Smocked dress and dots

I visited family last weekend and took some handwork to do. I also learned something. Not having my smock-gathering machine with me I used the traditional method to pull up the gathers. I ironed on a transfer of evenly spaced dots on the reverse side of the fabric, then picked up each row of dots with a gathering thread. Although its a lot of work, this method does give beautifully evenly spaced parallel gathers.

I haven't used this method for years and in my effort to make sure that the dots transferred well and that I'd be able to see them, I got a bit carried away with the ironing bit. Not only did the dots transfer well, they transferred so well that they are quite visible on the front of the fabric! I decided to keep going.

Which colours to use? I started out using colours that toned closely with the fabric. After seeing how the green and blue almost disappeared into the background, I realised that for the smocking to show up, I had to use something that would stand out more and added in the red row.

Overall the embroidery does seem to camouflage the dots and I hope they will fade further with washing. To be safe I'll probably add in a row of cable stitch at the bottom to further hide those blue dots there. More progress next time.

Canvas Work Pincushion Class

The pincushion class I taught over the last couple of weeks has come and gone. It wasn't just stitching or new canvas work stitches, but lots of sharing of ideas for new embroidery projects...

 

chatting and a cup of tea...

 

 

and a good laugh too!

 

 

Thanks for letting us use your shop Pearl.