Detached collars are really useful in lolita, especially when you're looking for offbrand blouses. The rounded collar isn't exactly easy to find in normie blouses at goodwill, so having a separate piece that you can use to convert an incorrect collar into something style-acceptable is very useful. You can convert a square neckline, pointed collar, or standing collar into a rounded one. You can use a more expensive fabric or add a small amount of expensive lace onto the collar and then be able to bring that quality detail into multiple blouses.
ap | aatp | vm | vm | vm | ap | etc
Lolita brands often refer to the detached collar as a tippet, which is a good search term for when you're looking for references, but these aren't what mainstream fashion would consider a tippet.
These are generally considered a "one size fits all" sort of thing. However, as we're all aware, one size does not, in fact, do that. So, instead of just giving a generic pattern for this, we're going to draft our own pattern from the neckline of a blouse that you already like the fit of. This uses the same technique as the Technically Wrong But Looks Good and is Easy Collar Tutorial that I already did, but starting with a finished garment instead of with a pattern.
(blurry pic count +1)
If you were starting with the pattern, what you'd do is line the front and back pieces up at the collar, and overlap the shoulder point by 1"-4", depending on the style you want for your collar.
So, grab a blouse that you like the collar fit on, and trace that collar onto a piece of paper.
Make sure that you have the collar stretched so that it's as curved as the shirt will let it be. You don't want it to be straightened out, or you'll get the wrong shape.
Trace the section from the center front of the shirt all the way to the center back. Make a mark where the shoulder seam of the shirt is. You should end up with something that looks like my tracing on the right.
Under the jump we have the full process of drafting the pattern.
Using a tape measure or a random piece of string you found on the floor, measure the distance from your neck to your shoulder point.
If you're not familiar with where your shoulder point is, there's a bone there to guide you. This is where, on a standard-fitting shirt, your shoulder seam is.
Mark your collar width along the mark where you put the shoulder seam. Mark that width out on the top and the bottom of the curve, too. The little squares in my draft there indicate that that corner has to be a perfectly square, right-angle corner. You don't want any slanting angles, so make sure that it makes a perfect corner from where the specific part of the curve it connects to is.
Cut out your piece. Match the curve of the collar (the part you traced) perfectly, but leave yourself a lot of extra room on the other sides. You'll trim that later. Don't cut all the way through the curve of the collar. Leave a little piece of paper there to act like a hinge.
Remember that picture way up to about overlapping the shoulder point? That's what we're doing now.
TPicture 1: Overlap the two pieces so that the overlap is 4" at the shoulder point.
Picture 2: Mark where that overlap is on both sides of the overlap. Label that "tall". This is the curve you want to use if you want a collar that stands up 1" from the neck.
Picture 3: This was where my little paper hinge broke and I had to add tape. I suggest you start this process out by putting tape on the hinge.
Picture 4: Repeat the process, overlapping 2" and labeling that point "Medium." Overlap by 1" and label that "flat."
You now have a template that will tell you the proper shape for a detachable collar, with a variety of stand heights. The next time you want to make a detachable collar, you don't need to trace a shirt; you can just trace this template.
So, label that something that you won't accidentally throw out in eight months when you clean your sewing room (^^;), and then let's go ahead and test it out.
Here's Helen Joseph-Armstrong (no relation to Green Day)'s render of the different collar heights. This process we're using is adapted from her book Patternmaking for Fashion Design. The front of your collar can be any shape, but it will have to meet up with the back of the collar at the shoulder.
When you're making a flat collar, you can make it any width that you want. If you're making a collar that has a stand, you need to have it be the width from your neck to your shoulder. If it's wider, it will buckle or fold because there's too much fabric for the space. If it's more narrow, it won't be long enough to reach your shoulder, and instead of a collar, you'd have little neck wings.
For a collar with a 1" stand (tall mark), you want the collar to be 2+1/2″ wide. For a 1/2" stand (medium mark), you want 3+1/8″. It's helpful to mark those down on your collar curve template that you just did so much work to make.
We're making a fur collar, which means we want a flat collar. If we did a rolled collar/standing collar with fur, we'd have the furry part of the roll in the collar touching our necks the whole time. Some people might find that enjoyable, but I'm not one of them.
So here's our template, overlapped at the 1" mark. Because of the way these things work, we have a little point up at where the shoulder is. If you're doing the 4" overlap, you'll have quite a prominent point there.
Either way, just blend it out. Eyeball where the curve would go if the point wasn't there, and redraw the curve without the point.
Since collars are symmetrical (hopefully), we’ve only been drafting half of it. On the part of your collar that will be the center back, draw a line down that is the width you want your collar to be.
In this example, the center front of the collar is at the top left of the line, and the center back is at the bottom right.
You can make the front of your collar any shape, but this shape here is my current favorite for this. It curves slightly away from the center front line, and is just a nice gentle swoop.
Since we’re making a flat collar, we could add any shape onto the collar. For example, BtSSB likes to make collars with bear or bunny ears in the back. You could add this now.
Due to the fact that people move their necks, you have to do just a little bit of adjusting for comfort. Add 1/4″ at the top of the center back, making the collar a bit wider and taller at that point. Mark 1/2″ down at the center front, giving the wearer more room to move their head. Then, draw in a new curve that account for this.
So tumblr apparently has a cap on number of pictures in a post (got around it by turning off the beta text editor, but I’m sure they’ll catch me one of these days), so I’m going to split this tutorial here and get to work on the how to sew a detached collar on another post so that I can appease the gods of the arbitrary decisions that is the governing body of tumblr dot com
There will be a link to the next part of the tutorial right here when I finish it.
(Let’s hope that this doesn’t mean I have to move tutorial posts off this blog and onto another platform. I really don’t want to do that)
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