Elizabethan Collar Scarf - Tutorial

Old things freak me out.  Honestly, it's a true phobia of mine.  The smell of antiques just about puts me over the edge.  The creepiness of vintage clothes and shoes makes me shiver.  Freaky, old furniture sends me running in the opposite direction.  Show me a porcelain-headed doll with teeth and I'm done.  There is nothing in my present life that would make this phobia seem logical, so maybe in a past life I was tormented in some manner.  Who knows.  But as for my future lives, I'm hopeful to become a variety of things, but that's for another post.  One day when it's slow on the blog-o-sphere, I'll hit you with my dreams of things in the afterlife.  (I'm kidding here, folks....but it's a fun thought nonetheless.)

Anyway, I wanted to make my mom a scarf and it surprised me to see the Elizabethan nature of it when I finished.  But I thought it was cool anyway.

It won't even need much explanation, you can whip one up in no time.

I used gauze fabric and didn't even hem the edges. I simply cut them with a pinking shears.

I doubled the fabric so that there 2 layers. My width was about 7" and my final length was about 50". Since you'll be making gathers, remember to double whatever you want your final length to be. In my case, about 3 yards.

Here are the actual directions:

1)  Wash and dry fabric.

2)  To keep my lines straight, first I cut the fabric on my cutting board with a rotary ruler and then just trimmed the edges with a pinking shears.

3)  Pin your 2 layers of fabric wrong-sides together so they don't slip while you're running the long stitches down the middle.  (Honestly, I didn't use one long strip.  I cut 4 strips, sewing 2 together, and then 2 more together and used these for my 2 layers of fabric.  That way you don't have to buy as much.  Just make sure your right sides and wrong sides match up correctly.)

4)  Hand-wind elastic thread in your bobbin.

5)  Decide where you want your gathering to be.  From my 7" width, I chose to gather in three places.  One in the middle at 3.5", the others 1.25" on either side of that point (therefore, 2.25" and 4.75").

6)  Sew straight lines ALL THE WAY down the strip of fabric.  Using elastic thread in your bobbin, allows it gather on its own.  Remember to back stitch.

Up close and personal.  Can you see the 3 places where I stitched?

See? Not even creepy.
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