Fitted Blouse with North American Smocking

I started working on this shirt on the opening day of the Fitted Blouse Contest on PatternReview.com and I finished on Saturday.  That means it took me 22 days from beginning to end. Not bad.  Not bad at all.  And I am oh, so pleased with the North American Smocking effect on the midriff.

The fabric is a medium wright stretch linen from Fabric.com.  The pattern is Jalie 2322 Women's Shirt.  Essentially, I eliminated all but the horizontal bust dart, and instead used the smocking to shape the waist.  The side seams are slightly curved for added shaping.  I added about 3 inches of length so the shirt would be too short after the smocking ate up its requisite 20%.  And I added a bit of length to the sleeves as well.  I've made this shirt before with the same fabric in reversed colors and I found that it shrank quite a bit with successive washings.  The closures are cap anorak snaps in antique bronze.

I saw this smocking technique for the first time on the Lilacs and Lace blog.  Laura Mae used it to make an evening bag, and I thought it was just amazing.  I was stunned by how beautiful, useful, and simple this technique could be.  I did a small trial sample with a scrap piece of shirting that was lying around.  I intentionally chose stripes so I could see just how the fabric was being manipulated.  Genius.  Absolute genius!  The tutorial for this can be found at Le blog de Gédane in both English and French, but the pictures are pretty self-explanatory.

What I learned from this is that there is an approximate 20% loss in both width and height of the smocked area.  But here's the cool part:  the smocked area is elastic!  Obviously, you don't get the full width or height at maximum stretch, but you get some.  And of course if you pull too hard, you'll snap the stitches that make the whole thing work.  But it still has some mechanical stretch.

What to do with this marvelous discovery?  Obviously, it was time to make a shirt.

I started by cutting the fronts and stitching the horizontal bust darts.  Then I marked the wrong sides with the grid and lines for stitching the smocking.  I left about 1/2 inch unsmocked for the side seam (this pattern uses 1/4 inch seam allowances) and enough room at center front for the front facings.

I actually removed the front self facings.  As you will see, the smocking is going to gather along the center front.  Separate facings were necessary to handle all that gathering.

Here it is partially complete.  It takes a few rows to see the basket weave begin to form, but once it does, it is so exciting.

The front is complete.

Now on to the back.  You can see in this picture how the smocked area appears recessed in relation to the rest of the fabric.

 Inside the shirt you can see the bajillion little hand stitches I took to make this thing work.  I haven't decided what to do with the thread tails yet.  Next time I do this I'm going to secure each fold with a lockstitch.  That'll get rid of all the thread tails and work just as well as long as I leave enough thread between each stitch to allow for the mechanical stretch.  These knots are simple square knots that have then been secured with Aleen's Jewel-It embellishing glue.  It's intended for glueing rhinestones and such to fabric, but I find it just makes a good glue.  I like to use the Aleen's because it's not scratchy at all and has a lot of flexibility.

After all this it was typical shirt assembly.  Had a bit of trouble with the stretch linen in the collar and cuffs, but just the normal stuff you'd expect with a stretch woven.

I like how well the shirt goes with my cargo pants of last year.

The areas of smocking meet at the side seams for a continuous band of smocking all around the waist.

I could've hoped for a slightly better transition between the two pieces at the side seams, but hey! for an experiment I think this is pretty good.

If that bit of extra length in the sleeves doesn't shrink out, I'm going to smock a few basket weave bands on the sleeves, too.  But I'm virtually certain the dreaded shrinking will occur.