Renew your clothes: Insert lace into the neckline

My challenge this month is to organise my wardrobe. It is too full and there are plenty of things I no longer wear. So my first step was to see if I could alter some of the garments to something I like. This week I picked some plain tops and matched them with lace inserts. I made a black crochet collar last year, but I never found anything to wear it with, so I thought I would use it as an insert for the top. I salvaged the lime lace insert from an old blouse which had ripped so many times that I could no longer repair it. At that time I thought I would at least save the lace as I planned to use it somewhere else (that was three years ago). So I finally did use it, and I am loving my new top!
So here is how I did it. For this quick alteration you will need a plain top, a lace insert, scissors, matching thread and needle (or sewing machine if you don’t want to be hand stitching it).

1. First you need to pin down the lace on to the garment where you want it (make sure you try it on to make sure it sits nicely). Stitch the lace insert on the outside edge (not inside edge). I hand stitched because I love doing it this was, but you are welcome to use sewing machine for this step!

2. Once the lace has been stitched on, you can cut away the neck leaving 1-2cm space from the stitched edge.

3. Finally finish off the edge. If you have been using sewing machine you could use a zigzag stitch (or overlocker if you have the overlocking machine). Since I have been hand stitching I have used button-hole stitch to finish off.

hope you found this simple alteration technique useful.
Have a lovely weekend!
Rasa 🙂