, you can tape it to the side, but I actually snagged it a few times, which actually is good, so I can go ahead and just cut that off. Um, so the way that I like to do this is because I feel like it makes it go a little quicker, and I have more experience with sewing, as I will just keep my work on the front, and I will keep this a little bit loose here so I can go in. And then when I come out, I can use my finger, this finger, to push the fabric down so that my needle doesn't get stuck in it.

Like that. It just takes fewer steps. So there's two different ways to do it. Actually, there are lots of different ways to do everything, but I'm showing you two different ways here, so you can decide what makes more sense to you, um, what's easier for you to do. What you feel like doing.

Also, like I said before, you could certainly do this by machine, and if you're gonna do that, I would pick a fairly narrow satin stitch. OK, so, um, just do a little test on a piece of fabric, but I would do a satin stitch, and a, and a fairly narrow one. So you're gonna put your length way down to like about where you're doing a buttonhole, like just barely moving. You don't want it at zero, but just barely moving. Um, and then do a fairly narrow zigzag, um, and then you could just go ahead and stitch in all those lines.

So you're going to be doing this back stitch or your sewing machine, um, satin stitch, and you're gonna be filling in every line in the web except you're not going to be doing this top sort of dashed line or the one we didn't quite fill in because that is the neckline. We don't need a, um, stitching up there. We just need all these vertical bits, and then all these connecting little arches. OK? So you're just gonna go ahead and do all of these back stitches.

And one thing I wanted to point out. Is that actually, I'm gonna show you in a different spot because I think it'll make more sense. It's OK to, you know, you, you don't have to go all the way around the whole thing. You can do a little here, a little here, a little here, and then kind of have some threads hanging off, and then move your hoop and then pick up all those threads one at a time, and continue to use those. That's how I like to do it.

I feel like that's a little more efficient, um, than moving your hoop all over as you're traveling across. I'm gonna get this hooped in here. And I'll show you. Here we go. So, as you're filling in all these little back stitches.

You may find, like, say you're going across here. Let's just say we started here, we're working our way across, and then we want to do this line. I wanna show you here, I'm gonna start right here, but. Just for the sake of time, I'm going to start right here. Just imagine I've already stitched along here to this point, OK?

And we're stitching along. And then we want to move up to another line, OK? And I just want to show you how you don't have to fasten off. Because every time you cut your. Your thread.

I don't like to leave it just dangling in the back. I like to kind of weave it in, and I'm gonna show you that in just a little bit, um, but this can save you a little bit of time. To sort of weave your thread in along as, uh, an area that's already been stitched, and I'll show you, I just want to show you how to do that. All right. So here we've made it.

To the end of our little row, and on the next row, we wanna be stitching up here. So, I'm gonna bring my thread to the wrong side, flip this over. And the next place we want to be stitching is right up here. OK? So, like the next line up, which is right there, flipping it over so you can see, we want to be up here.

So we're gonna travel up the back. of our work and just kind of weave that line in and out. Now, the reason I don't ever take just sort of like a long jump and start somewhere else, which, I mean, you could do. two reasons. One is that I feel like it can kind of show up a little bit.

It can show like a little ridge through your through the outside of your collar. um, it, it might also restrict your, your fabric a little bit there, might make it pucker. also, if you're doing it in white like I am here, you'll be able to see a little shadow of that sort of dark line cutting across. so I try to stick to the lines that are already there as much as possible when I'm moving my thread around. Ok, so I've gotten up to about here.

And so this is where I wanna kinda come through to do the next line. So that way, I don't, I don't have to weave in my end or tie that off or anything like that, so I can just keep going. but of course, at some point you're, you're gonna run out of your thread and you're gonna need to switch to a new piece of thread. I'll do a few more stitches here. and when you do that, I want to show you how I like to make sure it's not gonna come undone, but I, I, I also don't really like making knots, um, on something when it's gonna be.

you know, that's fairly thin fabric and it's white, you can kind of see through it. All right, so let's just say I was about to run out of thread. So I would come to the inside, and then I would just sort of weave my tail back and forth through the thread in that direction. Just make sure you're not coming out and making a stitch on the on the outside, and then I'm going to do the thing, the same thing back in the opposite direction. Like that and then you can go ahead and cut it off.

And that way it's just making a line on top of the line so you're not gonna see a shadow of of a piece hanging out there like this I would need to kind of weave that little bit back through. Ok, just so you don't see that. Now this is being very very picky. You don't if you're just wearing it for a fun costume out, you don't have to be so careful about that. This is, you know, if you're not planning on entering this into the state fair next year, you don't need to worry about all those little nitpicky things, but I just like to share them with you in case it helps you and you feel, you know, like it's making it look a little more tidy.

Um, yeah, just check in here and make sure I'm not missing a bunch of stuff. Oh, lots of hellos, you guys. Got a hello from Virginia and Delaware. Oh, and somebody already put it together, pattern was easy to put together. OK, cool.

And hello from California and Independence and oh, we got some compliments too, thanks, you guys. And from oh, in Arizona, Connecticut, you guys are from all over the place. Um, Uruguay. Oh, do the pencil markings wash out or rub out? Um.

It will kind of wash out, but I don't bother. I just draw them pretty faintly because I'm like, I, you know, like this is pretty faint right here, but I can see it well enough and then when I stitch over, I don't even see it anymore. So if you're worried about being able to see your pencil markings, um, you could use a different, you know, you could use a fade-away marker or something else. Pencil markings usually just sort of. Like I find that they just sort of rub away in time, but I usually only use pencil markings when I am gonna be stitching basically right on top of it, and so I don't need to worry about, you know.

Like I, I wouldn't make a marking that I'm not gonna cover up, I guess is what I'm trying to say in pencil if that helps. OK, so next I want to show you guys. How to do the chain stitch embroidery. So I already have some of this embroidered in. So you can see here I'm gonna make this a little darker so you guys can see.

Here's a leg here that I still have left, and here's a second leg that I had left and I purposely left them in two different spots so I could show you traveling back and forth from one to the other. Um, and this might look a little bit messy in here, like. There's this weird stitch here and a weird stitch here and then this stitch here, these are me jumping from one leg to the next leg and I leave that sort of trail of thread. Hopping from one to the next on the top surface because I don't care, because this is gonna get covered with that little felted spider body pad. Let's see, where's my little spider body?

We might have, oh, here it is. OK. So this is gonna, we're gonna be cutting this out of felt, and we're gonna place it on top of that. So you'll never see these little lines going from, you know, traveling basically from after you do a chain stitch on one leg to another leg. Um, so that's why there's these sort of little lines here.

You just don't need to worry about those, um, but I wanted to show you why, why they ended up there. So I'm gonna start out on this leg here going downward, and I'm gonna start just a little bit in from the, the head, OK, because we want the leg to start and be completely underneath the spider body. When we put the body on, I should say. Let me add that body. OK, so to do a chain stitch.

Um, and if you're left-handed, you'd be holding your needle in your left hand and your needle would be pointing from left to right. I'm right handed, so mine is pointing from right to left. So I am going to go into my work right next to where my my thread came out, and I'm gonna take a small stitch. Like this, and then I'm going to wrap that thread underneath my needle. Oh, I've got to get my hand out of the way so you guys can see what I'm doing.

I'm, I'm doing this with my left hand. I would normally do it with my right, but I'm, I would be covering that up. So then I'm going to pull on my needle like this. And because I wrapped that thread underneath, it's going to catch it. And create a little chain.

Right there. See, it makes a little loop, and you don't need to pull it too tight, you want to let it have a little bit of a loopy shape. It makes the legs look a little bit thicker and kind of knobbier looking. And now we're gonna go right back into that same space, right next to where our thread is coming out, that's in the inside of this loop we just made. So we're gonna take a little stitch here.

