Smocking - Hand Sew a Traditional English Sussex Smock Shirt or Dress

1. Introduction: Come and learn to hand sew this traditional English smock with me. In this class, you'll learn how to make your own smock shirt or dress completely by hand. No sewing machine required. You'll learn what sewing kit you'll need to buy, how to choose your fabric, how to measure yourself, how to cut your fabric, and all the sewing and smocking techniques you need to make this beautiful garment. You can make it for yourself or for a little one. This gorgeous piece is inspired by the traditional Sussex smock, which was worn in England in the good old days, but I'm bringing it back. Hello. My name is Laura, and I am an English folk singer and seamstress. I love sewing by hand. I make clothes for myself and my little one, and I've also hand sewn him a collection of toys. Sewing has brought me so much peace and joy that I just have to share it with my community. This class requires no experience, all our ancestors sewed, so you might be surprised at how quickly you pick up this peaceful skill. Right now, it's just lying dormant in your ancestral memory. This class includes high quality video close up, so it feels like you're just sitting next to your grandmother sewing together. Take this class, you'll need a basic hand sewing kit, which is simple and affordable. When you learn to sew by hand, you learn a practical art of slow living. Hand sewing helps you cultivate patients and enter into a state of flow. This class is for anyone who would love to hand sew a treasured garment for themselves or for their little one. Let's get sewing, see you in class, 2. Smock Construction Explained : So much for signing up to take this class. This class is different from my previous smocking class. In that class, I taught you how to make a Penonian style smock. And in this class, I'm going to teach you how to make a smock inspired by the traditional Sussex smocks. So what we're going to do is I'm going to explain the construction of the garment and talk about why I love it, and that will give you even more inspiration to get going and also help you understand how it's been constructed. Here is the smock I made for my son, and I'm wearing my matching one. Let's talk about how it's constructed. The first thing that's interesting is there's a rectangle panel here on the shoulders that the front and the back of the garment hang off like so. You'll see we've got this rectangle panel here and the front and the back sit nicely with that. Then we've got the lovely, heavily gathered shoulder here. The heavily gathered collar with the smocking and a nice button up cuff. Them, the front and the back is heavily gathered. So I've seen some traditional smocks where they have this smocking panel on the back, too, but to make this a bit simpler, I've just done the smocking on the front, and then it's just gathered at the back. These smoking stitches, this is called the wave stitch, and this is called outline stitch, the straight line. We're using two different kinds of smocking stitch. One of the things I love about smocks and I don't understand why they don't do it in modern garments is the gusset and the gusset means that you have free movement and space for your body to breathe, and it just makes the garment really comfortable. The button panel that's along the front, and then we've hand sewn wooden buttons along and then another interesting feature is the collar. So the collar actually has an opening at the back and the front, it's made out of two pieces like this. Then the garment has been hemmed with a small roll hem at the front. So now you understand a little bit about how this has been constructed. I want to talk about why I love hand sewing so much and why these garments mean so much to me. So we live in the age of fast fashion where clothes are bought for very cheaply and are seen as a disposable thing. It means that people don't treat it with respect and care and a lot is ending up in landfill. When you make a garment like this, you treasure it, you care for it, you wash it with care, and you're willing to repair it. Also because it's so well made, it will last compared to fast fashion, which is made just to last a few wars. Another thing I really love about sewing like this, it's my evening wind down activity, and it's my reflective time. I might listen to a podcast that inspires me or just listen to some music and reflect on who I want to be, on the mother I want to be, on who my son's becoming and just think about our happy life together. And all of those stitches, all of those memories and thoughts are sewn in. And this really becomes this garment is alive and living. And you'd be surprised how many people comment on this clothing because I think they can really notice it's something special. These garments really are an expression of love, and wearing them brings me so much joy. Now you have seen how this garment is constructed, and I've talked a little bit about why I love making them so much. Let's get into the next class where we'll learn what you'll need and best practice. I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. What You Need + Best Practice: We need and best practice. You'll find a list of everything you'll need. If you scroll down, it's in the project description. Also in the resources section, there's the smocking cheat sheet and tips document, which includes what you will need. To learn about the basic sewing kit, head two lesson two of the gathered skirt class. A few things to mention on top of the basic sewing kit, things that you need to consider. First of all, is the buttons. So I chose these wooden buttons, which I got from Etsy. I think when you have wooden buttons, it compliments the historical look. But just take a moment to do some research, look for buttons, and choose some nice buttons for your garment. Also, we're thinking about what color you will embroider in. So, in my smock, I've chosen a contrasting color. I tried white, but to me, it sort of was too contrasting. So I chose a light blue, and I really like this. Sometimes they used to actually sew the same color for the smocking, for example, white on white, which just creates a more subtle look that's also very beautiful. Here's a shirt that I made where I embroidered blue on blue, and I do really love how it looks. But for these particular smocks, I chose the contrasting class will go through all the steps to make this garment. If this is the first time you've ever sewn something like this, I recommend watching the whole class through. So you can really understand how it's made, visualize it in your mind, and then the next time through, you can sew along with me. This is now my sixth class that lives here on skill share so that I don't repeat myself. Sometimes I will reference other sewing classes of mine, and you can find them easily by clicking on my profile and you'll see all my other sewing classes there. Make the most of the resources section and download the two documents that are there, which is the smocking cheat sheet and tips and the smocking measurements and calculations. You might like to print them off, so you've got them alongside as you work through this class. I want to help you. So if you do get stuck, please pop a question in the discussions comment and I will help. Sometimes people ask me how long it takes, and I've never really calculated in time in hours, but I find that I give myself about six weeks to make something like this, and I'm just sewing an hour here and there. If you set aside some dedicated time, you might sew it even quicker. Some other things to think about when you are hand sewing. Be patient with yourself and be kind. When you're learning a new skill, you are going to make mistakes. Be willing to unpick. Sometimes you have to unpick your work, which can feel a bit frustrating, but just know that you're learning in the process. One of the obstacles, I think to hand sewing is the hardest bit is the measuring and the calculating. So to help yourself, make sure that you choose a time to do the measuring and calculating when you're feeling fresh. Hand sewing is a very restorative evening activity, but the measuring and the calculating just requires you being switched on a bit more, so make sure you choose a time of day that works for that. Follow the age old advice, measure twice, cut once. Sometimes I actually draw everything out, I measure it, I plan it, and then I sleep on it, and I look at it the next day. Because you're thinking of so many elements, you might like to sleep on it and just run it through in your mind, so don't make any mistakes on that crucial part. To hold yourself accountable, you might like to tell me about your project in the discussions tab. It's also nice to work towards a specific deadline. I made these socks for my son's third birthday, and as it approached, I made sure I spent more time sewing so that I definitely made them by the deadline. You hand sew, make sure that you sit comfortably. When I first started, I find myself sort of hunching over, and then you can hurt your back. So just take time to find a comfortable and supported pose as you sew. The other thing is, with hand sewing, you're using muscles in your hands that you've not used before. So you might notice if you do a lot of hand sewing that you feel a bit sore and tense in certain areas. I recommend going on YouTube and just searching hand yoga videos and trying out some stretches, or maybe even just a simple massage for your hands. That you're able to continue sewing. Let's get to the next lesson where we're going to measure ourselves and choose fabric. See you in the next lesson. 4. Measuring and Choosing Fabric: Come to this lesson where we're going to measure ourselves and choose our fabric. The first thing you need to think about is how you're going to measure. You can measure using your actual body or you can measure using a reference garment. I actually like doing a bit of both and then checking them against each other. When I made mine for my son because he's 3-years-old and he won't be still for more than 7 seconds, I had to purely use a reference garment to measure it, and then once I'd roughly constructed the garment, I could put it on him, and actually, I've done a pretty good guess from using a reference garment. When you choose a reference garment, you want to choose something that already fits really well so that you can use that to visualize your smock. Right now, I recommend downloading the smocking measurements and calculations document, and we can work through it together step by step. To help you, I've included the measurements and calculations for this smoc, which fits me at a Size 12, an English UK size 12, and this smok the measurements for this, which fits my son who is age three, and he's quite a tall and big age three. So you will have the exact measurements for these two smoks, which you might even just like to copy paste if you know that you're a similar size, or you can use it as a bit of a check. So If you're, for example, a UK size eight, you'll look at mine and want to make sure that all your measurements are a bit smaller, or for example, if it's for a 7-year-old child, you'll say, let's look at Laura 3-year-old smock. A all my measurements bigger? Yes, they are. Okay. I'm doing it right. Now let's run through each of the measurements and how we take them for each section of the smock. Starting with the shoulder panel, measuring from the collar down to where I like the shoulder gathering to start. Then measuring over the top of the shoulder for how wide the shoulder panel will be this way. Now, imagining that, just wearing a T shirt, get an idea of how you just prepare with that. Just imagining it would be like this, and then imagining the over shoulder like this. Then using a reference garment to measure the shoulder panel for Bobby, starting at the collar there and then down to where the drop