Reinforcement of neckline stress points – my red 12th century silk dress with slit neckline

Well, it seems like I am finally getting to the second to last posting about my current topic “reinforcement of neckline stress points”.

Let me recap my postings about this topic till now:
In my last posting I showed you an old hand sewing technique which provides great reinforcement for neckline stress points. And in the posting before the last one I posted pictures of how I used a variation of this technique for my husbands most recent tunic.

But let’s not stop at this point as I also used this technique for some other necklines…

As I promised in my last posting, I took some time to dig through the photos of some of my other sewing projects and found two more necklines for which I used this old technique for stress point reinforcement.

The first project I looked at was my tightly fitted red 12th century silk dress with side lacing and slit neckline. This sewing project was actually the very first project for which I used this old technique as the silk fabric I worked with was quite thin. I used a simple variation of the technique like the one I showed you in my recent posting about the neckline of my husbands new tunic. Well – simple or not – I am very glad to say that the neckline still looks great after all this years which just proves to me how great even just a simple variation of this old technique works.

…and I also dug up some photos of a more recent hand sewing project – my husbands yellow and blue 12th century silk tunic. Well, as I know my husband and how he normally treats his garb, I decided to play it safe and to use the full technique for the stress point of his keyhole neckline. But more about his neckline in my next posting… 🙂

Following I will show you how the finished reinforcement at the bottom of my slit neckline of my red 12th century silk dress looks like. It is just a “simple” variation of the stress point reinforcement technique but it works very well – let’s take a look… 😀 

At the first glance it might not be really obvious that I did anything to the stress point at the bottom of the neckline. And well, that was indeed intended:

But if you look a little bit closer, you will see the slight color difference between the bottom border (covered with red silk thread) and the side border (silk fabric) of the neckline. Unfortunately I didn’t have any silk thread in a 100% matching red but the red color of my thread seemed close enough that I decided to use it. As you can see at the close up picture above, the bottom stress point is covered with very small buttonhole stitches for which I used quite thin silk thread. 

And here a photo of the backside:

I think the picture above gives a rather good impression of how many buttonhole stitches were used to cover and strengthen the bottom of this slit neckline. Btw. before I worked my buttonhole stitches, I laid the same long reinforcement stitches along the border – like the ones I showed you in my posting “12th century tunic for my husband – how to secure & strengthen the stress points of a 12th century neckline“.

…and last but not least a look at the reinforcing stitches from above:

This quite thin and nearly not visible “ridge” is maybe the only proof that I used the buttonhole stitch to strengthen the bottom border of the neckline. Well, what shall I say, the lacing for this dress required me to make an endless amount of very small round “buttonholes” and I had quite good practice concerning the buttonhole stitch after I finished my last hole… *lol*

…and before you ask, I worked the other side of the slit neckline (situated at the back) in exactly the same technique – they look so much alike that I decided not to take any extra pictures of it. 🙂 

I hope you enjoyed todays posting and promise that I have only one more example of neckline stress point reinforcement for you… Really, I swear! *giggle*