Smocked Bishop dress and a card

A wonderful young woman with a love of old fashioned needle arts is in my knitting group. She recently gave birth to a daughter and while pregnant, commented on her love of smocked garments which aren't prevalent in this area, in this era.

Once upon a time I would have bought Imperial Batiste and gathered the fabric on my own smocking pleater.

Quality fabric is important when running it through a pleater. Joann's is fine for many things, but this level of quality isn't found in their yard goods. I suspect my long unused pleater may need new needles before tackling another project and they would need to be ordered. The needles are fine and if you run roughshod through the process of turning the pleater wheel, they will crunch and break. Not good, not good at all.

Thank goodness I discovered Meredith's Closet, an Etsy shop of ready to smock items. I order a 12 month size dress in a color called Butter. I pulled out my stash of long unused smocking designs which are called 'plates' rather than patterns. This is not the design I used, but is a sample of what a plate looks like.

Before I could begin to smock, the center of all those pleats had to be found. Each pin represents 10 pleats. The threads you see are gathering threads, usually quilting weight threads that are tied off on either side of the area to be smocked.

Here you see the pleats both scrunched up and spread out. The pleats should slide easily on the gathering threads. Smocking is worked from the left side of the garment to the right, but the needle enters the top of the pleat from right to left.

Reading the plate came easily to me when I learned to smock because I was accustomed to counted cross stitch and knitting charts.

The color is a bit off (too strong) in this photo, but shows the completed dress with a deep hem which is traditional in these dresses.

Here is a close up of the smocking itself. I was pleased with how it turned out, and more importantly, the mommy who received this dress was very happy.

The that I made to accompany this gift was another tri-shutter card. I seem to be stuck on them lately but they have been turning out well and use a variety of cute scraps and embellishments.

 





Mic-key M-o-u-s-e......pillowcases

If you grew up watching the original Mickey Mouse Club with Jimmy Dodd and Annette Funicello in the late 50's, it is hard to spell Mickey Mouse without separating the name as it was sung.

One of my great nephews just turned four. He loves Mickey. He is the second son in my niece's family so the house is full of boy toys. My sons are 22 months apart, I know what that is like. Ethan loves Mickey, but what doesn't he already have?

Part of his gift from us will be these pillow cases, made in record time out of two Disney prints.

The directions for this style of pillowcase are all over the internet, often under the "million pillowcase challenge" or "roll up method". This link will take you to a video tutorial or you can click to download step by step directions. For these pillowcases I cut the body at 3/4 yd (27 inches), the band at 1/4 yd (9 inches) and the blue starry trim at 2 inches. The band and the trim are folded in half, resulting in a standard size pillowcase when complete.

 

I've followed this pattern before. Each time I make one it seems to go faster. After the "roll" part of assembly was done, I closed the side seam with a French seam and the bottom end was a regular seam with an additional row of zigzag stitching on the raw edges. How you finish the seams is up to you. A serger would be great for both.

 

The card for Ethan could not have been simpler, thanks to a perfect cardstock choice from Michael's. All I did was cut the paper down to 8x6 and fold it into a 4x6 card with a hand written greeting inside. I've discovered I don't always need to reinvent the wheel when making a card.

 Mic...See you real soon!  Key...Why? Because we like you!  M-O-U-S-E.



Hanging onto summer

People who create for craft shows need to craft ahead of the current date. I don't participate in craft shows but do try to get things done so that I can enjoy the fruits of my labor for as long as possible without having Halloween décor displayed in December or Easter in August.

I love summer. Even though it isn't officially over for another 3 weeks, Labor Day seems to symbolize the end of summer to many. Does anyone else feel we rush into Fall, then rush into Winter and Christmas instead of enjoying whatever the current climate and time of year?

The next wave of décor in our home will be Halloween and general autumn related. I'm not ready for that yet here in SE Michigan, and hope our weather doesn't lead me to feeling fall-ish until October. Considering a few leaves have changed already, I'm not holding my breath.

I am holding onto summer as long as possible though. This table runner, made a few months ago remains in place.

The colors make me happy. Although you can't see it in this photo, the leaves and ladybugs were done by machine using an appliqué stitch that looks like a continuous row of the letter E. I love using that. I zone out and could do that for hours.

In other crafting news, I am almost done with the second sock of a pair. I hope not to need them until next month, but just in case the temps dip much lower at night or early morning, I'll be ready.

Cue the Super Heroes theme music!

With thanks to This Blog Post and the links within that post, I made Batman apparel for my grandson, the Prince of Sweetness who is also known as daddy's Buddy, mommy's Peanut, and Uncle Billy's Bug. Think George Alexander Louis, Prince of Cambridge has a lot of names? Any first born child/grandchild/niece or nephew does.

Our grandson was happy to see the Batman logo but not interested in wearing the tabard, mask or gauntlets. He is only three so there is still time for my genes to make an appearance and the love of costuming appear.

I now wish I had taken more time getting these photos, but between these and the photos on the above link, you can see things well enough.  Here is the tabard, mask and gauntlets.

 

I used premium weight craft felt for all that is black, and regular weight in yellow. The felt was left over from the playhouse project (shown here on my other blog). The tabard began as a 14" x 36" rectangle with an oval cut out for the head, and a slit cut down 4" in the back. No button or tie is necessary to close the neckline, this is just for play or possibly Halloween. Ribbons (12" pieces) were stitched at the sides to hold the tabard around a crime fighting body. 

The mask is a double layer of felt with elastic stitched in place. Other than stitching the ribbons and elastic because of the pull on these areas, the rest of these pieces could be glued, but I can stitch this stuff faster than glue would dry. Felt is forgiving and doesn't need hemming so this was a quick project. 

The gauntlets were designed to fit a child of 4-9. I don't know how this age range was determined. My grandson is very big for his age. I cut the gauntlet a little smaller and these were none too big on him, especially on bare arms on a warm summer day. It wasn't so much the width of the arm as it was getting his hands through the opening. I may cut these a little shorter at the narrow end to make the opening larger.

 I didn't time myself making these pieces, but I think the whole project took me less than 90 minutes, and that included getting supplies out and cutting templates for the logo and an oval for the neck opening.

 

Hmmm, I wonder if there is design online for a Wonder Woman version? A mature Wonder Woman. Very mature. Grandmotherly.