shoulder will be. Then going over this way to imagine how big the panel will be this way. Now for the sleeve from where the shoulder panel ends, all the way down to where the cuff starts. We're not measuring the full length of the sleeve, we're measuring up to where the cuff starts like so. From the gathering, from where the shoulder panel ends, all the way down to where the cuff starts, get a friend to help you with this one. Here I am imagining it on my T shirt, so imagining the drop shoulder and then holding it on my arm and measuring down to the point where my cuff begins, leaving that gap of what I would like my cuff to be. Then doing the same on the reference garment. Imagining, the drop shoulder is going to start here, measuring the length of the sleeve, but I don't want the whole length because I've got to add the cuff. I'll come back a little bit and take this measurement instead, a few centimeters from the end. You've got leave space for the cuff. Now onto the sleeve. Measuring around the arm as big and wide as I want it, the wide the better when it comes to the width of the sleeves. Now measuring the width of the reference garment. I just go around it like this. See how wide, I would like the sleeves to be probably adding more than the reference garment because looking now, this is Bobby's smock looking at how wide and gathered that sleeve is real, as I said, a moment ago, the wide the better when it comes to the sleeves. Now to the front and the back. I just measure how wide I would like that smock to be at the front. Like so. Then here I am measuring the smock you can really see look how wide that front piece is really wide. Now looking at the reference garments here's this reference garment for Bobby, seeing how wide that is at the front. You can measure from the front or the back. You're just going from seam to seam to give you an idea of how gathered and wide these smocks are. Here is Bobby's finished smock, and here is Bobby's jacket that's of the same size effectively, but you want the smocks really gathered. Now the length, we go from where the shoulder panel ends at the front, and we measure all the way down to how long we would like our smock to be. Here I am with my T shirt, imagining just the same so, imagine where the shoulder panel would be and then I hold it all the way down. See how long I would like it. You could make it right knee length if you like a long dress or even ankle length. Now on to Bobby's, imagining where the shoulder panel is and then measuring down, and perhaps adding a bit more length, so I've got a nice long smock. Now on to the gusts. With the gussets, I recommend going to my documents and just copying the adult size of gusset and the child size of gusset. If you've got a larger child, you might like to choose a size in between the 3-year-old smock and the adult smock. Now for the cuffs, the main thing I want to remind you is you've got to think about this button and the button hole. So keep those cuffs quite loose when you measure and imagine that you are going to include a button and a button hole in that. You also want how long you would like your cuff to be like so. When we measure ourselves, we don't want it to be really tight around our wrist, like this want to be nice and loose and have space for that button and button hole. Now using the reference garments, I'm just going to measure around. I'll probably add 4 centimeters onto that, so I've got space for the button in the button hole before I do my calculations, and then also the length of the cuff. Now to the collar, measuring loosely around the neck of how I'd like my collar to be like so. Then onto the reference garment, which is here. Yeah. Going around this, like so. That's how big we would like our collar to be. Now to how long you'd like your collar to be. With the sleeves, the wider the better, with the color, I just think the longer the better because measuring from the middle there to the collar because when you fold them, you'll see like this, you lose a bit of the collar. Even though the collar is 10 centimeters up here actually only looks like it's 8 centimeters because you lose a bit in the ses. Here's Bobby's reference garment, which has got a very small collar. I take that measurement and just add on a bit for what I would like my final collar to be. Here is Bobby's collar. Again, you see got the same issue here that even though the collar is 8 centimeters, when you fold it, like so, you lose two or 3 centimeters. That's why really just add a bit more on. When it comes to the length of the collar. In some of these socks, they really have really long collars that go all the way to the shoulder, which I absolutely love. There you go that's the collar of Bobby Smock. Now to the button panel, this is very simple, just looking at your buttons and working out how wide you like your button panel to be. Here's Bobby Smock measuring how wide I'd like it to be because Bobby's buttons are smaller, therefore, his panel is smaller. Look at the reference garment. This reference garment has big buttons. So the size of the button determines the size of the button panel. That's all our measuring. Okay, so now we've got all our measurements. Let's run through this document. We're going to if you're going to get your document out, we're going to go through my Smock, and we're going to look at how I took my measurements and I use those measurements to make the calculations for my pieces. So let's work through that together. Now you'll have your measurements filled in. We can now do the calculations to work out the pieces that we need to cut out. First of all, we'll start with our shoulder panel, we should have our measurement from our neck to shoulder. I've written that in shorthand n to S, and we should have our over shoulder measurement, which for me is 14 centimeters. For this one, the calculation is pretty simple. All we're doing is adding 2 centimeters to each measurement for seam allowance because we love having a 1 centimeter seam allowance on each side. For measurement two, the sleeve, it's exactly the same. We have a 46 centimeter length in our sleeve and a 48 centimeter width. As with the last measurement, all we're going to do is add two centimeter seam allowance to each, which gets us 48 by 50 centimeters. Now to the back, we measured the back width as 68 centimeters and the back length as 58 centimeters. This one is simple to. A we're doing is adding the 2 centimeters to each. So we end up with 70 centimeters by 60 centimeters. Then for the next measurement for the front, all we do is we take that width and we split it in two. The way I normally do that is I cut out the exact same piece. Your front and your back pieces should be exactly the same side size. And then all you do is you slice down the middle. You'll see in my final calculation. My back is 70 by 60 centimeters, but my front is 35 by 60 centimeters, so that's my back piece cut in half. Now to the gusts. For my gussets, the final size was 12 by 12 centimeters, and I added 2 centimeters to each of these, so I had that seam allowance for the gust, so it's 14 by 14 centimeter gusts. Now, these two are where it gets a little more tricky, the cuff. I measured the width of the cuff to be 29 centimeters and the length to be 7 centimeters. Starting with the length because that's a bit more of a tricky calculation, we multiply that by two, and then we add 2 centimeters. We multiply it by two because we have the front and the back of the cuff, the underside of the cuff is there two, and then we have the 2 centimeters seam allowance. The final for that is seven by two is 14 plus two is 16 centimeters, that's how long around it should be the width of our cuff. Then to length, the width of our cuff, and that one is another simple one. So you just take your measurement and add 2 centimeters. Just take a moment here to remind you with the cuff. I just hope you've added a little bit of room there because remember we need space for the button and the button hole. If you haven't, you might like to add another 4 centimeters now, so you've definitely got space for that button and button hole. Now onto measurement seven, the collar. This is a bit tricky like the cuff when it comes to the width, and that is because we need to multiply it by two and add two again. For the width, it was the final desired width is 10 centimeters, so I'll multiply that by two, that makes 20, and I add two, that's 22 centimeters. Then for the circumference, we add four for the seam allowances, and then we divide it by two because we want two collar pieces because there will be two collar pieces that we're going to cut out. So 52 plus 4/2 equals 28 centimeters. I want two pieces, 28 centimeters by 22 centimeters, and finally the button panel. 3 centimeters wide, multiply by the length of the front. You know how long the front of your smock is, and then you know you want a three centimeter width final. For that, we need that similar similar calculation that we did for the cuff and the collar, we multiply it by two and add two. We want it to be 3 centimeters, so we multiply three by two, make six, and add two equals 8 centimeters. Before we complete this part, just to remind you you can find all of these measurements and calculations in the measurements and calculations document, which I recommend downloading. Just having a look through the measurements for my Smock, look through the measurements for Bobby Smock. Breathe because it can be a bit overwhelming and a lot of numbers when you first get to it. If you start to visualize the smock in the mind, you will get it. Okay, great. When it comes to choosing your fabric, there are some things to consider, I recommend going to lesson five of the gathered skirt class where I go through all the things you need to consider when choosing your fabric. But the main thing you need to know is it needs to be a woven fabric, like a cotton, a linen, these are corduroy. Although I love the look of these corduroy jackets, I'm not sure if I'd work with cardoy again because each one of these little channels, when you chop it, these tiny little balls. So my whole house, while I was in the middle of this, was covered in tiny little navy flex, which drove us a little bit mad. When you work with linen and cotton, you don't have that experience. So I recommend, also, because of the way these smocks are that you'd like a heavier fabric. You'll find out more in that lesson five class about different weights of fabric, but because of the way this sits, they were traditionally made with a very, very heavy linen, you might consider getting something like that. So now we know how to measure and choose our fabric. I'll see you in the next lesson where we will lay out, cut, and label. 5. Layout and Label: Come back. In this class, we're going to learn out how we're going to lay out our pieces. We really want to be economical and not wasteful. Traditionally, the reason these are made out of rectangles is because you didn't want to waste any of this precious fabric that been woven by hand. What I do is I draw out a cutting plan like this. You see, along the top here is the width of my fabric, which once I'd washed, it was 144 centimeters, and then the length of my fabric. Then what I do is I lay out where all the pieces are going to go. These are my two sleeves and these are my two front and back pieces. It's not all scientifically accurate, so the sleeves here look longer than the body, which I don't think is true. The sleeves in the body are about the same length. The other way it's really really good to do the cutting plan is right. When you decide, I want my back piece to be 65 centimeters wide, but then you look and you plan to lay out in your fabric and say, hang on. 144/2 is 72 centimeters, actually, I can make my garment even wider because I think with this style of garment, the wider and the puffier the sleeves the better. This diagram shows this is the two front and back pieces, which then I'll cut the front piece in half. And then these are the sleeves, and then these are all the other sections here. If your fabric has a direction, so like this corduroy is in a certain direction, then make sure you think about that when you do your cutting plan. I made the decision as well for my cuffs to go this direction and for my collars to go this direction. I've seen other people let the grain of the fabric go a different way, so my shoulder pieces go down like that. So you just got to make those decisions as you cut head to lesson six of the gathered skirt class to learn how to prepare and cut your fabric. There's different techniques for cutting fabric, depending on the weight of your fabric, and I'll show you how to do something called pulling a thread, which is actually what I used to cut this corduroy. It's a way of making sure you get nice straight lines. So now you have measured yourself. You've made your calculations, you've bought your fabric, you've washed your fabric, you've cut out all your pieces. So now we are finally ready to get sewing. I'll see you in the next lesson where we will attach the button panel. 