When my husband and I were honeymooning in Italy, I bought three gorgeous white linen blouses from a little shop in Rome. More than 18 years later, I still have these blouses as a reminder of our wonderful trip and as a beautiful example of Italian handiwork.

When I was preparing a class on distinctive shirt details to present at the American Sewing Guild conference in 2018, I decided it would be fun to try to reverse-engineer the silk organza collar from one of my special Italian blouses. After several practice attempts, I developed a foolproof system for adding this feminine collar to a blouse. This process adds a width of fabric edging around a sheer organza collar. The two fabrics can be matching or contrasting, depending on the desired effect.

Maris Olsen is a teacher and sewer who loves to incorporate details from fashion she has seen into her sewing. SewMaris.com