Adding a collar/border to a v neck cardigan

I am disgusted with my 3 attempts to finish off a v neck cardigan with a nice collar/border. I am picking up stitches around the front sides and back neck and it seems there is no problem with tension (nor number of picked up stitches) but the shape of the v front is not maintained with the collar knitted as one continuous border. Is there a way to knit the collar in two pieces on a raglan style cardigan? Or perhaps is there a way to knit the continuous border at the same time as the body of the sweater?

I just looked in my Vogue Knitting Book (a how to book). It shows a V-neck cardigan with a basic k1, p1 type border. It just says you can do the front button bands and the edge of the neck all as one continuous piece (or two pieces and sew a seam at the back neck). Maybe that is what you have been trying to do.

I don’t know if that is of any help.

I can see that if the vee was not quite pronounced that adding the border would deminish the vee so that it would not be what you intended. You kind of need to make the vee an extra 3/4 to 1" (or whatever) deeper so that when you add on the border it will fall where you had envisioned it.

I am just a beginner knitter, but I knit a Wallaby and they had an option to add a collar instead of a hood. That is what I wanted,
They had me go back and do increases to the back edge of the neck opening and then I knit a 2" garter stitch collar flap. the collar turned out real nice, lays nice. I think this sweater has what may be called a placket V front.
If that helps at all.

Thanks for the reply. I think I have a combination of problems to work out to get it right! Each time I undo my work I learn something new!