Collar with stand

Thanks to the ladies who commented with suggestions on my last post. A cardigan it will be. And Vicky, I very much like your suggetion of a contrasting band, so I'll look for a matching fabric.

In the afternoon and evening I did have quite some time to sew and worked on my blouse. When working on the collar with stand I was thinking of a thread at Pattern Review: sewing goals for 2008. I don't have specific sewing goals at all, but tonight I thought "mastering the perfect collar with stand" could be one for me.
I've sewn quite a lot of these collars, but everytime it is taking me sooooo much time to complete it to my satisfaction. This one no exception. The first one was ripped off, the second must do.

I've tried Gigi's method the first time (link on the right side), but somehow managed to go wrong. Then I tried "perfect collar with stand in 10 minutes" in one of the sewing books I have (upstairs now, too lazy to find the title).
Well, 10 minutes seemed a very, very optimistic way of looking at it, and it was. The end result is not perfect anyway (my fault, not the instruction in the book). And I ended by doing it the "old" way, slipstitch one side of the collar band, which gave the best result in the end.

On the left a picture of how I always do the fusible interfacing: the interfacing is the pattern without seam allowances, and give a very accurate line to use for stitching.







I show you two pictures of my collar, on both sides. The left one is a little unsharp, but this is the one on which I handstitched the undercollar. The right one is "by the book".