maggiebsmocks

More pillow case UFOs finished!!!!!

These are the last of the ufo pillow cases. There are 2 of each fabric.

So, Meredith...how are those button holes coming along????

Back to school for September.

A Halloween classic at our house for October!

And what would December be without Rudolph lighting the way?

Note the little details of piping and trim on the pillow cases.

These are all made to fit a travel sized pillow. I measured the pillow and added 1"-2" plus seam allowances for each direction for the main part of the case. The trim on the end is extra length to overhang the pillow. This can be made as long or short as you want.

Enjoy the day!

maggieb!

FFP: Pumpkin Pie

I have been working on this little bishop since last fall. I was inspired by rick-rack edging for the candy corn smocking at the neckline.

There is a base cable line in orange. Then I alternated the yellow cables to the top and bottom of the orange line. Finally I added the white stacked cables over/under the yellow for the candy corn look.

The thing that was really holding me up on this one was the bottom border and what to do in between the top and bottom borders.

Once I simplified the bottom border it came together quickly. Deciding to keep the design very simple on such a tiny dress, I opted to backsmock the open space using a repeat of the 4 step wave with three passes and one pass of the cable stitch right under the candy corn area.

This is one for my Grand Mother's Hope Chest. I am not thrilled at the workmanship on this one. It is batiste weight fabric combined with a presewn neckline, making for iffy pleat distinction in some places. However, on a size 6 month old drooler, I don't think it will matter much. 

Enjoy the day!

maggieb!

A sweet little find

I found 3 packages of 6 each of these little cocktail napkins. They are Irish linen. I believe the embroidery is primitive machine work.

I plan to make all 18 of them into little hostess gifts ala Jane's directions:

http://janebriscoeheirlooms.com/needle.htm

Jane is a newly approved SAGA teacher. Check out her site for some fun classes!

Enjoy the day!

maggieb!

You HAVE to have a sense of humor

Many of you know we have been house hunting for almost a year. We have the luxury of living where ever we want as long as there is an airport within driving distance. We have decided to stay in Virginia. This place is just too beautiful to leave, add the  American history and there is no place more perfect.

All I can say is THANK THE GOOD LORD for the internet! I don't think I could have tolerated going into some of these places. For example:

Now I know I watch HGTV more than I should. But I have learned to look at STRUCTURE, room size, shape and placement. I realize people live in occupied homes. I understand not wanting to STAGE in some cases.

This picture is an example of not even noticing the 1970s sofa nor the blanket cover on it's back. No, this one is about the flooring. 'Nuff said.

If the flooring weren't enough to tell you to run, making a pit stop would.

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE seafoam, mint, light green. See, I even use it here on my blog. I have made many many smocked pieces using seafoam broadcloth, microcheck and batiste. 

However, I never thought about using it in this way:

Perhaps the wallpaper or the picture of the photographer in the picture was what jaded my opinion?

Yes, I don't care how much land you own. I don't care it it is the best location in Virginia. I'm not coming to see your home.

However... you could see the upper scale end of the spectrum...only in theirminds. Indigestion inducing wall paper abounds in just about every home built prior to 2006:

Throw in a wooden crate for good measure.

After eating a bad meal in that room you can certainly head off to nightmare land:

Awwww, they are trying to make me feel at home! They picked up the tv we dropped at the dump 20 years ago!

Perhaps you would rather take on a little more rustic life style?

This person clearly knows that granite counter tops are in these days!

However, they feel a need to retreat to this room after making dinner in that yellow kitchen with the lack of storage space for important things like dishes, Easter baskets and tissue boxes.

And finally, after a really hard night of hitting the bottle, there is this cozy retreat:

You never know who might ring 

So, yes, the internet has saved many many miles on the XC. 

We have broadened our search to include more areas than just Warren County. We have found a chunk of land and are waiting for a reply from the owner. Please keep us in your thought and send positive waves our way. 

Enjoy the day!

maggieb!

April Love: Smocking for the Object of Your Affection

A play on color made this bishop fun to watch as it developed. I wanted to use shades of one color but didn't want to pick which shade went where, so I decided to smock my design in a shading manner. This technique can be used for any smocking plate.