6. Attach Button Panels: Welcome to our first sewing segment of this class, where we're going to attach the button panels. What we're going to do is we're going to attach this panel here like this. In the video, you see me do it on just one side, but you'll need one for each side, for both your front sides of the smock. Let's get sewing. Here's our button panel. We're going to fold it like so, and it will sandwich in the front panel of our smock. Like so. To make sure it's straight, we can first of all just line it all up. I like to pop a pin at the end or in my case a needle because I really try not to have too many pins hanging around. I'm just scared about dropping them. I'm folding it over by 1 centimeter all the way along. What's great about cordoys? Because you've naturally got that straight line that you can follow. If you're using linen or cotton, you might like to measure this, or you might even like to press this 1 centimeter seam all the way along so it stays nice and neat. The first thing I'm going to do here is a fastening knot to get started. You'll see for now, I've just got one needle at the other end of where I'm going. You might like one midway as well just to check as you go. Or if you're a big fan of pins, you might even like five pins all the way along. There's many or as little as you wish. So then I'm fastening the button panel to the front with the first fastening knot. And then I just work my way along using what I call a fell stitch. It's a bit like how we do our flat fell scams. That's why I call it fell stitch. Not sure if it that's what it's officially called. But with the fell stitch, all I'm doing is I'm scooping up a tiny bit of the front panel, and then I'm going in at a slight angle and going into the button panel like so. I just work that way all the way along. Scooping in a tiny bit, going in at angle, and pulling through. So this is what it will look like. Oh, so neat and so straight, you could never get it that neat or that straight on a machine, could you? Now we're getting right to the end, and there's a few more stitches left to go. I always like to do a fastening knot at the end before I turn the fabric over and do the other side. Flipping it. Then you can see the line from where you stitched before. Is actually your choice here about how big your seam is? It can be anywhere between no 0.5 and one centimeters. That's what I recommend. You can see now that's going to be sandwiched. I'm using the first line of stitches, which we hopefully did very straight as a guideline for heading back the other way. We find it's easier going back the other way because you've already been concentrating very hard hopefully on the first line, so it's nice and straight. As always, relaxing shoulders, relaxing jaw, just checking a posture, checking any tension, so that this hand sewing is really restorative, that we're not tensing up, even though we're learning something new, we're staying chill. So then working all the way along, fastening knots at the end, and it will look just like this, how beautiful. Then all we need to do is the same on the other side. That step is complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Gather Front Panels: Back in this lesson, we're going to add our gathering stitches to the front of the smock so we can choose the size of our gathering panel. First thing to mention is about your gathering stitches. So I used these lines of the corduroy to get even stitches for my gathering. If you're not using corduroy, you might like to go to lesson 13 of my hand, so a smock class. I've got another smocking class on my skill share. And in that one, I show you how to to measure out your gathering stitches. Saying that, I actually think our ancestors wouldn't have used a ruler in that way, and you could also just try doing it by eye if you're feeling brave. My stitches are approximately 5 millimeters each. Another thing to consider is how wide your smocking panel will be. So first of all, let's talk about how wide my smocking panel is on my smock. So just measuring how big the smoking panel is. It's 19 centimeters wide before I gathered it. And that means I left 14.5 centimeters here ungathered. And the 19 centimeters, once I smoked them and gathered them, they gather down to 7 centimeters. I did 10 centimeters of smoking. And now let's talk about how wide the smoking panel is on Bobby's smok. Okay. So on Bobby's, I gathered a 16 centimeter panel, and that meant that I left just 5.5 centimeters. The 16 centimeters gathered down to 8 centimeters. And this was 8 centimeters long. You might like to go on Pinterest to get some ideas about how far down to smock, how wide to smock. So now you've decided that. Let's get sewing. So here's my lovely front panel. I've marked on here how wide I'd like my smocking panel to be, and also how long. I'm taking my gathering thread, which is in a contrasting color and cutting it to the length of the panel. Then doing a big fat hairy knot by twist twist twist twist twist twist twist towit twisting, and then pulling it through. Hey, walla. And then we just stitch log. So conveniently, I'm doing two channels of Cordoy per stitch. You can head to my other smocking class to see other ways to measure your smocking dots as I discussed at the beginning. I've also just started smoking a new shirt and I'm just trying not even measuring it at all, just doing it completely by eye. Let's see how that goes. But the ordo is fantastic because you can just see how long each stitches. Now you can see my nice even stitches. I've done one, two, three, four, five rows of smoking of gathering stitches. Then you see, I've done six, two, three, I've done six. And then I bunch together three rows, and I knock them. And that's just so that when it comes to actually gathering, I just find it a bit easier if you can pull a few rows in one. There we go. Matching up both sides evenly to matching front panels both gathered up ready to go. That steps complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Gather Stitch for Sleeve Shoulder: Lesson, we are going to do the gathering stitches for our shoulder. To give you an idea, my sleeve is gathered about 1.5, so this width plus half. And in Bobby's one, which is the one you're going to watch me doing, I have chosen this measurement, and I've doubled it. So you get this really lovely, heavily gathered shoulder. I must admit that I prefer it double gathered. Let's get sewing. On the left there, that's the shoulder panel, and on the right is my sleeve. And for my son's smock, I'm going to really heavily gather the shoulder, so it's going to be double. The width of the shoulder, I'm measuring that out twice. You can also do it 1.5. My smock was more like 1.5, but this one is double. Once you've marked out, you're just double checking the even there. And then running that gathering stitch. Same All done. Got to do the same on the other shoulder. That steps complete. I'll see you in the next session. 9. Attach Shoulder Panel and Gather Back: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to attach this shoulder panel to the front and to the back of the smock, and we're also going to gather the back of the smock. Let's get sewing. Attaching shoulder to front panel. As always just taking a moment to check in with your jaw, your shoulders, temples. You've got through many of the frustrating parts, the measuring and cutting is the hardest. Now we're going to use running stitch. This is our first step of actually fixing our garment together, so we're starting with a fastening knot as we always do. It's a 1 centimeter seam, and we're going to run running stitch. You can also choose backstitch if you prefer, but I always use running stitch for putting my garments together. We're going to do that running stitch all the way up to where the gathering starts. If you look, I'm just peeking underneath the fabric every now and then to see where the gathering starts. Let's just have a look and we're nearly there. A few more stitches. Then a nice fastening knot. That's the front attached to the shoulder on one side. And now we want to attach it to the back piece as well. But before we do that, we need to do the gathering stitch on the back piece. So we use, did you see me using my front piece as a measuring? We want to gather the same amount so that the front and the back? I gather the same. So I'm measuring out the same width of my smocking on my front panel times by two so that I can run all the way along there? You see now I've done a gathering stitch all the way along that back panel. So now it's ready for me to attach the front panel onto the shoulder like so. This is what it's going to look like. I'm just going to flip that round. As before, we do the running stitch all the way up to where the gathering starts. So it'll look like this. Lovely. And then all we need to do is mirror that and repeat on the other side. Okay, that steps complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 10. Attach Gathered Shoulder: Lesson, we're going to attach the gathered shoulder, so we're going to take this part we've gathered here and attach it to our shoulder panel. Let's get sewing. Here's where we were. We've got our shoulder panel attached to the front and the back, and I'm going to mark the halfway point on that shoulder panel. This is to help us get even gathering. As well as that, I'm going to take my sleeve that we've already run the gathering stitch along, and I'm going to mark the halfway point on that one, too. We can use that to keep it all even. Then we fold by 1 centimeter, so I'm folding my shoulder seam over. I'm just making sure I've got that halfway point marked on because once you fold it, you might lose it slightly also see here I really pinch it. It works with linen and you can do quite a strong crease so that you can use the crease as a ma. Lovely. Now we pull the thread on the shoulder. That should gather exactly into that nice shoulder panel and that also on top of it like so. The way we do this is we start with a fastening knot. Then I take where the gathering ends. There's a mark there from when we marked it out to draw the gathering on so that can help us to find that point, and then we fasten that with another knot. We've done 1 knot to attach the thread to the fabric. Another knot to now attach the sleeve. Then once we've got that there, all we need to do is pull this nice and tight and then match up that halfway point that we draw on our shoulder panel and the halfway point we did on our sleeve, and that's when we need a pin or in my case, using my gathering needle. To fix that together. Now we need to attach this gathered panel. I do that by scooping up one gather with my needle and then fixing it, you'll see as we go. If you head