Upcycle a shirt by sewing beads to the collar

OK, I’m a bit late on this bandwagon. There are already a gazillion gorgeous DIY shirt collars out there. If you type DIY collars into your search bar, plenty images come up. But, I like embellished collars and I’ve been meaning to make a beaded shirt collar, so here’s my attempt.

Beaded shirt collar

you type –

What you need for this DIY

My first bit of advice is to rather hand-sew the beads onto the collar as opposed to glueing them. I’m really not a fan of using glue on clothing that you would normally put in your washing machine. It means you have to dry clean your clothing as the glue will disintegrate if immersed in water. You can read more about why I don’t do dry cleaning – here – and – here.

If sewing tiny beads onto your shirt seems too much like hard work, then sew less of them like in my DIY.

Right, I took a basic white shirt and using a ruler lightly made a small dot with a pencil every 10 millimetres along the edge of the collar. You could space the dots slightly wider apart and make two or three rows of dots.

Marking the place to sew your beads

Next I sewed wooden beads onto the dots using matching colour thread. And that was all there was to do.

The fun part is picking your beads. So think pearls, metallic, wooden or even neon coloured beads. I wouldn’t go too large with the beads as the shirt may be difficult to iron. You could vary the size or colour of the beads and create a gradient effect.

To see how I added collar tips to two other shirts, visit the Greenie Galleries by scrolling to the top of the page.


You’re welcome to share your tips and ideas on the Greenie facebook page. Or just give the Greenie facebook page a ‘like’ if you support eco fashion.

Until next week!