And when we come out, we're gonna bring that thread underneath. Maybe I'll hold it this way, even though this is not how I would normally stitch away from myself, but just so you guys can see what I'm doing here. OK. So, we made a little chain. We're gonna go in, take a little stitch, make sure that your thread is underneath your needle here.

Before you pull your needle through. And I like to hang on to that so that it doesn't get all loopy and kind of knotted and tangly. Like, we're just gonna go in that same spot right next to where the thread came out. Make sure your thread is underneath. Like that.

OK. So I'm gonna do a few more stitches. Oh, and if you would like, if you find it difficult to go in and then come back out like this, you can also go right down into your project. And pull on it and just kind of hold that with your thumb. And then you can come out inside that little loop, OK?

So just a little space away, but on the inside of that loop. If you find that easier. So you're gonna go right back down like that. Hang on to that with your thumb, and then come up, and when you come up, just make sure that you are inside that loop. Like that.

OK. So I'm gonna do one more stitch here. And we'll call that the end of our little leg, and then we can go on the outside of that last loopy made. We gotta make sure we're on the outside this time. And we're gonna pull that down to the back, and that's gonna anchor that loop and keep everything in place.

And now, we want to start stitching here on this leg, but we're way down here. So I'm gonna weave my needle back up through here, take a stitch across the body, and then start that next leg. You don't have to do that. You could just, you know, weave it in, cut it off, but I feel like it takes less time. You have less ends to deal with, um, you know, you could also tie a knot and cut it off; it's not like it's all gonna unravel.

Um, I just like to avoid doing knots where I can on things like this because sometimes you can kind of see the bump of where the knot is. All right, so I've made it all the way up, just kind of weaving it through the back of that leg. And I'm gonna come in. So, that's about where I ended up on the back, at the top of that leg there. And I came through to the outside.

And now I'm just gonna take a little stitch over here and get ready to do my next leg. So, I'm gonna do, let's see, we'll come out right here, the top of the leg. And we're gonna place our needle right next to where that thread is. Make sure your needle is on top of the thread. And pull through, ok?

There we go. So, we'll go back in, make stitch, make sure it's on top of the thread. So, if you do not have an embroidery hoop and you're doing this just kind of in your lap, of course, you know, I wouldn't try that unless you have interfacing fused to the back of this fabric like, like we did already earlier. Um, but if you do have that interfacing on the back, just make sure when you're pulling, pulling these stitches that you're not pulling them too tightly, so it's not gonna pucker your work. The thing that's so nice about having this embroidery hoop here is it just holds it all taut, you know that you're not gonna, it's not gonna be getting all uh gathered up as you're pulling your stitches tight.

Well, they don't have to be tight, but as you're pulling them through the fabric. All right, we'll do one more stitch here. Like that and now I'm gonna go back down on the outside this time of that last little chain, and that's gonna anchor the end. And now we want our needle to be back over here because the next step is to place our little felt pad right here and tack it into place. So, I'm just gonna go ahead and sort of slide my needle back through, catching.

I'm just catching the threads here. It's ok if you catch a little bit of the interfacing, you know, by accident or whatever. Just don't go through that fabric on the, on the outside. All right, so we've made it to our spider body, and I'm just gonna kind of push that up and let it hang out there for a second. Then we're gonna cut out.

Our little spider body piece which wandered away from me. Let's see. Made up to cut out another one. Yeah. Somewhere, somewhere on the table is that little piece of paper spider, but I think it's gonna take me too long to find it.

So I'll just cut out this little guy here. All right. And because I'm gonna be using my sharper scissors, I want to cut this paper out first. Sometimes I will stack the paper on top of the felt when I'm cutting out little things and cut through, but this has, you know, these little tiny notches in it, and I really feel like I need to use my good scissors to cut that out of the felt, so. Here we go.