back to my gathered skirt class, I really do some close up shots of gathering and how to really get neat gathering. I do find this takes practice, and it can be easy at first to either bunch it up too tight or make it too loose, and then there's a already bunched up bit. It just takes time. So what I do is I scoop a teeny tiny bit, I go under Just reminding you now, just to drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw. All those things can happen when we try to do something new, we can get a bit tense. Let's keep working our way along scooping up a stitch and then attaching that stitch to the shoulder. The first step is to. Can you see the green running stitch running through? I use that as a guideline for where the gathering stitch should run at about half a centimeter away from the edge, and then we want the scene to be 1 centimeter. You can use that green line as an indicator. I've worked all the way to the halfway point, and now I'm going to pin the end of the gathering to the end of the shoulder, so we can carry on just the same. Once that's pinned in like so, we just work exactly the same. Like I said, this does take practice to get your gathers knifes and even. The fantastic thing about hand sewing it so slow, so you can see your mistakes as you go and then quickly unpick them and give it another go. I carry on the same fashion, scooping up the front of a gather and attaching it to the shoulder and on and on and on and on with relaxed breathing. There we are. We've got all the way to the end of this part. Just the last few stitches. There we go, and ending as always with a nice fastening knot. Well done. So look like this now. So you got your front, of your smoke, your back of your smock, and then your gathered shoulder attached. So this is what it looks like this way. I haven't done the other side yet, but you will need to mirror exactly on the other side, attaching your other front side panel and your other shoulder. Like so. That steps complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 11. Attach Gusset and Sides: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to sew our gussets in like sew, and also sew the sides of our seams of our sleeves and the sides of our garment. Let's get sewing. Starting to really come together now. We're going to attach our gusset here. So starting with attaching it to the sleeve. We always leave a 1 centimeter gap at the end of each gusset. So I'm just measuring their 1 centimeter from the end. And then I'm going to do running stitch. Again, your choice, you can do backstitch, if you wish. I find a running stitch to be perfectly strong for this. So I'm doing my fastening 1 centimeter from the end. I'm using my thumb to measure, you might like to use a measuring dap, not a thumb. Relax shoulders, relax raw, working all the way along until there's a 1 centimeter gap at the end again. Always with the gust leaving a one centimeters from the end. Now I'm flipping it around and I'm going to attach the gust to the side of the front panel. Now, I would say that this part of construction can be bamboozling. Just follow it through as you watch, and just rewatch it, if necessary. Just go back to the videos where I show you the garment so you can really see how it's constructed. The first time I attached a gust, I did it completely wrong, so it will just take time to figure it out. They're all going all the way down from the shoulder along the front panel and along the gust. Always leaving that 1 centimeter gap at the end of the gust. Now I've got to the gust. Sometimes I do a knot here, and then I'm leaving that 1 centimeter gap at the end. Now the gusset has been attached to one side to the sleeve and one side to the front, and now we need to attach it to the other side of the sleeve and the back, which you'll start to see it's starting to come together. There it is attached to the front and to the sleeve. Then now we need to attach it to the back and the sleeve, and we do that by First of all, attaching the front and the back of the garment. So we really are constructing the garment right now. This is such a key video. So we're running from the front, from the bottom, all the way along, that's my running stitch, going all the way to reach the gust. Now this is the point where we're attaching the third side of the gust. So we're always leaving that 1 centimeter gap again. I've folded the gust in half, so you've got almost a point, and you just want to catch the corner of it there. You see, so I'm approaching it cautiously. Trying to think of a joke of as one would approach, what kind of animal, would you need to approach cautiously a grizzly bear? We don't approach a grizzly bear. We don't have bears in England anymore. So right now I'm on the gusset. You see now, I'm just coming up to it. So you'll see now it's getting really thick because I got to go through all these layers in that corner of the gusst. And I normally hear at this point do a knot. So I'm going from attaching the front and the back of the smock to now turning to the gusset. So I'm at that corner point. I'm going to go back in and run along the gusset now. Again, going all the way till there's 1 centimeter at the end. So this is really coming together now. It might seem a bit confusing. When you get to the end and see it all laid out, it will make sense. So I've left that 1 centimeter gap at the end. And now that the back of the sleeve. So if this is all worked out right, this part here now, the sleeve, just these two 1 centimeter pieces should kiss so beautifully here, and then we join them together. This is the final side of the gust, da da I've now gone all the way along there. Now, that means I've got to the sleeve the sleeves like a tube, you're just now going to sew that tube together. After doing another fastening knot at the corner of the gust because I find this is a high strain piece of the garment, so it's really nice to get that really secure. Coming and the M. That will now mean that we are coming to the sleeve. Like I said, if you're finding this a little bit bamboozling, just once you've got all your pieces of cut and you're actually working through this, just work through it with me. I'm now pinning the sleeve tube together, to keep it nice and straight. I don't go off course. I'm going to work along the sleeve about here, about 3 centimeters from the end because we want the sleeves to open at the cuffs. Let's do a little knot there. There should now just be one tiny bit that's still open. You go gus it fixed. But from the shoulder to where the gust is, there's one tiny bit there that's not been attached. So now we're just going to fasten not attach that bit. This is what it will look like at the end, your sleeve will be altogether. You have the gust here. This is the front of the garment now. You can see it's like a square sat in the armpit. My sleeve is open 3 centimeters at the end. It's looking like so. Okay, that step is complete. See you in the next lesson. 12. Prepare to Flat Fell: Come back in this lesson, we are going to prepare to flat fell. Flat felling is a style of seams, which means that the seams are absolutely beautiful. They are almost hidden, and they're quite thick and chunky as well, so I think they help with the structure of the garment. You might find this a little bit confusing when you first do it because I've chosen a way that I believe it's best to fill in each direction. You can just follow my instructions. Another thing to note is that because we have these cuffs like so, we leave an opening at the end, so we flat fell to here, and then we do rolled openings so that we can then attach these cuffs. Let's get in preparing to flat fell. Let's get sewing. All these arrows indicate the direction in which I'm going to flat fell. If the arrows pointing that way, it means it's going to fold over like so. So just make a note of the way these arrows are. That's the front of the smock, and then the arrows are like so on the back. So you just need to copy these arrows onto your garment like that. So you're able to see. Then what that means is, you'll need to cut the other side. So because for example, on this bit, the right one is going to fold over. I'm just cutting a little notch, and I'm going to cut this now to be not 0.5 centimeters, 5 millimeters so that these flat fell seams can go over it. I'm just using those arrows as a guide marker. So I know which side to cut. As with a lot of this, the first time you do this, it might seem confusing, follow it through as I do it. Just copying where my arrows are and then cutting in the direction. This one is going to fold over that way because the arrow is pointing that way. Keep checking your arrows as you cut. And you'll need to do all four sides of the gusset as well, checking the gusts all folding outwards. You just need to check that all of the undersides are cut so that it will fold over. There's another one. Cutting in a little notch and we're going to cut that one half of it off. That will fold over cutting the end of the end of the notch. Just checking over now, k. Have I cut half of the seam off on all of these edges, using the arrow as an indicator for which way I'm going to flat fell it? Working over the whole garment, as was checking in with, shoulders, temples, enjoying the process. It really is worth doing this because then you just get such beautiful inside seams. In modern garments, they just use an overlocker. Okay, here, this is another step I do. I go and check the gusset from the outside at this point and check if it really is secure. You'll see this one corner here is a little bit loose. So now I go back and I just do some more knots on the corner of my gust because I really don't want my gusts to start falling out in some of my earlier garments when I first started making clothing. I didn't double check this, and then I have to go and repair it later. So it's really good to get those gussets in nice and secure at the corners. So once that's all secure and looking beautiful from the outside, and you have done all your flat felling, you've followed my arrows and flat felled each one, then you're ready to go and flat fell your garment. That step's complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Flat Fell Seams: Welcome back. Here we are flat felling our seams. The main thing to note with flat felling is you always want to work on the side that your hand is in, so I'm right handed, so I always flat fell the right side. So that means you might need to turn your garment so that you're always starting. So it's folded over to the right side. And you'll notice this in the video, I'll always be flat felling on the right. Let's get sewing. So starting at the bottom of my garment, where the front and the back meet. I'm doing a fastening knot. And you'll see now, this is what flat feelings like. You fold the larger piece over the smaller piece, and you get this really lovely neat, but also kind of thick seam. I think it helps to even give structure to the garment because the seams are so chunky, about smooth. You know, as I mentioned before in the previous video about overlockers, they're so sort of scratchy and ugly. These are smooth and neat. We scoop a bit and we scoop a bit, and we just work all the way along. I love flat felling, it's very soothing. You see now I've reached the gusset, and the gust is folding out on all four sides when it comes to flat felling. You just need to fold over the corners, d ding like that. Folding that side, folding that side. So our gusts is so lovely and neat from both the outside and the inside. As we did when we first attached the gusset, and we made sure we had knots at the corner. You might like to add more knots as well when you flat fell the corners of your gust just to keep it really secure. Checking him with jaw, shoulders, temples, hips, enjoying the process of learning how to make this beautiful garment. There's my fastening knots, getting