Saturday 16 October 2010

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).
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SAM_2286
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.
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I also trimmed the collar front width again, as I don't like it extending past the shoulder point.

SDC10007
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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.
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I am nearly happy with collar #4.
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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!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are cleverer than I, I just added a big wedge at the centre back. But yeah, more than the square shoulder adjustment.

BTW I did raise the armhole on mine.

The fitting on this coat is will-sapping though. You still haven't done sleeves even! It seems to be a really fiddly sort of coat. Or perhaps we are very picky?

Faye Lewis said...

When it comes to this coat, wrestling is a good analogy to use. I myself have been down for the count several times during this process. I do love that giant collar though as well as the ginormous lapel detail. I think they both add piazza to the coat that I'm wondering if I will ever finish at this point. I do however, admire the reduction work you performed on the collar.

katherine h said...

I'm impressed at your dedication to the fitting process.