So here's our little spider head and body. And I just do a little rough cut around the body like this. See, this is why I don't cut this out ahead of time, ever. I learned this the hard way like twice. OK.

So, now I'm just gonna go ahead and hold that on there with my thumb. You can also trace around it if you want, um, if that's helpful. Uh, if you're, if you're tracing onto black felt or, you know, dark felt like that, you can use a silver Sharpie. That actually works pretty well. That's normally what I use.

And then the silver Sharpie part, that's gonna whatever side you draw on will have to go downward facing. So you would flip your pattern piece over so that it's upside down if that makes sense. Like if you, if you wanted. Trace, let's just say you wanted to trace this onto your felt and then cut it out, you would flip it over, trace it, then you could cut on your lines and then you would flip it back over so that way the part where you traced would be facing down so you won't see even if your um satin stitches isn't total aren't totally perfect when you're sewing over it, you won't see a little glint of that silver peeking through. I did a little messy job there.

Here we go. All right, so we've got this little spider head and body right here. And we're gonna be just tacking it into place. We're just gonna do like a little whipstitch around the edge of our spider to just make sure it's not gonna move on us later. So, I'm gonna stitch about 1/4 of an inch in.

I'm just making a little stitch here. Right at that point where it comes in, like where between the head and the body, that little crack. So I'm just making a little stitch there. I'm gonna come up. Right here on the other side, you guys can see my needle coming out.

And then we're gonna tack that into place there as well. And once you get those two tacked, I feel like that'll stay pretty well. And you can do a few more stitches around. Just going, you know, coming up about a quarter of an inch away from the edge. And going down right next to that edge.

Just like that, keep the, to keep that in place. OK, and then we're gonna do the same thing over on the body part, body section. You're just gonna be stitching those in place. I probably do a total of maybe like 10 stitches or so that hold this in place. It doesn't need to be anything perfect.

You just really need, it just is really helpful when you have that tack in place because once you start doing the satin stitches, you don't wanna have to worry about that shifting around at all while you're stitching. All right, here is my last stitch, checking the felt on. OK, and now we're going to do a little satin stitch. I'm going to start at the back of the spider because that's where I am. So I'm going to start by just making, um, just a bunch of horizontal stitches that run through the spider in this direction, OK?

So I'm gonna come up here and go back down right here. This is the very edge, the back of the spider, and if it falls off of the felt, that's OK, and you're going to move in. Just the tiniest bit. And you're basically, what you're aiming to do is you're trying to make long stitches coming in and going out of your, you know, in and out of the fabric right next to the line you just did. So it butts right up next to it.

And when you make these, try not to pull them too tight. You're gonna pull them until that loop just sits on top of your fabric. You want it to look like a little bit of a bubble there, you know, like, that felt pad should look kind of rounded and raised, getting a little tangled back here. Here we go. OK, so this part is a little slow going.

You know, you just have to be patient. And if this was something, so, OK, back to if you were using your sewing machine instead of hand-sewing these things. If you wanted to use your sewing machine for the legs, I would still do just a satin stitch on that and make it wider than you did on the web. OK, so the web should be a pretty narrow satin stitch and you can do the legs a little wider, so that will help you visually make that visual distinction between what's a leg and what's part of the web. And then when you get to this spider part here, I would recommend just doing a little applique piece.

Um, you could cut out a piece of the felt and then just do like a satin stitch around the edge of it. I think that would look nice. Um. Or you could just decide you were going to hand stitch just the spider part right here, just the body and the head if you wanted to. All right.

So, um, you would just continue working your way down, and, you know, as I'm working my way down the body, my stitches are getting wider to accommodate the width of the body of the spider. And it looks like I have sometimes you'll get like an extra little strand. I've got a little strand sticking up right here, and I like to go ahead and just go back up and stitch that down in place because it's gonna bug me. Just having that little, sometimes when you're pulling on your thread, if it gets a little uneven or something like that, you'll get like this random one little strand. Of the, you know, there's like 6 strands in your, in your embroidery floss.

