Cross-over V neck constuction steps

Step one: 

Iron a small piece of fusible interfacing to the wrong side below the point of the V. Do not stay-stitch. If some of your stay stitches show and you try to take them out later you will make a hole. The interfacing patch will provide all the stabilization you need.

Step two:

Working with a binding strip that is twice as wide as you want to finished neck finish to be (you are going to be folding it in half) plus two small seam allowances (I use about 1/4" for this) and a lot longer than you need (you can cut off any excess when you are done stitching and having the extra gives your hands something to hold onto), pin the binding around the neckline. Since this is for a woman's top the eventual cross-over will be from right to left.

Pin the binding even with the edges along the long side of the Vs and stretch it slightly across the back of the neck so it will hug the neck and not stand straight up.

Note that the pinning, and first pass of stitching, ends several inches above the point of the V on the left side. How far away this stops doesn't matter it just needs to be a fair bit wider than the width of the band. I think I stopped pinning about 2 1/2" before the point of the V to accommodate a band that was about an inch wide. I eye ball this.

Step three:

Stitch around the neck edge starting a seam allowance distance below the V on the right side and ending somewhere short of the V on the left side as shown. Use a straight stitch and a knit/ballpoint/jersey needle. As a V neck doesn't have to be stretched to go over your head a straight stitch is just fine. ( See above you would locate a spot 1/4" below the point of the V right at the white pin head above, stitch up the right side of the V across the back neck and down the left side of the V to where you see the pinning stop.)

Clip right to the stitching at the point of the V.

Step four:

Working from the right side play around with the ends of the band so it looks like this below and pin in position:

• Fold under the seam allowances on the unstitched section on the left side.
• Tuck the end of the right band into the hole on the left side where it was left unstitched.
• Tuck the remaining part of the left band under the right band.
• Pin in place
• (Note in the event you have a pucker at the point of the V that only means you haven't clipped right to the stitching. Go back and do it fearlessly, remember you have interfaced this area)

  
This is what it will all look like at this stage from the wrong side:

Step five:

Flip it all up to expose the seam allowances and finish stitching the remaining seam - you can see what needs to be stitched by looking at the picture above and seeing where the seam ends - just continue that seam through all layers until your stitching meets the stitching above the point of the V on the right side.

Step six:

There is no step six. All you need to do know is cut off any extra tails from the binding, tack the left end to the right seam allowance if it seems it is flapping around (if you have got this far you will know what I mean) and if you want you can zig zag the layers of the seam allowance together to flatten if you want.

Why this method is fool proof (and therefore the way I always make knit V necks):

1. No stay stitching
2. No pivots
3. You don't do any tricky stitching or in fact sew the worrisome part of the V until you have arranged it totally with your hands, patted it into place, put in a pin and made sure it will turn out (see step four)
4. There are no surprises, what you set up before stitching is what you will end up with.

Done.

Sewing a shirt placket

For a start let's talk about the continuos placket or lap method of finishing a sleeve vent. Before we go any further let's talk about what this little unit's job is:

To finish the raw edges of the little opening above the cuff that is necessary so your hand can get into the bottom of a sleeve where it is closed when the cuff is buttoned up.

That's it. 

Raw edge finishing of a little slash that is about 3 inches long. 

This is not worth having a nervous breakdown about. 

And that might be where making a traditional, inevitably bulky, continuos placket can take you. Too many layers in such a small space with the monumental challenge of trying to sew through 12 layers of fabric (including seam allowances) diagonally across the top of the vent, over a wide throat plate hole, as is necessary in a zig zag machine, is a challenge that in my books hardly ever turns out well.

By contrast a tailored shirt style placket is dead easy and produces immaculate results with very little mental engagement, around here always a plus.

The way I do shirt placket requires photo copies or hand drawn copies of my simple pattern piece. When I put these little numbers in I do not:

• mark
• measure anything
• use more than a few pins
• stitch down anything until I have pressed and arranged it by eye so I know it will look right, if it doesn't I re-press till it does.

I do the entire placket by eye and feel and it works great. 

This is how I do it:

Step one:

• Cut out the placket piece.
• Make a little clip at the bottom of the sleeve where the cutting line of the vent should be.

Step two:

• Press under the two long edges of each vent by what looks to you like about 1/4". Just make sure that the pressing is about the same depth on each side.
• Press under the little pointy peak at the top of the placket, clipping in about 1/4" where marked in the attached diagram so you can actually fold the second side of the peak in. Turn it around to the right side and if none of this looks even and neat try it all again at the ironing board.

Step three:

• Pin the placket to the wrong side of the bottom of the sleeve so you are looking at two wrong side fabrics, this means the right side of the placket is facing the wrong side of the sleeve fabric.
• Pin a paper copy of the pattern on top of the placket lining up the marked cutting line in the centre of the stitching box with the little clip at the bottom of the sleeve.

Step four:

• Shorten your stitch length so you have smallish stitches and stitch around the stitching box.
• When this is done tear away the paper and cut up the centre of the box and right to the corners.

Step five:

• Turn the whole unit to the right side and press so the top of the box looks faced and square. If it is a little lumpy go back in a cut closer into the corners but don't stress about it - remember the placket part you see from the outside functions as a giant patch that covers all sins.

Step six:

• You now have a pointy big side to the placket and a thinner side, wrap the thin side around the stitching on one side of the box, just as far as you need to so as to cover that stitching and top stitch it down. Again don't fuss too much about the top it will also be covered up by the placket patch.

Step seven and the last one:

• Laying the whole thing in front of you fuss around with it with your hands until the placket part with the point covers what it has to and covers the part you just stitched up.
• When you have it the way you think a placket should look put in a few pins and stitch the folded under edge down, around the pointy part and back across horizontally. Go look at a shirt you have for a better idea of what you are trying to make this look like.
• You are done and it looks great.

Here below is my hand drawn pattern for a female sized sleeve placket. I have written in the directions for what to do with each marking so I won't get confused, which I often do when there are too many lines to figure out.

Note I don't actually make any of these markings, I just use the shape of the pattern to cut out the vents and the words and lines to remind me of how this goes together and what I am supposed to do.

Instead of marking I use photocopies of this drawing, or I trace off the outline shape and only the stitching box (cleverly marked with little stitches in this very home made drawing) and pin it to the placket and stitch through the paper in lieu of any more complicated markings.

The paper can then get torn off (easy if you use small stitches for stitching around the box), slashed, turned and the placket completed from the right side.

Pattern and instruction drawings for a sleeve placket below. Note this placket is fairly wide, it's one of several I have made up, but I thought it made the techniques easier to see. You might want to reduce this in width to suit your own taste, or use these methods with your own pattern piece:

Placket pattern and instruction sheet:

Placket pattern and instructions: