Collar Pattern & Fitting, Part 2

I worked on the collar pattern a little more, and I'm much happier with it now. I did take it into work for pattern help - I wasn't sure if the problem was the neckline or the collar, and I didn't want to waste time "fixing" the wrong thing. Turns out the major culprit was the collar - much easier to fix.

To review, here's the collar in the 1st Fitting:

1st Collar Mockup - Collar is pulling away at the neckline seam where it meets the Lapel

Collar Pattern after 1st Mockup - Darker Line shows the refined Point

So here's the fix - the collar needs to curve up more along the neckline seam. Because the collar seamline was too straight, it was tugging in an odd direction. I decided to curve the neckline up about 1" higher than it was before (1" was just an educated guess).

I traced the straight-ish back neckline edge with no changes, marked the new point I was aiming to curve up to, and slashed the collar from edge to the neckline (at one point I thought this was all wrong and threw away the process pattern, so no pics...but I'll do some if anyone ever asks). Keeping the front neck seamline the same length (bottom edge), I curved it up into my new shape. But! By overlapping the outer edge to make the new curved shape, the pattern became too tight on the outer edge, which was the same problem I had with my very first collar draft. GOING IN CIRCLES!! So I laid the pattern back out flat, and traced that top edge in the shape it wanted to be - but it's now longer than my original CB line, so I had to change the angle of the CB seam.

Collar After Correction - Neckline edge is more curved (bottom edge), Point remains the same

 The collar pattern looks completely different from any of the examples I've been looking at (thus the trashed collar pattern mentioned above). But I decided to give it a shot and stitch it onto my mockup - VICTORY!! Now the collar lays much more nicely where it joins the lapel. (Okay, I have to take out a smidge from CB, but you can't really tell here.) If I ever make another coat from this pattern, I'll want to rework this area, but I think it's time to call it good enough and MOVE ON. :)

Corrected Collar Mockup - Note the smooth roll where the lapel and collar meet

Collar Pattern & Fitting, Part 1

With all these options, it seems like it should be easy enough to make up some sort of collar, right? Well hopefully for you it's easier than it was for me...for the last couple weeks I've been struggling to get my collar to fit and lay right. 

Remember how I changed the front neckline in the first fitting, and the neckline curve became a tighter circle? Because the neckline shape changed, I decided to scrap the collar I scaled up from the Tidens Toej pattern and draft a new one using Men's Garments 1830-1900. This book has been extremely helpful to me so far, but that version of the draft didn't work because the neckline is so much tighter...the inner edge is so tightly curved, that the outer edge became too tight.

Original Collar draft - probably should have stuck to this version!

Drafted Collar, Slashed and Spread to open up the outer curve

I was just hoping that my new collar would be big enough, and I planned to tweak it significantly in the next fitting. The shape of that outer edge is really ugly!

It turns out, I over-spread the collar draft a little bit, so I'm taking about 1" out of the center back collar. We also shaped the collar to be a little more narrow at the front - it's on the smaller side for the period, but not quite as small as the original inspiration portrait. I kind of insisted on having the "M" shaped collar point - I don't think Chris cares for it much, but to me it's a really cool feature of the period that I didn't want to leave out.

One part I'm still struggling with is getting the collar to roll correctly at the front collar/lapel - you can see it pulling away from Chris's neck where I've got it marked with a pin on one side. I think it's the neckline shape that's the problem, not the sewing. I'm going to ask a patternmaker at work for help, and I'll post the correction here.

BTW, taking pictures when we fit has been really helpful to refer back to when working on the pattern. That way I don't have to ask him to put it back on every 5 minutes!

Viewer's Left: Unshaped Collar as drafted
Viewer's Right: Collar is trimmed and "M" Point defined

Viewer's Left: Collar Trimmed
Viewer's RIght: Unshaped Collar

Crazy Regency Collars!

There is a great variety of collars in Regency era coats, and I think it's an opportunity for the wearer to express his personality. For civilian coats, the collar should be wide and turnback, but there are a great many choices of collar shape, point shape, and even fabric.

Here is a sampling of coats, mostly from the Victoria & Albert museum collection. Note the variety of collar options! 

French Tailcoat c.1800
High Turndown Collar & Wide Revers/Lapels

Hunting Coat c.1815
Wide Self Fabric Collar with "M" Shape

Velvet Collar with Peak Lapel

Self Fabric Collar c.1815

Detail of "Thrush's Tongue" or "Lark's Tongue" Collar from above coat

Searching museum collections online is relatively new for me - I've only spent a little time looking at the V&A, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a couple others. If you have a favorite collection or search method, please share!