day seven: ring (of stitches) around the collar

(Clever titles are hard, okay? Don’t @ me.) I never got back to the liveblog last night, so let’s try again today.

I got the neckline cut last night and right now I’m going to try to do a rolled hem without stretching the edge. I seriously thought that I might leave it till last, but I said that about a serk I made last summer and it’s still waiting for me to finish the neckline.

In the interest of facing my demons and just doing the damned thing already, I’m going to do this today. I’m nervous, but I can do this… slowly and carefully. 🙂

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IT’S DONE! It’s done. It’sdoneit’sdoneit’sdone. All those tiny, satisfying stitches. I think that at some point I need to make a linen t-shirt top and roll the neckline and do the stitching with a contrast thread so the world can see what it looks like when you only pick up three threads at a time.

In white silk thread, though, it looks like this.

I am stoked. I am super happy with how it turned out. I’m going to give it a quick press and get to work on the sleeves. Stay tuned!

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Sorry I didn’t write a blow-by-blow of doing the first sleeve, but I was busy, you know, making it. I did my usual trick of putting the gusset in upside down first time round, but that was easily remedied. I bought these amazing milliner’s needles and wow can you stack a ton of stitches on these babies — they’re two inches long.

The first thing I did was insert the gusset into the top of the sleeve, and the first thing I must always remember is to sew it in so the fold is on the same side as the sleeve seam. I inserted it so the fold was along the edge of the sleeve head and that will never work.

So I flipped that around, took some measurements from the Viborg shirt I made a few months ago to determine the width of the cuff and where to position the start of the taper to the wrist (seriously, I can’t be bothered to cut the sleeve to that shape), and then closed the seam.

I used to worry about the felled edges of the gusset both folding to the outside of the gusset, but then you have to cut one edge or the other of the seam in order to fell the sleeve seam and no. I absolutely can’t be bothered to be that precious about it. (Not any more, anyway.)

I felled down the seams of the gusset and the underarm seam, and now it’s ready to sew to the shoulder of the serk. Now that I’ve refreshed my memory on how to put the bleeding gusset in (!), the next one should go swiftly and I should have the sleeves attached tomorrow.

Hopefully I’ll also be able to get a start on attaching the gores, too. That’s just a lot of long straight stitching, so it shouldn’t take all a ton of time. After that, it’s just hems.

I really should have asked for viewing recommendations. There are a lot of seams happening here.

Anyway. Nothing will get done tomorrow if I don’t go to bed, so I’m going to do that. Night, y’all.