Sometimes one little strand is sticking up, but I just tucked that down in there by just kind of coming up near it, going underneath it, and then pulling it down into the. The satin stitch section, OK? So you're just gonna keep adding those little bits in there, these horizontal lines. You're gonna work your way down here just following the edge, and this little felt pad will help you know where to come up and where to go back down, OK? And then once you're done, you can just kind of weave your, your end in back and forth in a couple of directions like that, and then you can cut it off.

Oops, cut that tail off of the back. I was running out of thread there, so we're not gonna go any further on that. Um, but this one has already been embroidered, finished working on this little piece. That's what it should look like, those little satin stitches there and the chain stitch embroidery. And now we can go ahead and start putting that together.

Um, so in order to do that, we're gonna cut out two more things. So, next, you would cut out the backing of your collar. Uh, the backing of your collar. So you don't even need to get your pattern piece out if you don't. Well, actually, let's pull that out.

Um, if you did not uh mark that sort of lighter. Edge, the neck edge, if you didn't mark that, you can go ahead and mark that now. Um, you can mark it lightly in pencil, or I actually like to mark it on the wrong side here. Gonna do that. That way, we'll be able to see it a little bit better.

I'm gonna mark that dark enough so that you guys can see. You can mark this line here. See, I'm just. Matching it up with the embroidery. And marking that neckline there.

OK? So, we've got a line right there. Um, and then we can take another piece of fabric, and you're gonna put right sides together. OK? So the nice side of your embroidery needs to go down and if you have a right side of your fabric for the backing, that should be up.

So you're gonna match them up like this. And then you can go ahead and pin them together. So I'm gonna pin all the way along. Right to the outside of those seam lines there or those stitching lines. And then you'll also need to cut out your little.

Uh, tabs if you are using them. You don't need to use them if you don't want to, but if you want to be able to pin them to something, safety pin them to the, you know, the neckline of your garment, whatever you're wearing, then it's helpful to cut those out. And put them together. So we're gonna grab, let's see. This is what that pattern piece looks like.

You're just cutting it out right on the line because your seam allowance is already included. Looks like I have a little bit of space here. I'm gonna cut it out of the scrap here. OK, so you can, you can pin this if you like or trace around it with a pencil and cut it. I'm just gonna hold them together because it's such a little piece.

And these don't need to be, you know, super precise or anything. They're just little tabs that you're making to, put a pin in. OK, so I would cut out three of these if you want to have three tabs, or if you have a different amount you'd like to use, that's fine too. And then to make the tabs, you're just going to fold them in half, and then you're going to do a little quarter-inch seam allowance, right, or seam line right here and right here. OK?

So we're going to stitch those up. I'm just using a straight stitch. I'm just using a straight stitch. All right. Then you can go ahead and just cut off the corners.

These are the corners where the fold is, so they're not going to be adding bulk. And then we can go ahead and turn this. I have pretty small pinkies, pretty small fingers, but if you don't, you can use the end of a pencil or something like that to get these turned out. Like that, you can go ahead and press them if you want to. I'm just gonna kinda wiggle them into place as best as I can.

So there's my little tab. Um, at this point, I've got my two layers pinned together. I know where that seam is going to be, so I can go ahead and cut. The neckline out, I'm leaving maybe about, I'll probably leave about half an inch or so of seam allowance here. Maybe five-eighths of an inch, something like that.

I'm just eyeballing it. It doesn't matter exactly how much you have, because, um, you know, you already have the stitching line marked out on your fabric. OK, and so, um, I found it helpful to plan out where I'm going to put my little tabs, so I put one at the center back, and I've made two more little tabs here already. So these little tabs are going to go at the front opening. So one here, one here, and one there, and they're gonna go in between layers of my fabric.