that gust on nice and secure, and then I'm going to carry on flat felling just the same folding that over. There I've gone all the way from the bottom, all the way along the gust, and now I'm going to carry on upwards rest of the gust and up to reach the shoulder panel. We don't flat fell when it comes to the actual shoulder panel because we've got a inner shoulder panel, which we use to cover up all the stitches on the shoulders. Now I'm going to the sleeve opening. I've done the front of the back, now I'm going to the sleeve opening. We do here what I call a rolled opening. This is just to do a nice finish on these edges of the seam. I do that by just rolling that around like a so. You'll also see this rolled edge on my gathered skirt class, if you'd like to see me doing that. On another garment, you could head to the rolled opening on my gathered skirt class. I'm just rolling it like that. This is quite a small neat little seam. I don't know, it's maybe three mill or five mill. So rolling it and stitching all way along like so need to repeat the same on the other side. So fastening not here. Rolling it open, and attaching it on. Working all way to the end. And then now this bit is ready to the edge of the s then we need to flat fell that. So now, we've done these two rolled openings. Now we can flat f s. So we can work all the way from the gust where we were just finishing off and start there. I'm just using the arrows as a guideline and just being slow and patient as you work through all of this. I'm on this other corner of the gust here just about to start on the sleeve. I'll probably do some more knots to get that really secure. And then I'll work all the way along Once I get to this end bit, where the rolled opening is a bit imperfect because it's one bits rolling one way, one bits rolling the other way, B s make a nice twist and they meet up like that. You might just want to do some extra stitches a bit like how we do at the gussets because this is a part of the garment will get strain where you're putting it on and off. You just might want to do some extra stitches where you can round here, some knots to get that nice and secure. Just looking for any little bits poking out. Can you see the little tiny bit poking out there? I'm going to go and just attach everything with knots and make it really secure. Working through to that bit with the annoying bit that's poking out. We'll just tuck it under go away, you cheeky bit. Go away, go away, tucking it in with my needle and then just sewing around that. So like I say, this really is the benefit of hand sewing because you can just get in there really detailed. Really neat and just fix all these little glitches. I just don't think you could ever make a smock with a machine. Just maybe the straight lines, and that's about it. Because you just wouldn't get that beautiful finish. So that nice twisted edge is all done now looking lovely and neat. So do some fastening knots. Do Do Oh, we're going to even do some more stitches, I think. Just really looking at any bits that look fiddly and just sewing them and knotting them. Make that thread disappear like so. There's a few more edges that need flat felling, so we just keep working around where we need to go. I need to do the other two sides of the gusset. So by the end, it will look like this. Wow. So crisp and beautiful. So that's it from the inside. All the seams nice and chunky, yet smooth and beautiful. That step's complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. Attach Cuffs: Back in this lesson, we are attaching the cuffs. This is another creative decision. How much are you going to smock your cuffs? I've just chosen one waves stitch. I've also seen historical garments where they have quite a large chunk smoked here. Just do some research and choose what you would like your design to be. Same with the front and the back panel, you might like to go to lesson 13 of my other smoking class where I talk about the smoking dots. Now you've made your creative decisions about how big your smoking panel is going to be? Let's get sewing. So here is my sleeve with my rolled opening and we need to gather it. I've drawn my mark here for where I want to gather. I'm going to do nice and even stitches using the cordoy as my marker. I'm doing two rows of cordoy per stitch. It's nice and even. As discussed at the beginning of this video, it's your choice, how many rows of gathering you want to do here. Oh. I just turning my sleeve out the other way. I think it's easier to work the right way round of the garment. My garments right way around. That's a bit easier. I had it inside out before. There's my starting point. I got my big knot, and then I work all the way around and do a knot at the other end. Then it's your choice, how many rows. You might just want to do it like that and not smock it or you might want to do more. I actually did too many rows and didn't use them. Have a look at some other design. Now I'm halfway marking the cuff. This is to get even gathering like we did on the shoulders. I'm marking the halfway point on both sides of the cuff. So. And then the same on the sleeve. Just folding in half. You could also use a tape. I just find this is a quick and easy way just by folding in half. You can see my four rows of gathering sit shoved on there. I'm just going to pull them. Not all those four rows together, find that easier to work that way as I did in the front panel, and then s on the other side. Pulling all four threads, and then knotting them. Check in my shoulders, jaw, temples, enjoying the process. Okay. That gives you an impression of what it will look like when it's all gathered up. Taking our cuff, folding it over, and as with the gussets, we're always working 1 centimeter from the end, ore your seam of choices. I think this is probably more like 0.7 from the end and 0.7 folding it over and touch my fastening ready to attach to the cuff. So there we are? You might like to use a pencil to mark your seam length. I'm just doing that here. Getting my folded over cuff and attaching it. Noticing that bit that's hanging over at the end that's going to be folded under in a moment. That's the side of the s. Nice fastening knot to attach the two together and then we work in a straight line like so until we get to the gathering. There we go. Nice straight line. I fold the seam as I go. Now we've got the halfway point and the halfway point our cuff that we've marked and using our pin, but in my case, a needle. I attach those two together. As with other gathering parts, this can be fiddly just to try and get them nice and even. You'll see here now that I spend a moment checking that the seam is folded nicely at the length I've chosen about 0.7 mill for mine, just make it nice and straight fold. Then just fiddling with the gathering to get the gathering nice and even. It's all bunched up one place and loose another. Once I think I've got it nice and even. Once I've got my seam folded over nicely. I can start to work along in the fell stitch method where I just scoop up one gather and then attach it to the cuff. As with all of this, it takes a bit of practice to get it nice and even. You might find the first time, need to redo it. Learning curve, relaxed shoulders, relax, relax temple. So working all the way along like so, gather by gather, smock by smock stitch by stitch. Until we make our way to the halfway point. I've gone all the way along here, take that needle out, and then we want to make sure that our calf now with the no 0.7 mill at the end or the 1 centimeter wherever you've is attached to the other opening. We just fix that there. We know how gathered our next bit has got to be. Folding it over nicely. Again, just tightening up those gathering ones and then evening them out. And folding over that cuff seam again, getting it nice and straight. Stitch by stitch, working all the way along. Eventually, then we'll finished all the gathering and now we'll be at the point Sometimes I attach the pin here, instead, I find it easier as I work on the gathering. I finish the gathering there, take that away and then work into the end. The fool in the fold. Lovely. Once you've done all of that to the end, you'll be ready to turn it over. I find it so much easier to do the other side. You've already really concentrated on making it nice and straight and getting your gathers even. Now we're just matching it up on the other side. I put my needle in, get out of the way, put out the way so that you can reverse your garment so that you can do the inside. There's my needle. Take it out now. Dy. A thimble back on and folding over this end now. Remember we need that bit hanging over at the side, whether it's 0.7 or one or 0.5. Then we're doing like a mirror image, matching these two together, and then at the same time, we're going to tuck these inner seams in now. So that those seams can disappear. Oh, look at this, starting to look globly, like a real cuff. I'm a real cf. I'm a real boy. Same bolding the seam as you go, you might like to iron the seam really flat if that helps you. Following the stitches from the other side, just makes it so much easier doing this side. I'm going to now take out that top row of gathering so we don't need it now. We've already gathered that taking out that top row of gathering. Around nice and straight. Following the straight line. There you go. Dele D or I've already done a little bit, and I just carry on carry on same way scooping up a stitch and attaching it. Just measuring that it's as I go, you might like to use your tape to measure. Sometimes I draw a line on my seam just to check that I'm getting and straight. Find your own way to keep it straight, so getting all the way to the end now. Then we need to do the same as we did. I'm attaching it with a pin. Again, just so that I don't go go off hay wire. I get to the end getting excited because we're nearly at the finish line of these cuffs. I've gone all way to the end now. How lovely that's. What I need to do now is I need to tuck in the two sides. I tuck like This is a point when the cordoy is helpful. If you're using a heavy linen, you can use the grain of the fabric to help you get a nice straight line. I can be a little bit fiddly, just fiddling around to get it so it looks really nice and straight. Trusting your eye, and you can use your fingers to press it flat. Once it's all pressed flat, then I think I've heard the term whip stitch is it whipch, Fellstitch, whipit, you just attach these two together, like so. I think I'm going to start with a fastening knot. I do love when I switch from one thing to another, just adding another knot, make it extra secure. The random straight. Scoop a bit under a bit fully working all the way along till we get to the end and then we fast. Then we just repeat the same on the other end. The other side of the cuff was open like that too. We need to do the same. Making that piece of thread, disappear, put it through. Now I need to do the other one. Tuck in in the same fashion, tuck tuck, and so all the way along there. That's all lovely and neat two This part can be fiddly, just fiddling around so you get it really nice and straight, so just take your time and then use your fingers to press it flat so it's nice and straight. Getting rid of any random loose threads as well while we're in this process. I've got a short piece of thread to do this bit, so I'm going to start in with a fastening knot and work exactly the same as I did in the other one. Then when we get to the end tying up with the knot. While I look at that say lovely. It's really starting now to look like a jacket. If we turn it the right way, you'll just see how lovely this is starting to look neat we just need to repeat the same on the other side that we've got two cuffs like so, which we're going to do our buttons on soon. One side left undone and there is a side that's finished looking lovely and starting to look like a jacket. That's what we need to do. Really starting to take shape. That steps complete. I'll see you in the next session. 