Step 4 In Avoiding Heat Stroke: The Forest Smock So Far
Project Specs:
Fabric used: 3.5 oz linen from Fabrics-Store.com in the color Bleached. This is hands down my go-to lightweight linen. 2.5 yards, and then some.
Blackwork on collar and cuffs. Scale: 1/14th of an inch.
Patterns used: the Motif Smock, ish
First event attended: TBD.
The finalized neckline embroidery.
When I was thinking about the Motif Smock, I went to my go-to source for the cuffs- The Art of English Blackwork. In that process I stumbled on a few patterns I really loved (to no one's surprise) but they didn't fit with the Motif Smock's neckline. Habitually, I prefer nature-inspired patterns, but that regularly becomes "Marion only ever works on flowers." This gets boring so I wanted to try something that would break the mold a little.
As said in previous posts, I struggle with transferring my embroidery patterns, especially when they have to line up to something like a neckline. I wanted to go back to period practice as much as was possible for this smock for that process. This turned into a LOT of test rounds.
So. Many. Testers.
On the left hand, we have pricking and pouncing that actually went shockingly well. The neckline pattern is very intuitive for the process once you figure out where the baselines are. The cuffs, on the other hand, are much more challenging. I had to do those in layers of pouncing, and they just didn't line up in a way I was happy with. But the major challenge that doing this revealed is that the corners for the neckline as I designed them are great origin points for the pattern but they do not work as an insertion point. I tested 7 different options, all with pricking and pouncing, and chose the one I thought fit best.
And then I tried to line it up on the neckline and everything fell to pieces. Nothing lined up the way I wanted it to, and it was just a disaster. So much so that I had to scrap the body piece I had cut initially. It turned into scrap linen for more testing and for other projects. The right-hand tester is the result of transferring on the light table as with Sofiya's birthday goblet cover. It's much neater and lines up better, but still not perfect.
To scale drawing of the neckline to be used with the light table for transfer.
Ultimately, I made the decision to try a large slate frame that would allow me to do the whole neckline at once, using the light table to transfer the whole pattern at once. To do this, I used my usual sketches on 1/14" graph paper and then lined them up in segments on a large pad of tracing paper. This let me adjust spacing make sure all the corners ended up exactly where they needed to be. Each corner has something small that was fudged a little to make it work, but it's so minuscule that only I notice it.
Once the pattern was transferred, I did the embroidery and then added a facing to the neckline. This is different than my usual methods- normally I cut out and hem the neckline, fully construct the smock, THEN I do the embroidery. I think working flat, with the added tension from the slate frame helped to line up the pattern and avoid the inconsistencies I see with the flapping edges from the already hemmed neckline. The choice of the facing is to protect the embroidery, which I started and finished without knots, to try to get a flatter result.
And figuring out this only took me five weeks and one entirely ruined body piece. To add insult to injury, I miscalculated and only bought 2 extra yards of fabric when I should have purchased 3, so the body piece is much shorter than it needs to be and I have to add length to the center block to make it as long as I want to.
I decided to do the embroidery as part of the online Revenge of the Stitch events. Revenge of the Stitch is normally an in-person event, during which teams of people sew an outfit in 24 hours. Online, we're working on our own and have 48 hours, but the point is to encourage regular stitching and sharing and I'm all for that. The fact that it coincided with a 3 day weekend for Shavuot didn't hurt.
Going forward, I'm modeling the pattern somewhat off the Motif Smock. These smocks are comfortable, versatile, and I'm very happy with them. One major difference is that the neckline for this smock is narrower (shoulder to shoulder) than the Motif smock. I think this is ultimately going to help me get a better fit into the shoulders by moving the shoulder seams further up.
