Out to Sea

I'm sorry that this little outfit is so wrinkly!

It's a button on suit that I made for my son Sean when he was 

18 months old, 20 years ago.

It's picture smocking, and the smocking plate is called 

"Out to Sea".

I made piping from the fabric that the knickers are made of.  

There are six buttons that go around the waist and keep the pants attached to the shirt which buttons down the back.

I really love the pleats on the shirt, underneath the smocking.

This pattern is called Chery Williams button on suit.

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 :)