OK, so I would place them here. And then, once you have placed your tabs, you figure out where they go, then you can check for a little section where you're going to leave it open for turning. And so I would leave open this little section over here on the side. And if you want to, you can go ahead and do a little stay stitch line that's at the same point as this. So stay stitching, that's just um a little line of stitching right here, just straight stitching in that little spot where you're planning to turn because that way when you clip in um into your fabric, it it can make a nice neat and uh turn, but I'm going to skip that step because we're running short on time and you don't have to do that step.

I did put that in the instructions in case you wanted to do that. Um, and I'm going to go ahead and just place these little tabs right up next to where I'm gonna be sewing that center front. Here we go. And I'm gonna put pins in here to remind myself where I'm going to stop stitching. Because otherwise I think I might forget.

So, I'm going to leave this little section open here. Between here and here. In my piece. So I'm gonna start here, and so to that point, and then I'm gonna start here and so to that point, and then I'm gonna flip my collar right side out after I trim everything. OK, actually, um, because I'm stitching all the way around the outside, I'm going to start here and go all the way around my collar and end here.

Sorry, I got a little confused there, so we're going to start here. You just want to make sure you're stitching all the way around, you know, your collar, but you need to leave that one little section open. And when you get to the point where you know you're sewing over those tabs, you just want to make sure it's going to be far enough away that you're not accidentally going to um stitch stitch into the sides of your tabs. You want to stitch across the bottom to anchor it in place, but you don't want to stitch along the sides. And you wanna make sure you're sewing to the outside of your beautiful embroidery, OK?

So just make sure your your needle. Is going to the outside of your embroidery. Oh, I just realized my needle is not centered. OK. There we go.

Oops. When you get to the tip, you're going to leave the tip of your needle in while you lift the foot and turn. So every time you get to one of those points, make sure your needle's down. And you can lift that presser foot and pivot your work. OK, so right here, needle should be down, lift, turn.

And you're trying to stitch pretty much as close as you can to the hand stitching line, but try not to stitch on it. All right, we've gotten back to the neckline here, so I'm gonna. Keep in mind, I have to leave that little space open at the end for turning. I'm sewing right on that neck pencil line there. There's my back.

Tab right there. I can feel it going through the thickness and there's where I'm going to stop. All right, so now, when you're turning something that has curves and points. Looks like I got a little mess going on here. Um, you're gonna want to, uh, trim pretty close, so I would cut like maybe a quarter of an inch away, leave a little bit of a seam allowance there because we don't want it to fray, and then make sure you're really looking at where the tip is.

So here is where the tip of my thread, my white thread is. I don't know if you guys can see that, but I'm cutting just below that, and I'm gonna cut a little bit of the bulk out. Of that corner, cause when we turn it, we just don't want a big wad of stuff in there, OK? And now I'm gonna go ahead and trim all the way around. Sorry if I'm missing a lot of your comments, you guys.

I'm just trying to get this in, um, before. Our time is up here. If any of you guys are, uh, Craftsy Premium members, we do have a Craftsy Premium. I'm gonna be teaching how to make a pair of really cool two-tone mittens in a little bit. That's my next live event, so that's gonna be in about 20 minutes.

So that's why I am making sure that I am, you know, showing you all the steps here. Before we have to go. OK, so when we get to those corners, we really want to get rid of as much bulk as we can. Don't cut into your stitching line though. And then when you get around to the part, the part where, um, you're leaving it open.

I would still trim this down to about a quarter of an inch away. Because it's gonna make it easier to make, uh, a neat turn there, um, and to make that to kind of close that up later if it's the same. Um, if both edges are cut to the same seam allowance, it's good to just trim it a little bit, and we're gonna go ahead and clip that corner. So you can go ahead and I'm not going to do this on all of these because we don't have time, but you can make a little notch out of each of these little tips here. Cut off that excess.

And get that out of the seam, so when you turn it, um, it's not gonna be so bulky. And then you can make some little clips here, so you're gonna clip right up to where that seam is, right up to your machine sewn seam there. Or hand stitch if you wanted to hand stitch that part. OK, so normally I would be making a few more clips in between, doing these about maybe three eighths of an inch apart or something like that. The curvier it is, the more clips you're gonna need.

