Our family always enjoys dressing up for All Saints’ Day with our co-op friends. This year, Jim dressed as St. John Vianney. He obviously needed a clerical collar, so I whipped out one quickly for using felt, elastic, and a few straight stitches on my sewing machine. This was so easy, I feel silly doing a tutorial on it, but I thought some of you would find it helpful.
A friend of ours made a clerical collar using construction paper, which is actually a lot easier! But this version is a little sturdier and I’m hoping it can be used year to year.
Clerical Collar Tutorial:
1. Cut two long rectangles of black felt (approx. 11 inches by 1.5 inches-you’ll need bigger for an adult) and a square of white felt (approx. 1.5 inches by 1.5 inches).
2. Do a loose measurement with elastic around your child’s neck and cut the piece to fit. You want the collar to be fitted but not tight. It also needs to fit over your child’s head. Allow some extra elastic so it can be overlapped and stitched together. For my 8 year old boy the elastic was approx. 12.5 inches long. I used 1/2 inch wide elastic.
3. Lay the two black felt pieces on top of each other and pin the white square in the very middle.
4. Sew a straight line across the one long edge of the 3 felt pieces.
5. Sew the ends of the elastic together backstitching several times. You should now have a circle of elastic-make sure it isn’t twisted.
6. Sandwich the elastic in between the felt pieces and sew a straight line across the remaining long edge of felt, carefully rearranging the elastic in between as you work your way around. (You are basically making a tube with your felt that the elastic sits inside.)
7. Voila! A priest collar that can be used for many All Saints’ Day costumes to come! Wear with a black shirt.
Told you that was easy!
Want to see what else we wore for All Saints’ Day costumes? Here are 16 simple ways you can celebrate the day with your kiddos!
