{"id":9160,"date":"2010-10-11T23:07:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T03:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/?p=9160"},"modified":"2015-01-09T21:56:24","modified_gmt":"2015-01-10T02:56:24","slug":"peach-bishop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/11\/peach-bishop\/","title":{"rendered":"Peach Bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PeachBishopwholeBriteX\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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This is one of my all-time favorite smocked dresses.\u00c2\u00a0 I made it for Rebecca when she was just 4 years old and now, 30 years later, still enjoy seeing it hang in the nursery closet.<\/p>\n

There are several interesting features to this peach Imperial batiste bishop dress.\u00c2\u00a0 The\u00c2\u00a0 extra deep smocking front and back, white sleeve overlay,\u00c2\u00a0and original smocking design made it a pleasure to design and stitch.\u00c2\u00a0The bottom rows of the smocking design were drafted to mimic the sleeve overlay fancyband.<\/p>\n

EXTRA DEEP SMOCKING:<\/em> The\u00c2\u00a0number of rows smocked\u00c2\u00a0front and back on this dress greatly exceeds the recommended amount for this size.\u00c2\u00a0 You can see that the\u00c2\u00a0smocking goes far below the beginning of the armhole curve, normally the absolute last row of stitching.\u00c2\u00a0 Smocking rarely goes beyond this point because 1) it would exceed the width of the child’s shoulder and 2) it is impossible to pleat through that curve.<\/p>\n

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\"peachbishopshoulderX\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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The first restriction is eliminated by smocking only a few rows at the neckline, well before the edge of the shoulder.\u00c2\u00a0 Secondly, the pleating is done before construction, allowing pleats to go to any depth.<\/p>\n

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\"PeachBishoptopX\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is most easily done\u00c2\u00a0by working with a block of fabric, rather than a cut out front and back.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The armhole curve is traced\u00c2\u00a0with a washaway marker onto the fabric block before pleating front, back and sleeves\u00c2\u00a0from a straight edge to a straight edge.\u00c2\u00a0 Later, the pleating threads are pulled out up to the seamline of the armhole and knotted off.\u00c2\u00a0 Then the armhole curve is cut out and the front and back pieces are joined to the sleeves.<\/p>\n

SLEEVE OVERLAY<\/em>:\u00c2\u00a0 The white sleeve cap overlay includes a Swiss embroidery from Capitol Imports, entredeux and French Val lace edging.\u00c2\u00a0 This detail alone elevates the easy care bishop to a\u00c2\u00a0more\u00c2\u00a0elegant\u00c2\u00a0level.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is easily done.\u00c2\u00a0 First,\u00c2\u00a0 the fancyband was created. The width of sleeve pattern was measured just above the beginning of the armhole curve and recorded.\u00c2\u00a0The Swiss embroidery was edged with entredeux with lace edging joined to the bottom edge.<\/p>\n

Next, the depth of the sleeve was measured\u00c2\u00a0from the neckline to that same\u00c2\u00a0point above the armhole curve.\u00c2\u00a0 This\u00c2\u00a0will be the finished length of the\u00c2\u00a0sleeve cap.\u00c2\u00a0 The width of the fancy band\u00c2\u00a0was subtracted from the length and a 1\/4″ seam allowance was added.\u00c2\u00a0 The entredeux already has a seam allowance so only one SA need be\u00c2\u00a0added.<\/p>\n

The two sleeve caps\u00c2\u00a0were constructed as one block.\u00c2\u00a0 The fancyband was joined to the batiste, the piece was folded in half and then placed on the\u00c2\u00a0the sleeve pattern, with the raw edge of the batiste at the neckline.<\/p>\n

After the\u00c2\u00a0sleeves were cut out, the white caps were simply basted to the\u00c2\u00a0peach fabric.\u00c2\u00a0 Then each whole piece was treated as a single sleeve. Lace edging was rolled and whipped to the sleeve and\u00c2\u00a06 rows were pleated at the neck edge and again above the lace.<\/p>\n

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\"There<\/a>

There should have been one more stitch joining the peach bodice to the white Swiss embroidery.<\/p><\/div>\n

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PRE-SMOCKING CONSTRUCTION:<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0After the front, back and sleeves were cut out and finished, they were seamed together.\u00c2\u00a0 Care was taken to match up the pleating rows at the neckline on both the sleeves, front and back.\u00c2\u00a0 The regular seam was overcast with fine thread,\u00c2\u00a0because\u00c2\u00a0French seams would have been\u00c2\u00a0very bulky\u00c2\u00a0with 6 layers of fabric.<\/p>\n

ORIGINAL SMOCKING DESIGN:\u00c2\u00a0 While the top rows of smocking are nothing special, just simple diamonds and baby waves, the bottom of the design was my attempt to copy the sleeve fancyband.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, the flowerettes were no challenge. But it took some time for me to echo the lace pattern.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I realized that in order to replicate the look of lace, I needed to use the standard\u00c2\u00a0three strands of floss for the lace header, two strands for the scallop pattern and dot and a single strand of floss for the ground (background) pattern.\u00c2\u00a0I’m not sure that it is entirely convincing, but it was interesting and challenging to try to duplicate the pattern. This portion of the smocking is relatively stitch intensive, so it was necessary to stitch very loosely.<\/p>\n

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\"peachbishopsleevesmockX\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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There is one other smocking detail I’d like to mention.\u00c2\u00a0 Using the smocking stitches for ribbon carriers is a sweet look.\u00c2\u00a0 The first time I tried this on an earlier dress, I used white floss to contrast with the pastel fabric.\u00c2\u00a0 But after white ribbon was run through the one-step waves, the lack of contrast between the ribbon and the stitches caused the smocking to just disappear.\u00c2\u00a0 Since then, I’ve always smocked in the color of the fabric to create contrast.<\/p>\n

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\"I<\/a>

I always tried to stand behind Rebecca when she was wearing this dress because the back closure is so ugly.<\/p><\/div>\n

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UGLY\u00c2\u00a0BACK:<\/em>Time and time again, I have tried to invert the buttons on a bishop so that the smocking design is not broken by this utilitarian necessity.\u00c2\u00a0 Success has always eluded me.\u00c2\u00a0 First, sewing the buttons on to just the placket allows the placket to open enough to look even worse than well placed buttons and button holes.\u00c2\u00a0 Secondly, when I have sewn the buttons through to the smocking, there is a pucker.\u00c2\u00a0 Thirdly, when I attach snaps, I get the same pucker that results when sewing buttons through the smocking.\u00c2\u00a0 I find this back very distracting.<\/p>\n

Does anyone have a suggestion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is one of my all-time favorite smocked dresses.\u00c2\u00a0 I made it for Rebecca when she was just 4 years old and now, 30 years later, still enjoy seeing it hang in the nursery closet. There are several interesting features … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,8,28,24,38],"tags":[204,531,1059],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9160"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9160"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33024,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9160\/revisions\/33024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}