Undercollars Part 2 - Grain

Collars fold and curl and turn, so it makes sense that they should be cut on the most supple, malleable "grain," bias. This may not be quite as crucial as the shape and size of under collars, but the two techniques together do make for a beautifully curling, smooth, faultless collar.

Just to review, here is a comparison of the two collar pieces of Vogue 7467, a suit jacket pattern.As noted yesterday, the under collar piece (here, the lower piece) is smaller in size at the edges (not the neckline.) Note now it also has a center back seam, and a bias-oriented grain arrow. Let's re-draw the grain arrow. When you're drafting the under collar piece yourself it's easier to draw that grain arrow as a 45° line from the CB seamline. Remember, the grain of the upper collar runs along the CB. We want the under collar to be exactly bias to the upper, or 45° off. I've drawn in a new grain line with green marker. My grain line is perpendicular to the pattern's given grain line...that's OK, because we'll be cutting two under collar pieces and they'll be perpendicular to each other anyway.

Early on in my sewing life I must've read that bias under collars were a good thing....but hadn't read yet about creating smaller under collar patterns. So, in making the little fleece and corduroy jacket I'm about to show you, I diligently cut a bias under collar. But I cut it with the upper collar pattern piece, and on a fold. In other words, I cut it on a bias fold (thinking myself Oh So Clever), like this:Well, here are the less than ideal results. Firstly, can you see all the bunching of the corduroy under collar? There is too much fabric b/c I used the upper collar pattern to cut it. Second, and this is what's most important today...look at the grain of the corduroy and keeping in mind that the wales of corduroy represent the lengthwise grain....can you see that the lengthwise grain runs into one collar tip, and across the other collar tip? In other words, both collar tips are cut on bias, but one tip is "dominated" by the lengthwise grain, and the other is "dominated" by the crosswise grain. And b/c lengthwise and crosswise grains are so different, the collar tips will behave quite differently. (In this case one tip will curl up in a more pronounced way than the other since the under collar is too big in the first place.)This is why anytime you cut something with a bias orientation the bias must be balanced. And *that* is why we've added the CB seam.

In order to mirror the under collar pieces you must cut them on a single layer of fabric, flipping the pattern perpendicular for the second piece. Like this:
first piece:second piece:or, alternatively if you create two under collar pattern pieces the layout it will look like this:When sewn, this mirroring effect will create a nifty chevron effect on plaids or stripes at the CB under collar, like this:There are umpteen ways to construct collars and I'm not prepared to go into those now. But one thing is constant for me....understitching the under collar. It may be done with invisible hand-stitches, prick stitches, machine straight stitching, or even, in the case of heavy spongy wools, zigzagging, but it is the icing of the cake of collars!

p.s. I finally noticed that "upper collar" and "under collar" are not compound words! I hope you'll forgive me if I don't go back over the past 6 months of posts and correct them all...