15. Attach Collar: Back in this sesson, we are going to attach the collar. The interesting thing you'll notice about the collar. I mentioned it before is that it opens at the front and the back. You can make the creative choice of how big your collar is. Obviously with Bobby being a bit smaller, his collar is smaller and mine sits about here, but I've also seen them having very, very big collars. We attach the right collar sew all the way around, so it attaches from the button panel and goes all the way around, and then meets in the middle with the other side of the collar and goes around. Let's get sewing. So I've got my shoulder panel, and I'm going to mark the halfway point on it. Because with our collar, we gather up the front and gather up the back evenly. So the midway point of the shoulder is the halfway point. Here's my collar, and I'm finding my halfway point in this. You'll notice this is a theme going all the way through. Always to keep things even, we always measure the halfway point, and sometimes in some garments like the gathered skirt, the quarter points to keep our gathers nice and even. So the first step is to attach the collar to the shoulder panel. As the gussets and other parts, we leave the 0.7 0.7 the seven millimeter or the 1 centimeter seam at either end of the shoulders because that bits going to tuck under. I'm just pinning it here securely, and just make sure it's really neat and even that we've got the two halfway points matched up, the halfway point of the cuff and the halfway point of the shoulder. Now I'm just starting my thread off with a fastening knot. And once these two are fastened, then I'll work along with my seam, a nice straight line attaching the midway point of the collar to the shoulder. So I've done one half of it, and then once I've reached that halfway point, carrying on. With our same felling stitch that we've used so many times in this garment, just attaching that collar to the shoulder panel and leaving your seam at the end. You'll notice I'm not going all the way to the end of the shoulder panel. I whether it's one centimeters or 0.7 at the end. Okay. That is that first step done. C attached to the shoulder. Then what we will be doing is attaching one end of our collar to the button panel. I'm folding it over both ways. I've folded it from the side and from the end. Mike so it's folded under there, folded under there. Now this is the part that's tricky about getting nice even gathering from the button panel all the way along to the shoulder. I've tried various techniques to get it even. You can measure the distance from the front panel to the shoulder panel and then from the shoulder panel to the edge of the smocking, and work out if it needs to be half half or similar, or just do it by I. Right now I'm just doing it by I and matching up so that all the gathers are nice and even. Or, like I said, you can mark the halfway point, so the halfway point is where the shoulder meets the column. So that's He mines 4 centimeters, each bits there, 4 centimeters. So I can just pin that there, and then I at least know that if I get those two halves, even then the whole thing will be even. As with the cuffs, all we're doing is gathering it up, taking a moment to make sure the seams fold over at the same length and then making sure the stitches are even, and then I just scoop up and under. You see, I've just done it all the way up to the shoulder panel. I'm taking my pin now and then I'm going to carry on along here. Again, just fiddle fiddling to get it all nice and even. I working all the way to the end of the gathering stitches and along the shoulder panel to where your stitches end. So there's no gap now. That's all sealed up. You can see from the front now it's starting to take some shape there, and you can get the impression of what it will look like with all the smocking gathered like so. Now we need to fold it over. Actually before that, we need to attach to the back. We found the midway point at the back and we need to fold it both ways again and it to the midway point ing a pin. H As before, just taking a moment to get the gathers nice and e and make sure that you've folded the N and straight. You're working along with gas and a nice straight. You see now we've gone all way from the front over to the shoulder, and that's all straight and then we've gone along the back. Now what we need to do is just flip that collar and do the other side. I'm starting from the mid back, which is where we finished. Then I'm going to fold that seam using the grain of the corduroy to get a nice straight line that way, and then folding this side to and sandwiching it in a bit like we did with the cuff or with the button panel, we're just sandwiching the collar in. When changing direction, adding another fastening knot, everything's really secure, coming through to the other side. So you've got your stitches you should be able to see from when you did the outside of the collar so that the inside of the collar can be nice and straight. Folding over as you go and just working your way around. So you work around the back of the smock, then to the shoulder panel, and then all the way to the front. It's starting to look like this. Then we need to close up our two ends like we did on the cuff. By taking a moment to fiddle and get it all neat like that, seal it off, and we need to do that on both sides. A nice fastening knot when we've finished. Make that thread disappear into the collar by just threading it in and pulling through. Okay. So there is on both sides, just got to seal up that one now. It's all both sides, so your garment so start to look like this. It's really starting to take shape now with that collar. In the next lesson, we will finally start smoking. 16. Smock Front Panel: In this lesson, the smoking begins. Be patient with yourself. It is a new skill to learn. It's taken me a while to get to the point where I feel confident that my outline stitch is always going to be neat, and my wave stitch, which is the Zig Za stitch, is always going to be even. So just take time you might even like to practice on a practice piece of fabric. There's something I really find therapeutic about smoking because it's counting. You'll notice that I'm always counting the stitches makes it quite meditative. Right. Let's get smoking. So you can see on the right side, here's one I've done earlier, and we're going to work on the left side. So we've bunched up three rows at a time and knotted them, which just makes it easier to pull our gathers into nice. Thinks sometimes people call them tubes, the little sort of rows that you smock onto gathering smocking tubes. So now I've got my embroidery thread, and I've just got the three threads rather than six that come on the DMC thread that I bought. I split it in a half, so I've just got three threads. Smoothing it out, it doesn't get all knotted as I go. Then I'm going to start from the middle of my garment with a fastening knot at the first row. You should have an idea in mind of the design you're going to do and with mine, I'm starting with an outline stitch and then I'm going to do some wave stitches and then back to outline and then back to wave, and that creates a nice diamond and line pattern. That you can see here on the other side. With the outline stitch, you've got to choose the direction you're going to do it, and I want to mirror the other side. So I just double check the other side so I can mirror it. I'm coming into the first tube. And this is a really key tip here that you really don't want to stitch any of that green thread because then when you pull it out, it could get all tangled to just be really careful to not pick up any of that green thread as you're sewing. As always, checking shoulders, checking jaw. That is our first stitch. We go at the top of the tube, we scoop it, and then we come out under. You might be coming out on top depending on which direction you're going. So I'm mirroring the other side. As you do this, you might initially be a bit disappointed. Hang on this isn't very good or very straight or anything, but it's not until you really get to the end or until even you've done a few rows, where it really starts to feel like, Ah, this is starting to look good now. So be patient with yourself and working all the way along outline stitch to the end of this row. Making sure I get the tension right. That green thread can be a bit pesky. Pulling it nice and tight in between each stitch. Then when I get to the end, I need to do a little knot to finish it off. That's my last stitch on this row. Pesky green thread. Maybe it'd be good to sell tape it or something out the way. It does often annoy me. So now I'm going to do a, I'm going to do one more stitch, attach it to the end, and then it will be time for the knot. So that's the last stitch. Ah, that stitch, is a knot, there we go. We'll knot it in now. Look, that's starting to look very nice. Mirroring the other side. If your stitches are uneven, which can happen, you can fix them by going back over like this and just going and pulling them tight. I'm scooping under the stitch and just pulling it tight, and then the next one D D. Till all your stitches are even. Because when you first do it, sometimes you end up doing a few loose stitches, you can go back and fix it like this. It is a bit fiddly. We'll give a nice finish at the end. I'm just making sure everything's all even and tight, pulling up that knot. That looks much better to me now. So now I'm going to go, this is my knot. Here we go. Keep talking about a knot. Here's the knot. I'm right, that is all fastened off now. So that is row one complete. Then I'm going to go back through to the other side. And I'm going to do my next line of smocking. I like to just very sneakily slide my thread under a few threads so that it's hidden, but you really don't want it to come through on the other side. Just make sure if you're going to look from the top, you can't see these stitches. They're just picking up tiny threads from the back, but you shouldn't see it from the front. Coming back through. And now working back the other direction. Pesky green threads, get out of my way. I'm doing another knot here again just so that it's nice and secure to start, and then I'm going to work back the other direction. Again, being very careful not to pick up any green threads as I go. Just taking the very front of that stitch, avoiding the green thread at all costs. So scooping up the front of the tube and pulling down and getting that tension right as you go. S, pulling it, nice tension. Carry on. So there we go, all the way to the end of that one. Nice fastening knot. And the n. Go away. Lovely. I've done two rows of outline stitch. I'm going to make that disappear, and then going to come back the other row. Then we're getting on to the wave stitch, which I'm going to use two rows of wave stitch to create a diamond shape. First of all, just making this thread, this time, I'm going to make the thread disappear into the button panel. Just the main thing is that you want to move the thread down to the next row without it showing from the front side. In this case because I've got the button panel there, I can sn through that. So now I'm out on the next row, it's time for the wave stitch, which as with so much of this project, it just takes a bit of time to get it right. Because what you do with outline, you're just going straight along like that. But with this one, every time you go down, you just go down like a millimeter, so it creates the zigzag. I normally count. That was stitch two, one, two, and then three, and then is the third one, coming out from under. Then on the fourth one, which is now, one, two, what's wrong with that, give a little. One, two, three, and then now we're on stitch four. We should be midway point