Smocking a Shepherd's Shirt- Part 8

 Okay, so work got in the way and I hadn't been able to do anything for awhile. But I'm back, baby!

I needed to finish embroidering the front and back before I started making the reeds/tubing/pleats/gathers. I also had the neck opening calculations to do. That has been a bit of a conundrum for me. My friend Torey- hi Torey!- had a great suggestion which was to measure the circumference of my head and then compare that to the opening that would be available in the garment as is. I have no idea if that makes any sense! 

Here's a picture of the garment to be made. I've put the front and back down with the shoulder straps separating them to show the neckline. The sleeve and gusset are just extra! Since this is sans smocking, it's unclear how large the neck opening will be..

 

Well, that doesn't help so then I thought I'll "gather" the fabric up into what I think the smocked size will be. Here's a picture of that. (I figured the neck opening would be obvious and there was no need to "gather" both sides.)

Well, that done I measured away! And dontcha know, it's gobs and gobs of room! So I either have no problem or I have a problem. I think I won't know until I actually smock the front and/or back. Fun!

Well, all righty! Onto the fun of marking the fabric. One thing I was really worried about was remembering to mark the backside of the fabric since that's the side that gets gathered. That, as it turns out, was fine. 

 

The thing that was not fine as the going under the dots and over the spaces. It sounded easy and it sort of was. What was hard was being consistent as to how much under I went. Right so look at my grid- just go under the intersection! Easy peasy! But is it? How many strands of thread on each side of the intersection? What can I do every time??? I have 1,064 "dots"! Well, it wasn't tedious on the sleeves when my under was dashes, but it's tedious now! I can see why you would want to do this on something with a big easy to see weave like coarse linen!! I get it now in a way I didn't before.

And by the way, the frixion pen manufacturer's recently put out a thing (according to one of my Facebook embroidery groups) that light is what causes the white line after heat removes the ink, so those will definitely be visible because I need the light if I've any hope of precision and consistency! 

It's not the backside you say! Yep, but the ends have these little blobs because of the way I apparently just leave the pen there after I complete a line so that'll be visible all the way through! Oh well!

 

Here's the threaded grid of the front/back piece.

 

Here it is gathered!

 

I thought the back side might be interesting so here's that.

Of course now it's time to look at that neck opening!! Cat for scale (or because the only time she likes to be photographed is if I'm not trying to photograph her!!).

My head measured 29" in circumference so when I measured the neck opening and found that it was 22" I figured I have to do 4 to 5 inches of opening in the front and back. I haven't worked out exactly how I'm going to embroider around that since it's gathered. Problem for another day I guess!