All smocking is three strands of floss except the two passes of wheat stitch which are two strands for each pass.

Begin smocking with the bottom pass of the heart motif.

553/553/553 

Top of the heart motif:

553/553/554

Independent wave sequence:

553/554/554

Bottom of the wave combination:

554/554/554

Top of the wave combination:

554/554/211

Upper wave combination:

554/211/211

Cable Row at top of upper wave combination:

211/211/211

Bottom half of wheat stitch:

554/554

Top half of wheat stitch:

553/553

The lower flower design begins with a 6 cable flowerette in the darkest shade.

The second pass is the medium color with a 2-step trellis next to the cables.

The third pass is the lightest shade with a 4-step trellis next to the above trellis. 

The diamond motif in the middle of the design has two different details. The large diamonds over the large heart motifs at the front and back have medium color 6-cable flowerettes in the medium color.

The sections over the sleeves have wrapped bars over two pleats in the medium shade.  

The sleeves are smocked with the dark shade on the two outside passes. The medium shade is used on the inside passes. Then the bars are smocked with the lightest shade. The waves are two-steps over one half space, one half space apart.

Anchor Floss Sources

I had a comment in the Wee Care section asking where I find ANCHOR FLOSS.

I prefer Anchor floss because it has a much nicer hand than some of the other floss companies. The colors are perfection! If you have never tried Anchor, treat yourself to a few skeins! If you are hesitant, just try their white Anchor 1 & 2 and black, 403. I promise, you will NEVER use DMC white or black again.

I try to support my local thread stores as much as possible. Locally, I buy Anchor at In Stitches, Alexandria VA or Everything Cross Stitch in Fredericksburg, VA.

Online, I tend to buy Anchor Floss at the sources I use for smocking fabric and plates. I tried to find the Anchor listing at Bessie Mary this morning. I couldn't find it. So I called MissJan and she confirmed they carry most of the colors. The next time you order a plate, go ahead and ask if she carries the Anchor to match. 

Enjoy the day!

maggieb!

Rolling the Fabric on the Dowel ? from T

I received this question from the sewing forum at Allbrands. I wrote more than their space allows for an answer so here is the full story. 

Thank you for asking! And thanks for saying you enjoy the blog. I love having my own space to share tips. I love answering questions, so feel free to ask!

"Hi! I cannot tell you how glad I was to come across you on here! I read your blog over and over and I have still managed to mess up the bishop. I practiced on fabric so many times and then I went to pleat a baby bishop and I think I may cry I know you are probably so very busy, but if you have just a minute, would you mind telling me how to roll my fabric on the dowel so it goes through correctly? I rolled it so the top edge stayed lined up and it just bunched the rest of the way down so of course it bunched going through the pleater and I just had to walk away and leave it. What should I do now?
Thank you so very much for your time and help!
T"

Take the fabric out of the pleater and start over. Remove the needles and gathering threads. Press the fabric flat. A little spritz of water will get rid of the pleat marks if there are any.

Pleating is something that is a LEARNED technique. You don't inherently know the activity. Therefore, it takes practice. Good for you for practicing! Now you are ready to move on to a new item, again, it will take practice.

The dowel only has ONE purpose: to keep the excess fabric out of the pleater. It does not control the fabric. It does not guide the top edge. 

You can roll that bishop onto the dowel fairly wonky and it will still work. Roll a seamed piece on a flat surface like an ironing board, hanging the majority of the fabric off the front of the board. Begin rolling the fabric on the dowel, rolling toward you, drawing the fabric up as you go. Fold the underarm fabric to one side or the other to keep it neat. You will NEVER get your top edge rolled perfectly because there are seams and extra fabric below the arm curves.

You need to pleat with the seams UP where you can see them to manipulate them into the roller grooves. I know some pleaters tell you that this is not going to put your gathering thread through the pleat at the correct depth. IT DOESN’T MATTER! The pleat is still the same size whether the gathering thread is closer to the top, middle or bottom of the pleat. You are ALWAYS going to stitch avoiding the gathering thread.

