Smocking a Shepherd's Shirt- Part 11 The End!

 Okay, so last time we left off the neck had been completed and the sleeves were next up.

Okay, so the sleeves have a couple of fun challenges, namely the gusset I've never done before and have no instructions for and the fact that my pleats are double the width they should be.

I'm not gonna lie, the gusset involved a lot of staring at the fabric wondering. What I decided to do seems to have worked out, so let's look at that. I knew one side of the square was supposed to be along the side of the sleeve and another side was supposed to be at the shoulder seam. A gusset usually has a diamond-like shape so the diagonal should be in the armpit. Or to put that another way the hypotenuse of the right triangle formed by the sides at the sleeve seam and the shoulder seam should be in the armpit. That leaves two sides of the square I have to put somewhere. Since I was trying to ensure I sewed the correct sides to the correct places, I decided to create the right placement with pins. You can see my thought process here.

Great! Now I can see that this triangle flap is going counter-intuitively towards the shoulder. I still feel this is a little strange, so I left this pinned on my cutting table as a reference while I sewed the other sleeve.


Here you can see one sleeve and gusset attached to the torso of the garment.

By the way, I'm still nervous that that gusset is going to provide enough ease in the armpit but what's one more concern about this garment? (Face palm!)

Okay, so super wide pleats resolution- I folded them to each side of the center and sewed them down. I think it's an obvious solution, but if you've made it this far, you should get to see the resolution!! :D

 Here's how the sleeve looks on the outside. It's kinda pretty!

At this point I got distracted by the pleats. I could see all the lines from my gathering prep and I kinda liked it.

Then I got distracted by how soft and pleasant they feel!


Okay, stay focused! So close!! So close!! Here's the garment with both sleeves attached but not actually sleeves yet.

Okay gusset time- it's like hammer time but less fun! Duh... nuh nuh nuh... nuh nuh... nuh nuh

Okay! Sleeves and sides sewn together- it's time to add some cuff and hem the bottom. I apparently didn't stop to take any pictures of these steps so here's the nearly completed garment. Only buttons are missing. And is abundantly obvious it is baggy in all the wrong places!
 

After putting it on and pondering the buttons, I decided that if I were ever to wear it, the openings would never be unbuttoned, but was I going to wear it? It's actually kind of comfortable, so I sewed the neck closed and found I kinda liked it but not to wear in public!!! So no buttons on the cuffs... I'm calling it!