Lady Grey. That's a lot of collar

My next exciting fitting venture was to wrestle with the Lady Grey Collar. The collar is a real feature of the coat, being oversized and dramatic. I am not quite that dramatic, so had already trimmed the collar down a little (and the lapels). I had also already added a wedge, 3cm at the widest point, over each shoulder, to match my square shoulder adjustment.
I was not happy with the collar in its first trial appearance. (I know, it is a bit crooked, but I managed to ignore that).


As Katherine pointed out in the comments on the last post, if you have a big collar, you need a bigger adjustment than your plain old square shoulder addition. I had forgotten this, and added just enough for a standard collar, with predictable results.
Back to the drawing board. I adjusted the pattern piece further in a cheating fashion, by just adding the extra wedge to the front of the collar.

I also trimmed the collar front width again, as I don't like it extending past the shoulder point.



Collar #3 fits better, but has an unfortunate droopy look at the collar points, as I had straightened out the angle of the collar front quite a bit. I decided I had changed the shape of the collar too much, and removed an inch from the collar fronts, tapering to the neckline, to bring the collar points back up towards the shoulder rather than over the chest, and recut my original shoulder wedges, adding another 1.5cm to each wedge.

I am nearly happy with collar #4.

It might need a bit more off the front, and the pattern piece does not allow for turn of cloth, so I will trim a bit from the under collar. Progress!