Feb 25, 2013

Smocking

I am making my little grandson a blessing outfit.
I'm making the button on suit with the pleated front and knickers.


This is my pleater.
For this project, I threaded 10 needles.


Some of my little dowels that hold the spools of thread have broken over the years, but I can still get it to work :)


I rolled my length of Swiss Cotton onto a dowel and gently pulled it through the pleater.  


It's so easy to break a needle when I do this, so when I say I pull the fabric through gently, I mean it.
If I break a needle, I have to take the whole thing apart and start all over again.  I've done that many times, and it is a pain!


Yay, I didn't break a needle and the pleating is straight.


I smocked 2 rows on the top and 2 rows on the bottom.


I want the pleats to hold their shape in the front, so I had to back smock 4 rows on the back of the inset.


I finished the little ducks.  This is called picture smocking.  
When I pull out the pleating threads, the pleats will hold their shape because of the four rows of smocking I did on the back.
Notice the trellis smocking in between the two top rows and the two bottom rows.


I finished the little pull toy ducks, aren't they cute?
I just have to sew l/4" buttons to the bottom of each duck.  
People are always asking me how long it takes to do a smocking inset like this one.
I counted this time and it took an hour to do each row and each duck, stitching over approximately 250 pleats.
  That comes to a total of 13 hours!!!  
I will be sewing the little blessing outfit this week and will show you the results :)

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