between that row of gathering stitches and the next outline stitch. Can you see now I'm coming up from the top because I'm going to start heading back in the other direction. I did one, two, three, four, this direction, and then four now becomes one, that was one, and now it's one, two, three, four, and tn. Notice now I'm coming up this way, one, to Can you see that's starting to be the first zig of our Zig sag. Now stitch four. This is the turning stitch, four becomes one. I'm turning it, now it's coming back the other way. That now becomes one, and then I go one, two, three, four, four becomes the point, one, two, three, four, L so so. One, now that stitch two. There we go. One, two, three, Number four is the turning one. So rather than coming at the bottom now, I'm going to come out at the So there's two zig zag and a zig, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, I sometimes go back and count them and check. It's very methodical. It's really good. I found it's just so helpful for my mind. I think smocking and hand sewing is really help with stress because it just gives me something very practical to focus on. Carrying on our next zag. We've done two zigs and how on a ag. I think you get the feeling now, so this one's the turning ones, then it comes out the bottom. There we go. This is really starting to take shape now. So I go all the way to the end. What's going on here? Oh, too check if it's even, you can pull your smocking gathering really tight and just see how it looks. Now with this one, I just turn it back on the front, and now I'm going back in this direction. So I've done one, two, three, four, so then again, one, two, three, four. That's what's great about the diamond one is you don't have to go back under and hide it because you just literally turn the comment round and head back in the other direction. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Coming back by that deleted lead ad. It's almost like you're mirroring the zig zag above you, so you can use that as a guide to check that you're doing it right. I'm looking at the top one, checking a, that I want you to line up with that to get a nice even diamond stitch. Practice makes perfect, relax shoulders, relax jaw, relax temples. No need to feel frustration. We're just learning. There's also loads of videos on YouTube on this actual part, the wave and trellis stitch. You might like to watch some more videos. See someone else do it, might help you. There we go. That's one row of diamonds done. And that is starting to look very, very lovely, wow. So I decided to then go on and do so, that's me just tting it off, I think, finishing that row. Dear lady. Oh, yes, knotting off that diamond and making that thread disappear. Good bye, cheeky thread. Then I decided this was all creative and creative decisions. I decided I wanted to do one more row of diamonds and one more row of outline stitch. My final design goes outline, outline, wave, wave, outline, wave, wave, outline. You can work out your own with what you like. There we go. Coming to the end of my final outline stitch. It's really starting to look like something. Like I said with this one when you first start, you think, Oh, my gosh, this doesn't even what is this. Then it starts to come together and look lovely. Shoulders, jaw, temples, practice makes perfect. Hips as well. Contents up in our feet, our hips, just making this so relaxing. When we finish, my design is finished on both sides. This is a satisfying bit. You chop off all your gathering stitches, D D do. And then you pull it out and Wow. Oh, my goodness. I just love this bit. Looks so nice now. It's really taking shape. You can see how gorgeous that looks. Just noticing any little threads here that need to be cleaned up. Look at that. Wow. That front panel looks something and then repeating the same on the other side. So we just cut off those threes on one side and then pull them out from the other side. Lovely, be very careful not to cut any of your smocking. Wow, look. See here I think I caught a green sti. A bit of the green threads so just need to be careful, pull it out. Wow, look at that. Gorgeous. Now our front panel smoked. Let's go and smock our cuffs. 17. Smock Cuffs: Back in the seste we are going to smock the cuffs. In my design, I have just used one row of wave stitch on the cuffs. Let's get sewing. So here's our cuff. You'll see my buttons already attached. Don't worry. We're going to do that in a future lesson. So for now, we're just focusing on the smocking of the cuff. We've already done the front panel, so we've practiced, so this should be much easier this time around. So we're just knotting it here at the base of the cuff, make the The thread disappear under a few very discrete stitches here, making sure that doesn't show from the front, and then we're going to work around with wave stitch. So you see, I've got quite a few rows of gathering stitch, and I could have done more. But I just decided in the end for my design that I just wanted one row of waves stitch. I thought that looked really nice. I've seen it where people have quite a long panel of smocking on the sleeves that can look really nice too. It's totally up to you in your design. So here I am just doing the wave stitch. Remember, you just count in fours, you go one, two, three, four, and then the 41 becomes the turning one, when you turn it back down. That's stitch three. You'll see now I've turned it back down to stitch four, and then coming again so that now becomes one. This is now two As I said in the previous lesson, you might want to go on YouTube and type in wavetitch, smoking, just to see some other people do it because the way you hold the fabric and all these things make it easier or harder for you. Lifting and twisting on that one deletedly do. We've done one zig, one zag, and we just carry on all the way along zig, zig zag, getting to the end. Out of the way you pesky green threads, making sure that we don't ever sow the green thread because that's when it's really annoying, get out my way. To pull that through, tightening up. Time for our knot. Pulling that through through the loop, do a knot. That's our cuffs. That's much simpler than the front panels because I've just decided on that one row of wave sit which I think looks really nice just a little bit of detail on the sleeves, but not going mad. Making that disappear, making sure you can't see it from the outside of the garment. Then we're just going to do a little knot that we're going to hide in the cuff. There we go. Looking very pretty. That steps complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 18. Hem: Come back. In this lesson, we are going to do the hem. So in this design, I've just done a very, very small rolled hem. If you'd like to try a wider hem, a bit of a chunkier hem, you can go to lesson 14 of my gathered skirt class. Let's get sewing. So just taking any loose threads, first of all, before I start folding my hem. As with so much of this project, I'm just doing it by y, how much I'm going to fold it, but you might like to use a tape and measure all out. The first thing I'm going to do is just do a fastening knot. On the button panel to get started. Then I'm just doing a very small rolled hem so I'm just going to roll it once, roll it again. Then once I'm attaching that bit to that bit, I do like to do another knot, so this is starting with 2 knots, really 1 knot, and then 2 knots. There's the second knot. Then all I'm going to do is work along straight with that fell stitch that I've used so many times in this project and work along nice and straight. As I mentioned before, you might like to go to my gathered skirt class where I sew a hem, I sew a slightly thicker hem. Can be quite nice, a bit more of a statement hem. It's all to do with the length of your coat or your smock as well and how long you want it. You see now I've just worked all the way around, like so. Nice and even, it looks so lovely from the inside, and then flipping it should be nice and straight from the outside as well. If you try it and it's not straight the first time, try pressing it before you do it and so after pressing. That steps complete. I'll see you in the next lesson. 19. Button holes: Welcome back in this sess and we're going to do the buttons and the button holes. So I actually went and looked at some of my husband's garments to see if there was a rule, and it seems that the buttons are always on the right, and the button holes are always on the left. Maybe because that's most people are right handed. I'm not sure. Doesn't really matter, but you can make that decision about which side you have your buttons. And then the same, I noticed on most garments, the button is on the front of the cuff, and the button hole is on the back. Let's get sewing. So there's our lovely smoked cuff. And this is what we're aiming for here. We've got our button, our button hole like sew. Lovely. So Let's get going on that. First of all, we just need to measure where that button is going to be. I might like to use some other garments for reference about how far in the button should be. Mine is for the center of the button is 1 centimeter from the end. I'm going. I want to obviously have the two cuffs looking the same, so I'm going to recreate that going 1 centimeter from the end here. Got my thimble. Got my button, looking like that's going to be there, fantastic. First of all, just as with all of this, always just starting with a fastening checking I'm halfway. I want this button to be exactly halfway on the cuff. Now that's there. Now we can just start going round and round and round the button. Just adjusting the position. As you do it, just double check now, matching them up, looking good. And then going through. I'd say I do somewhere around five stitches on each button hole that it really is nice and secure. Then once you've done, I mean, some buttons just have two holes, but these buttons, then you get a nice cross, round and round and round both directions, about five stitches. Always kind of heading back to the center point of where you came in. I it's starting to look good. Just keep going round, round, round. Like that, it is about five stitches. Okay. Once you've got enough stitches in both directions, then it's time to fasten it off, which I normally do at the back like so coming under a little bit and doing a nice knot. Checking shoulders, temple, posture, hips, staying nice and relaxed. Sets all fastened on lovely, looking good. Now we need to do the whole that this will go into. I draw a little mark with my pencil where it will be. And then in this case, I'm going to use my scissors. You can also use a scalpel, which I'll use on the front panel. So just do a little snip. And then you want to check. Oh, this always scares me. I don't want to cut my lovely garment. The little snip, snipey snip. Check if you can fit the button in comfortably because obviously you want to add some stitches, so the pole gets slightly smaller I can't fit it in, so then I just make it a tiny bit bigger, check it again. That can go in now, now I'm ready to do buttonhole stitch. As with other parts of this class, you might want to go on YouTube and search hand sewing buttonhole stitch to see an example of someone else doing it because I must confess that doing Navy on Navy here makes it a bit harder to see. I took me quite nice to do your button stitch in a contrast in color to make it stand out, and for educational purposes, there are some videos on YouTube where they're using a different color thread to the color of the fabric, which makes it a bit easier to see what's going on. Basically what I'm doing is a few millimeters from the edge. I'm going through the hole, and then I pull through a loop as if I'm going to do a knot, but then I pull down so the knot is in the center of the button. I'll show you a few more, so you know what I mean, I go in a few millimeters from the edge. I come