Smocked Diaper Shirt Finished

This is a quickie post to show you the finished Smocked Diaper Shirt. The original smocking plate, from a forgotten issue of Australian Smocking and Embroidery, had an extra row of smocking echoing the bottom of the hearts, roses in each and every heart, and little french knots at the apex of the bottom row. It was long after I finished the smocking and was almost through half the roses that I realized I had left out that bottom row. Oh well! Since I had already removed the pleating threads there was no way I was going to try to add that last row, and I didn't feel it warranted pleating the remaining rows by hand so I could add it. And free form smocking never works. I had decided to add the roses in every other heart to see if I liked the "lighter" design, and I found that I did. Luckily, the center heart was in the very center of the smocking, so I could get away with half the embroidered roses. 

Since I smocked way too close to the selvedge edge, I just turned it under once and topstitched it down. As I mentioned before, I really don't like thread loops, which seem to be prevalent in bishops, so I added plastic snaps. Nice and easy for a new mom to use.

Here's a close up of the pinstitching on the Swiss embroidery. To repeat myself from the last post, I used Madiera Cotona thread size #80, stitch D7, W and L = 2.5 on my Husqvarna Designer I. I forgot to specify the needle, which was a brand new 100/16 Schmetz general sewing needle. It needs to be brand new as it has to be sharp enough to penetrate the rolled and whipped seam allowance. 

And here's the final dress, waiting for the little darling, who should make her arrival in mid September. No news yet on the one due 1 1/2 weeks ago.