Smocking a Shepherd's Shirt- Part 5

 

And the adventure continues!!!

So for all of Alice Armes's helpful instruction, I can't help but feel I need a little more than she gave me/the world. With that I found myself diving into my mom's books again. From Dianne Durand's Smocking Technique, Projects and Design published in 1979 I learned that we should remove the gathering threads after we have embroidered it, which was quite a relief! I was quite pleased with my "tubing" until I learned it was the wrong side of the garment. For some reason (clearly inexperience is the culprit!) the pleats weren't as nice on the right side. Oh, sigh! It was also a relief because it seemed like I had pleated too much lengthwise of the sleeve.

It was late enough in the day yesterday that I only gathered the pleats on the sleeves, but later in the evening I decided I would embroider the sleeves. 

Just a side note about nomenclature... I really feel inclined to call the process of gathering the pleats smocking and I also want to call the process of putting embroidery on said pleats/gathers smocking. So while I'm not confused as to what I'm calling what, I feel it's quite a bit muddled-sounding. All this is to say, I'm trying to be clear, just not sure I'm succeeding! Sorry!

I have a default setting of 3 strand for embroidery unless there's some obvious reason not to, so I was quite validated by Ellen McCarn's assertion that 3 strands was good for normal embroidery. Incidentally, she said use a #8 needle for 3 strands. 

 

Additionally, she recommended that you cut enough floss to complete your embroidery but that the guidelines are between 15 and 24 inches. Shorter and you might not have enough and longer your floss is going to be pretty thin before you're finished.

Based on the little bit of embroidering on smocking I did before this, I would say, yes you really don't want to find you don't have enough floss! Stopping midrow sucks! Best to avoid it if possible!

Armed with my DMC 4 floss because it matched my fabric so well, I sat down to embroider. Well, that was hard. Despite having gathered up 6 inches of fabric, the tubing is only 1/4" wide. I'm sure any experts out there are like, "Oh yes, clearly you..." But this is the boat I find myself in... So with so little smocking experience I found making a pattern in the smocking deeply challenging. I kept trying, figuring experience will help me the most... Then I decided I'd do a little feather stitch on either side of the tubing and discovered I'm so not used to being hoopless. Yikes!

 

So even with hours spent attempting to embroider on my smocked sleeves, I only got most of one sleeve embroidered! Gotta laugh! All my lofty plans are falling by the wayside and I still don't know if I'll actually have a garment I'll want to wear, let alone in public!!