Tag: smocking

Smocked and embroidered shirt.

Embroidered & smocked shirt

This is what I’m wearing today – a smocked and embroidered shirt.

It started life one of Paul’s old work shirts. It’s in perfectly good condition, it just doesn’t fit him any more. So I’ve smocked the sleeves and a bit on the back, and embroidered the button stand and collar.

I did this to see whether it would work as a project that could be taught in a workshop – how to revamp an old shirt with some simple decorative needlework. Unfortunately this was such a nuisance to make that I think the answer is no! There’s a reason why the smocking and embroidery is always done before you assemble your garment – it’s much too fiddly to try and do it afterwards.

On the plus side, I’ve gained a pretty addition to my wardrobe, and have every intention of wearing this with my huge floppy trousers. Also, it tells me that smocked and embroidered shirts made from scratch are definitely in my sewing future!

Smocking Sampler – part one

First attempt at smocking

Yesterday evening I did some smocking.

From top to bottom:
Cable, Stem, Honeycomb, Surface Honeycomb and Van Dyke stitches. 

Ta-daaa!

Tonight’s endeavour is going to be trying out some fancier stitches – Wave and Trellis. Then I should be able to pretty much replicate this panel, from one of the reproduction smocks at the Museum.

I notice that the pleats I’ve made are much deeper than those on the reproduction smock. It seems as though the more stretch you want, the deeper the pleats should be. If the work is primarily decorative, the pleats can be much more shallow.

The stitches themselves control the amount of stretch. Cable and Stem stitches hold the fabric pretty firmly in place, although they do allow a little bit of give. Honeycomb is the most stretchy of the stitches on this sampler – I suspect that the travelling stitches like Wave and Trellis will also stretch quite a lot.

The size of the stitch in relation to the depth of the pleat also makes quite a big impact on the work. I’ve made quite small stitches on deep pleats, which allows for a lot of stretch. If my stitches had been larger or the pleats less deep, the whole piece would have come out completely different.

Smocking actually has some things in common with knitting – it matters which direction you’re working in, it matters which direction you put the needle into the stitch, and if you get all twisted up it just won’t work out right.

Working on gingham is pretty easy, because you’ve got ready made guidelines to follow. The real test will be making something neat on a plain fabric. There’ll be a few more samplers to make before I’m ready for that!

Museum of English Rural Life

Smocking

On Sunday afternoon I persuaded Paul to wander round the Museum of English Rural Life.
I hadn’t been since it moved location (in 2005!), and it’s in a much bigger space now. It’s a slightly strange museum – laid out more like a store room than an exhibit, with things shoved up corners and hanging from the ceiling – but it’s an amazing collection, and there’s a wealth of information to go with it.

The highlight of my trip was getting to play dress-up with the reproduction linen smocks. They didn’t have a pair of farmer’s clogs in my size, otherwise I’d have been wearing those as well!

(I used to wear slip-on clogs all the time when I was a student. My friends kindly referred to them as “those sawn-off wellies”. Charming.)

The highlight of the trip was tagging on to the tail end of a guided tour, and being allowed upstairs into the archives – and they have MASSES of textiles! Lace fans, embroidery samplers, tatting, and LOADS of clothing.

I’ve taken a large number of photos of the reproduction smocked coat and tunic, although I was so over-excited that I completely forgot to take pictures of the inside. These garments would have been made entirely by hand, so I’d like to have a look at how the seams were finished.

I can’t help wondering whether there’s been an extensive study made of all the garments hidden away in the archives. With the exceptions of craft books and sampler patterns, I can’t find anything that’s been published on the subject in more than twenty years. (A study was done in 2001, but it’s out of print.)

The next time I go over to the University library, I might have to browse around the clothing and folklore sections, and see what I can find out. This smock collection is crying out “PhD” to me. I wonder…