Bluebird of Happiness - Coat - Part XXXII

Collar - Inside Details

Thank you all regarding the ties! It is very difficult to make a design change, think you have it all figured out and then find out things are not going to work properly. Those are the moments where there are many doubts and questions. Such as: Why am I doing this? Why did I even begin this project? What was I thinking?!? and How am I going to fix this? Moving forward and seeking a solution is the right answer, but it is hard not to get tangled up with the emotion of the moment.

So, moving forward, the collar must be attached to the coat! That actually was the easy part.

First, the collar must be supported properly and the roll line established. What is really nice about this pattern is that the roll line is printed on the pattern piece. This is something I really wish the Big 4 would do more often these days. It is difficult to establish a proper roll line unless you have a little experience. I do enjoy using BWOF and other foreign patterns because they do print the roll lines. This is important when building the under layers of interfacings and other things that will support the chosen design. Here's the pattern, you can see the roll line, we'll take a look at what I did with it later in this post:

Because I had changed the collar to a slightly larger size, added a lot of beading and added ties, I needed more support than a medium weight interfacing would supply. I turned to that old favorite of tailoring, hair canvas. I've use a fusible hair canvas and cut it to the shape of the collar and then fused it to the underlining (which is muslin) of the undercollar. I did not want to fuse it to the silk at all. I did not do the pad stitching, since it was a fusible and because I did not want the collar super stiff. I wanted a softer sort of roll of the collar.

To reduce bulk at the center back of the under collar, I overlapped the hair canvas and center back along the seam line and stitched along the penciled line you see below and trimmed close to the line. This is better than stitching the seam and then pressing it open for reducing bulk.


I did not use any fusible or hand stitched tape inside the collar at the roll line, although now that I'm thinking about it, I should have. Oh well, next time, maybe I'll do that! I did make one line of stitching through all three layers (silk, hair canvas, and muslin) on the roll line. I've seen this done on shirts and jackets that do not have a separate collar stand to help establish the roll line. This line of stitching will also help me to keep that roll line nice when touching up the ensemble between wearings and showings.

After carefully shaping and steaming, I had the collar you saw yesterday on the the dress form (scroll down to yesterday's post for the picture.)

Now for the actual attaching! Because of the way the border is attached, the ties ends and all the layers I'm trying to attach together and finish all at the same time - that's a lot to think about isn't it? - I wanted one technique to tie all this together and look neat at the same time. I know that is a lot to ask, but it is possible! The solution? Binding.

I pinned the collar to the coat, with the wrong side of the collar to the right side of the coat - as if it were finished, and then pinned the binding on top of that. One seam joined all the layers, and I stitched another line of stitching 1/8" away just for security. Grading and trimming was the next task, and is very important in this type of situation. For the coat body, there was a quilted layer, plus the lining and underlining which was joined to a collar that had a layer of quilting, plus an undercollar of silk, hair canvas and muslin - grading is a must with all these layers! This brings me to a little side comment - now do you see why I use tulle as a backing and a split layer of batting for my quilting when doing garments? All those layers add up quick, even when using split layers of batting and tulle. In the photo below, you can sort of see how many layers there are, and yes those seam allowances are also trimmed on the diagonal at the intersections.

The binding was then turned down over the seam allowances and hand stitched to the lining or border.

Neat, clean and finished! Not only is the collar finished, but also the edge of the border than extends beyond the collar is finished, too.


What is left for the coat? Well, not much! I need to do the closures, inside details and label and that is it for the coat. The dress, unfortunately, needs a lot more work.

Parting Shot: Surprise. When I got home today, I found a little box in my mailbox, which contained the items below (minus the chocolate, the children and I made quick work of that!). It is a little thank you gift from the founders of MQX, and was a unexpected little bit of sunshine in my day! Notice that the bright yellow mug was wrapped in batting to protect it for shipping - very clever and not surprising since these ladies are big names in quilting! Thank you, MQX!