out the center of the button hole. I loop through and I pull down this way so the knot is right at the bottom and nice and straight. I keep working all the way along the edge in the same fashion and the stitches want to be right next to each other because we want this to prevent any fraying and to give a really nice neat button edge. The bit gets a bit trickier and a bit hard to see where it's navy on navy is this nice curved corner. You'll also find I did a curved edge of a buttonhole stitch on my rolled opening of my gathered skirt class. You might like to look at the rolled opening of my gathered skirt class to see what I'm doing here. But I'm basically working in a horseshoe shape so that the buttonhole stitches come around in a horseshoe shape around the top. Same, just keep pulling the loop through and then pulling down towards the center of the button hole. All the knots are in the center of the button, forming a really secure and hard wearing button hole. Pulling and through. Then once we've done that horseshoe shape on one end. Then we just work back the other way as we did. You'll see now I've come to the other side. Now I'm doing the horse shoe on the other end and then fastening in it all off with an ice fastening knot. Really run out of thread at the end there. Once you've finished, if you see that there's any gaps, you might like to just run around again with the buttonhole stitch again just to really make sure that you're not get any gaps. Yeah. You can see here now this is looking really lovely and our button fits securely. Lovely. Perfect. Look at that. Beautiful. Now to our front panel, the first part is to actually decide how the gap between your buttons. Again, you might like to use a reference garment that you like the button gaps. I tried out a few different things. In the first attempt here, I tried gaps of 11 centimeters. You'll see me marking that out now. This is the great thing about this these marking talks I'm using, you can just rub it off easily with your thumb and then start again. I recommend taking your time drawing out these button hole marks so that you're really happy with it because you can hold it up and get a feel for how it looks. These were 11 centimeters apart. But once I did it and looked it, I just thought it really needed five buttons, not four buttons, so I rub them out. And start again. For this small garment for my toddler for my son, I think an eight centimeter gap look just right. Just take some time to work out what looks right for you, depending on your height, and your shape, and just look at other garments to see what the gaps are between the buttons on other garments. Once you feel happy with your dots, Stand back and have a look that looks nice to me. Then I can attach buttons at each one of those points. There we go. I'm attaching five buttons at the front at equal distances. Once they are all attached, it's time now to make the button holes along the front, and this is when I need my scalpel. I line it all up, get it nice and straight, and I mark my gap. As we did on the cuff, We will test it to see if the button will fit snugly in. If it doesn't, then I use my scissors to snip it a little bit bigger and test it. It's a bit of a fine art, this one because we don't want the button hole too big and obviously we don't want it too small, so you just need to fiddle around to get it just right. Just be cautious with how much you snip so you don't make them too big, then your buttons won't be secure. Then I carry on working. After I've done that hole, then I use my scalpel to make holes all the way along the front. I'm going to now do my second button, so lining it up. Use my scalpel. I don't think to be honest, I'm using this in the best health and safety method. It probably better if you've got a cutting board. When you slice, you're not going to poke your finger. I'm just snipping it a bit bigger as I did with the front one, and then I'm going to test it and then just keep working all the way down. Until all my buttons. Oh, that still wasn't big enough. Le tiny bit. Keep just taking like a millimeter off and then try again. Like I said, you really don't want your button holes too big. Okay, looking good. So I just work on a way exactly the same all the way down. And then I just need to rewind the video and do all the button holes, stitch all the buttons. Until they're all even and looking lovely like this. That steps complete. Next up, the inner shoulder. 20. Inner Shoulder: Back in this lesson, we're going to reinforce the shoulders and sew them from the other side, so the shoulders are very strong. Let's get sewing. Here's the inside of our smok and here is our inner shoulder panel that we're going to use to cover up all this mess. All this gathering, all these stitches under the shoulder, so the shoulders look really nice and neat, and as well as that, the shoulders are really strong and reinforced. This is about a 1 centimeter seam all the way around and we're just going to fold it in all these places. Starting in this corner here, I've folded the seam on both sides and done a fastening knot and now I'm just joining this corner here. Then I'm going to work in that same stitch that we've done so many times in this project, the fell stitch to join that side. As with other parts, you might like to make sure that this seam is folded evenly by measuring it and pressing it. But I just do it by e and as I go. I'm just attaching it here with a fell stitch, working all way along. This is attaching to the collar right now. Then turning to a second side and now this is the gathering. I'm just going to line it all up, get it nice and straight. Use the stitches from previous parts of the project to help me get a nice straight line. As with other parts of the gathering, we scoop up one of the tube, one of the gathered tubes, and then just work our way around. This is another nice moment of working with Cordoy because you can really follow that straight line to get a nice straight edge. I'm going all the way out towards the shoulder checking in nice, relaxed shoulders, relaxed jaw, hips, posture. Make sure you're sat nice and comfortable and not slouching. Now I'm going to use this panel just to tuck in any other messy bits, and also, you might want to trim any loose threads that you spot. This bit here is all a bit messy, so I'm just tucking that under. As I come to the shoulder, where I'm going to turn and do the third side. I've got this corner folded nicely and I'm t on this corner now to do the final side, not the final side, the third side. Okay, so that's two sides done, looking so nice and smart. Remember listening to Steve Jobs talking about how he worked with his designers to make sure the inside of the laptops are really beautiful, even though none of the customers will see it. I like that with these socks. You can spend quite a long time making the inside look really beautiful. It's just for you as the wearer, that it feels really nice and you know that it's strong. We're going to work around now the fourth side. Look at that. Just the last final few stitches of this fourth side. Those gathered stitches. Then as always fastening off with an ice, fastening knot at the end and making that thread disappear. Pulling it through and snipping. Wow look at that. Beautiful. Our inner shoulder looks so good right now, and there's the outside. That steps complete. I'll see you in the next sesson, where we'll do our finishing touches. 21. Finishing Touches: Come back well done for making it this far. Now it's time for the finishing touches, which involves tidying up, just noticing any lose threads, reinforcing where we need to and pressing your garment. As we did with the front smoking panels, we're just pulling out the smoking threads on the sleeves. This is where you really start to enjoy your hand work and see how beautifully it's come together. So both sides here, pulling those threads out, Snip and pull. Are so satisfying. Love that. Beautiful. Now I'm just looking out for any loose stray threads. There's a few here on this cuff, on this sleeve. So just really carefully snipping them off. Just checking over your garments so that the first time you wear it, you don't walk around with threads all hanging off you. I have been known to do that before. Once you've checked over all the loose threads and just pick them all off and snip them. Then it's time for reinforcing if you feel there's any spot. So this is one spot that I feel is really weak on this garment is at the back center of the two collars. So when I initially sewed it altogether, I don't feel like I really got in there and made sure it was the two sides of the collar were really secure. So what I'm doing here is I'm just doing some knots to really not all the collar is really securely in place. Because we attached the front and back of one, the front and back of the other, but we didn't attach them together, but now they're both together, it's worth just doing these stitches to reinforce everything. Now I'm going back over to the other side with more knots and just going to knot. It's really secure and really neat and beautiful, so now over to the other side, a few more knots. Knotting these two sides together from knotting both the right collar and the left collar together and knotting both the front and the back of the collar. It's really really secure. After we've done plenty of knots, we'll do one last knot to finish it off and make that piece of thread disappear. As we do. Beautiful. And now for pressing. So this is another final touch that just makes your garment really pop and sing to make it really crisp. So crisping up those collars and. Everything's really neat and crisp. Nice tree edges. And then ironing out the whole of the garment, front back arms all of it, so that you have this look at that D D D D. Absolute beautiful. Appreciating all the detail, the cuffs, the smocking, these. Wow. Now your garment is finished and looks so beautiful, let's go to the final lesson where we'll say well done, and goodbye. See you in the next lesson. 22. Goodbye and Well Done: Completed the class well done. If you have just watched it through, and you haven't actually started, now it's time to go back to the beginning and actually get your fabric and go go go. If you have completed your garment, then well done and I can't wait to see it, is a good time to celebrate and reflect on the process. How can you celebrate? Well, for me, I made these for my son's birthday, so we wore them on the birthday and took lots of photos and videos. You might like to do something like that. It's also a really good time to reflect on the process. Write down in your journal, what didn't work, what did you learn? What would you do differently next time? Every time I make a garment, I learn something new and I can carry it into my next design. So now we've celebrated and reflected on the process. It's time to say goodbye. Thank you so much for taking part in this class with me. Skillshare is all about community, so let's connect. Remember, there's the discussions tab where you can ask me any questions or post any comments. I'd also really love to see your finished smock. You can post that in the project section. Or you might also like to add it on social media and do tag me at Laura Lam hashtag folk sewing with Laura. If you've enjoyed this class, please do take a moment to leave a review. It really helps the Skillshare algorithm, and it really helps other students be able to find this class. To stay in touch, please do go to my teacher page and follow me. That means you'll get notified with future classes I upload. You'll also find links there to my social media, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and I do also have an e mail list where I send out inspiring e mails every once in a while. May the magical art of sewing bring more intention, patience, peace, and beauty into your life. Thank you so much. Goodbye.