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The Chemise

1-14-07:  Well, not much progress here.  I finally asked SG to finish the smock for me as a Christmas present, and have given the sleeves to her to use.  I know, I know, I totally copped out on this.  What a cheeseball.  Hard to believe this dress has been "in the works" since June of 2004!  Argh!

3-19-06:  OK, finished the other sleeve smocking, and very daringly, I removed the gathering threads, like the smocking book says you're supposed to.  I left them in on the Flemish smock, so we'll just see what happens on this!  I also went ahead and got my own serger, it arrived yesterday, got it for free from reward points, so what the heck.  I'll spend some time figuring it out and then draft the rest of the smock from the dress pattern.

3-11-06:  Well, I guess this would more properly be called a smock, I suspect.  I washed up some bleached white linen and ironed it all up yesterday, fiddled a bit and decided I didn't feel like drafting the body, but I did feel like smocking.  I keep swinging back and forth on the chemise here:  should I do one of my quick and dirty ren fair drawstring specials, with nicer sleeves, or should I draft something nice and fitted?  I think the gown is snug enough that I need to draft something off the gown pattern, and I'll make the sleeves puffy.  For some reason I really wanted to smock yesterday, so I cut some basic sleeve blocks and ran the selvedge edge through the smocking pleater to get started on the cuffs.  Have I mentioned what an awesome gadget this is?  The first sleeve, I forgot to take out all the needles I wasn't using, so it took a while to run the sleeve through, but the second whipped right through.  I finished the first cuff yesterday, not my nicest work, but that's OK.  I ended up doing five rows of honeycomb with stem stitches on either side.  Now to do the second cuff and keep moving on the smock.  I wonder if can get SG to serge the smock pieces together for me?