Smocking a Shepherd's Shirt- Part 4

Okay, so I followed Girls Own's lead and gathered up the sleeve to form the "reeds" (Ms. Armes's terminology). Speaking of Ms. Armes, she is rather insistent on eyeballing the process. She states, "None of the old skilful smockers used dots for they soon acquired the knack of gathering straight 'by eye,' and once the habit is acquired it is a much quicker and infinitely superior method." She makes, I think, a good point about the challenges of using an iron-on transfer method, especially given her booklet was published in 1930. She writes, "The use of transfers is to be condemned, for they are seldom evenly printed, and it is exceedingly difficult to iron them on to the material on line with the thread and if the gathering threads do not follow the thread of the material, the smock will hang crooked."

I, however, opted to consult one of my mom's smocking books before I attempted the gathering. The booklet that I used is called Ellen McCarn on English Smocking published in 1986.  Ellen McCarn is a proponent of the pleater which I would have used if I had one. She also is a proponent of the iron-on dots method, though I saw no indication that her book came with any! She gave some advice I found helpful.

1.  Use a long needle. I used a milliners needle.
2. Cut the thread 8" longer than the width being pleated.
3. Knot the end so that it doesn't accidentally come out.
4. Stitch under the dots and over the spaces keeping the needle and thread horizontal. 
5. Once all the threads are in place, pull the unknotted side so that the tubing is formed (though she didn't use that word).
6. Tie off the ends so that everything is nicely gathered.

Interestingly, Ms. Armes didn't do dots but rather dashes.

 

I wasn't really sure what to do, so I did a hybrid of the two. I stitched under the spaces and over the dashes. But before I did any stitching I took my frixon pen and drew lines on the fabric. I figured even if I had the white lines that sometimes show up, I was going to be fine with it.

 

Ms. McCarn said to start 1/2" below the top of the fabric and to gather an inch more than you were planning on smocking. Not knowing how long the sleeve smocking should be I did it 4.5 inches- well 6 inches because of Ms. McCarn's 1.5" extra. And let me tell you this was tedious! I think this is the real reason skillful smockers eyeballed it!

 

The next step was threading the fabric which I found enjoyable.

I ironed it here and you can see I have some white lines but this is supposed to be the inside of the sleeve so okay...

Here you can see it gathered which was super easy!! But boy howdy does it seem like I gathered too much! I think I'm stuck doing too much for the other sleeve too because I don't think I want that kind of asymmetry... Yikes!

I'm a little nervous about the space in the armpits... I hope that gusset provides enough give! I hate not having dimensions or proportions for this tubing creation. Sigh...