本帖最后由 八度火 于 2010-11-8 00:43 编辑
Happy Monday, everyone! I hope you had a lovely weekend. Today we're continuing onward with the construction of our white smocked baby dress.
There are (at least) two schools of thought when it comes to smocking and construction. My mother always pleated her fabric, smocked her design, and then did all the sewing. Perhaps it's those few years I spent sewing ready-to-smock clothing, but I prefer to get more of the sewing done up front, so that by the time I've finished the smocking, the outfit is nearly done, and just requires a few more strokes with the sewing machine.
And, since it's me doing the talking, we'll do it my way.
Front Waistline Seam:
First we'll cut a piece of piping the precise width of the bottom of the yoke piece:
My piping there is simply a piece of bias-cut fabric, cut twice as wide as my seam allowance, plus 1/4" to wrap around the cotton crochet yarn I've used inside. Since this is a straight seam, you could probably get away with using straight-grain piping, if you were into that type of thing, or if you had a plaid or striped fabric that demanded it.
Now, gently, gently, we'll baste the piping to the top edge of the pleated skirt:
How does one baste gently, gently, you might well wonder. Lighten the pressure foot pressure if you can, use a long stitch (a basting stitch, even), and go slowly here. We're trying not to crush the pleats all flat or spread them out like you can see I've done right in the middle there. (I took it out twice, begged the pleats to cooperate, and finally gave up and pinned my hopes on the smocking to tighten those pleats back up.) We're trying to get the pleats sewn to the piping as evenly as we can.
Now we'll baste the yoke piece on there, right side to the skirt right side:
Then we'll baste the yoke lining on there, right side to the skirt's wrong side:
And now that we've got everything for the yoke in place there, I'm going to sew it with an actual seam, at a respectable stitch length, but what I'm going to do is sew one seam, then flip the yoke upward and look at the piping. If it still looks too loose, I'll flip it back down and sew another seam a hair closer to the piping, until the piping looks tight and nice sticking out of the seam, thus:
Sleeves:
Now we'll sew up a couple of puffed sleeves:
Back:
A 3" continuous bound placket at the skirt center back:
And then we're going to put the back yokes on. Here's how that works. First we'll run two gathering rows, one at the waist seam line and the other halfway between there and the raw edge.
Now, if you remember, we cut the bodice backs on the fold, so that the bodice back and the bodice back lining are attached to each other. So, now we'll need to fold this bodice/lining piece in half and put a pin where it folds. Essentially this is the point where it changes from being bodice to being lining. You with me?
Okay, so now we need to pull up the gathering threads on half of the skirt back and pin it to the bodice back, thus:
Then we'll sew that, wrap the lining around and sew that:
See where we're going with this yet?
When we repeat that for the other side, and pull the bodice backs upward, we get this:
...a tidy waistline seam, encased between the lining and the bodice backs, and the back of the dress, ready to be sewn into the rest of the dress.
Now. We have the front ready to be smocked, the back ready and waiting, and the sleeves all cute and queued up. I suppose that means it's time to get my needles and floss and get some smocking done. I'm on it.
See you next time!
I did, in fact, take my needle and floss and smock across the front of the white voile baby dress, just as I said I would:
It reminds me, now, of green vines running all across a white fence. Which means, of course, that it's waiting for some flowers.
Here's what the front looks like so far:
Although that photo makes the smocking look black, almost. I assure you, it isn't.
Next time, the flowers!
Finally having finished the silk ribbon flowers on the white smocked baby dress, here it is: 
Now, I think that teaching smocking may be outside the scope of this website (and really, I'm an amateur, occasional smocker and unqualified to lead anybody anywhere) but I do have some recommendations. For fabulous books on silk ribbon embroidery and smocking (and many other lovely handsewing techniques), Australian Smocking and Embroidery's A-Z books can hardly be beat. This page from Creative Keepsakes gives a good primer on smocking. This article from Threads Magazine gives 5 basic silk ribbon embroidery stitches, enough to get you started. I've removed the gathering threads, and am ready to do the final construction that makes this little bit of fabric, thread, and ribbon into a dress worthy of a spring baby. Which we'll do next time. Until then,
Note: Carrots help with heartburn. Eating carrots and sewing a white dress do not mix.
Since we did all that sewing beforehand, now we're just a few swipes from being finished. Before we start, however, I want to point something out.
Observe:
Somehow, during my sewing, the yoke and yoke lining ceased to line up right. Now, I could take a seam ripper and take the lining off, then put it back on again, (which is probably what I should do, technically) but since it's only on one side I think I'll just trim it.
So, carefully, carefully, making sure I'm trimming both sides the same amount, I'll make that armhole edge even.
Shoulder Seams:
Now we'll sew the shoulder seams in the yoke and yoke back.
We'll press those shoulder seams open. The lining, as you see, is still hanging free.
Now we'll sew the lining shoulder seams, right sides together:
So that once we're finished, the shoulder seams are nice and tidy from the inside.
Neckline:
Now, back when we made the pattern, we added a seam allowance. This was because I thought we could sew the yoke and lining together at the neckline, like we did here. It became apparent to me as I worked through, though, that sewing that neckline seam and turning the yoke right side out with suuuch a tiny yoke would be impossible. So the only option really left to us is to bind the neckline. Which works fine, except we still have a 1/4" seam allowance at the neckline.
So, naturally, we'll need to take that out. The easiest way I've found to do something like this is to let the sewing machine do the measuring for you, by putting in a basting thread at the correct width:
And cutting along that line.
Then we'll baste the neckline again, this time to hold the two layers together while we bind them. We'll also cut a piece of fabric for the binding, on the bias, six times plus 1/4" or so as wide as we want the finished binding to be.
We'll fold that in half, wrong sides together, and press it.
There are (at least) two ways proceed from this point. If it's important that we maintain a stitchless appearance on the binding, as I would want on something heirloom-esque, we'd sew the binding to the right side, fold it around to the wrong side, and slipstitch it in place.
On this neckline, however, I'm doing it "backward".
First we'll sew it to the wrong side, matching those raw edges to the neckline raw edges and leaving the long ends hanging off at the center back:
Then, after pressing the binding toward the neckline, we'll fold it around to the front and pin it, so that the folded edge covers the stitching there:
It is possible that the seam allowance will need a little trimming, to make it easier to coax that binding around into the right place. The ends at the center back are trimmed just short enough to wrap around and fold underneath the binding, raw edges out of sight.
Then we'll sew very close to the folded edge, all the way around the binding:
Pressing the binding when we're all done makes it look sharp and finished.
I think we'll stop there for today, and finish all up on the white dress next time. Because I need to go find some carrots.
Wishing you a heartburn-free day, |
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发表于 2010-10-30 02:16:12
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来自： 广东惠州
发表于 2010-11-3 11:45:13
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来自： 浙江杭州
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There's a lot going on in this photo, so we'll take it slow here. 
八度 2级精华就要来了哦 加油