And I'm actually going to clip this section as well, the part that we are going to, you know, where we're going to be turning our work. I'm not clipping it all the way to that line, but very close. Maybe about one and one eighth of an inch away. Because we are gonna need to have that clipped in order to make this nice and neat. All right, so now we can go ahead and turn our collar right side out.

And we can pull those little tabs. When you get to those points. You might need to give them a little bit of help. You can put a pencil in from the inside, or one thing you can do is you can use a pin from the outside, kind of push it down into that little bit, grab on and pull it upward. You do have to be a little careful because you don't want to snag your hand embroidery here.

But this does take a little, you know, those are very, very pointy points. So it does take a little bit of finessing to get that to come out. Here we go. There it is. OK, so that tip looks nice and sharp.

Another thing you can do when you're turning out a corner like that is you can fold the edges in, so fold. Fold like you're folding just that seam allowance and then I'm gonna hold that with my I'm gonna just pull my thumb and my finger to the outside and it's already pretty much popped out like you know that does help you. You can't really do that with these because it's hard to get down in there, um, I mean, you can try. But let's see, we'll see if we can do it. Yeah, I don't think we'll be able to do it.

It's just such a tight little space, but I'm gonna try. So I'm folding the seam allowance first and using my thumb to kind of pull it out. So that does make it a little quicker, but you're not, it's not gonna be a perfect turn. You're still gonna need to go in there with a pin or something to kind of pull out that little tiny tip of the collar, but that's what makes it so spooky. Here we go.

It just makes it more fun to have that extra little pointy bit. OK. So, once you get this all turned nice and neat, you pull out all of these little corners, then I would give it a press and press it from the wrong side. I would put the embroidery down. Make sure you're not pressing your spider though, 'cause you don't want to, you know, I, I, I just, I'd like him to be poofy, so leave him alone.

And then, um, press the rest of it if you need to, or you can finger press it if you want. Um, and then, the remaining part is just this little bit right here. You just have to tuck those raw edges to the inside, and you can do a little slip stitch seam. So you're kind of sneaking in and out of the folds. Here I'm just going to grab this pin here to kind of show you if this were a needle.

You'd grab a little here and a little here and a little here from this side and a little here. You're just kind of going back and forth and that way it's nice and invisible. If this is something you're doing as a quick costume at the last minute, you can absolutely just do a little stitch line right around the entire edge of the collar, catching those little edges in there. Once you get to that, just kind of take your time, fold that all in. And then, you know, just stitch really close to that folded line.

You'll have like a little neat and tidy little stitching right next to that edge there, and it'll look really nice. And then the last thing, which I don't have time to show you unfortunately because I have to get to my next live event, um, but if you're going to be sewing those little, little hook and eye closure to the wrong side of your collar. So, and I do have a close-up of this in the download so you can see, there you can you're just going to sew like you're basically stitching around and around and around each one of those little rings. You can, I see sometimes people stitching through both rings. I like to stitch all the way around this ring and then all the way around this little ring.

I'm talking about just the little tiny loops, and then the same thing over here, stitching all around this ring, stitching all around that ring, and it seems to hold it nice and flat to the fabric. You want to make sure when you put that on there that this hook is very close to the edge, that folded edge, and this loop is very close to that folded edge. So when you put them together like this, it should make your fabric butt up so that they're just touching, and that way you don't even see those. I'll move this out of the way. You don't even see that attachment point right there.

OK, it just looks like they magically come together. All right, sorry, I didn't have enough time to show you all of the steps. I really appreciate you guys being here. I appreciate all the encouraging comments and compliments on my collar, um, from in the chat, and I hope you guys have a super fun Halloween. I hope you guys make these collars and you guys have a blast.

Thanks so much for joining me. Bye everyone.