Now that you understand these two things, the rest will make sense. You will control the fabric feeding into the pleater with your hand. I pleat with my needles facing me, turning the handle with my right hand therefore, I control the fabric with my left hand.

~Make certain you are pleating only the STRAIGHT part of the arm's  curve. On a baby bishop, this may be as little as 6-7 Rows and that includes any holding Rows.

~The fabric going into the pleater will feed at the left hand side (needles facing me) and ONLY the portion being pleated goes into the pleater. The rest of the fabric will be flopping around at the outside of the pleater. I say flopping because at this point, that extra fabric is rolled loosely and most of the time will hang awkwardly off the dowel. THAT IS OK! You are controlling the area to be pleated at the pleater edge with your hand and the grip of the rollers.

~Make certain the first edge of your fabric, probably a back edge, is entering the pleater rollers perfectly straight. This is where a third hand would be great! I hold my fabric edge at the rollers spreading my fingers apart to control as much of the fabric as possible, holding my tongue just right! Then with my right hand turn the handle just a tiny bit to get the rollers to grip the fabric. Once that is in place, I take a deep breath and start pleating.

~KEEP THE TOP EDGE OF THE FABRIC PERFECTLY ALIGNED WITH ONE SINGLE NEEDLE GROOVE THE ENTIRE TIME YOU ARE PLEATING! I think this is the most often missed part of pleating that results in problems. And I mean ONE groove! I am so anal when I pleat that I even pick an inside or outside edge of the needle groove I am using as my guide.

If your top edge has a curve like the Ellen McCarn bishop pattern, you still need to keep the fabric edge aligned with a groove. This is where your CONTROLLING HAND is really going to get a work out! You may need to be pulling slightly more fabric in at the bottom portion of the needles to keep everything straight.

Once you approach the first seam, you are going to see just how much adjustment needs to be made to get the seam aligned parallel to the rollers so the seam will fit into the grooves.

One thing that will help beginning pleaters is to draw a wash out marker line on your garment. Half way across each section: back, sleeve, front, sleeve, back, draw a line perpendicular to the top edge, parallel to the edges and seams. This gives you a visual to see if your pleating is staying even and straight. Corrections can be made GRADUALLY to align the fabric feeding correctly again.

Pleating isn’t a lickity split quick activity. Even an experienced pleater takes her time when pleating her fabric. Just like the rest of the steps of the process, you will learn to enjoy pleating rather than fear it.

Thanks for reading along! I know this was a long one!

Enjoy the day!

maggieb!

Trellis Stitch vs. Wave Stitch

Trellis Stitch vs. Wave Stitch

Thank you to my faithful readers who sought the answer to this question on my blog. I am honored.

My answer to the question what is the difference between the wave and trellis stitch:

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE, THE TERMS ARE INTERCHANGABLE.

The person asking the questions said that I was incorrect! HHHMMMM…OK… let me research. I would hate to be telling my friends the wrong smocking information.

A little background: I started smocking 27 years ago this month when I was preggers with the Little Man. This is how my first lesson happened:

We were new to Little Rock AFB in Jax AR. The First Lieutenant’s sponsor’s wife called me asking me if I was interested in going to a smocking class with her. I said YES (probably a little too eagerly…). She asked “you don’t know what smocking is, do you?” I said NO, but that didn’t matter! I thought smocking meant we were going to make smocks/aprons.

Anywho! We go to our first (and only) class! Mary Lee Henderson was the teacher. Class was at her breakfast table. I look back and wonder if she would be pleased at the monster she created? I took to smocking like a duck to water. Pat, my new friend, didn’t really care for it. Mary Lee…she is probably one of the biggest reasons I am generous with my knowledge. I would buy a single piece of fabric and take it to her. She would cut out, assemble and pleat bishops and bonnets (even lace edged them for me!) for next to nothing. And I was a very impatient person. I would call her a couple days after I dropped off the fabric to ask it had been readied for me. She was always kind and generous with me. I try to keep up her example.

Now, back to the questionnaire for the stash contest points. I am not fighting for that single point (my points are not even close to breaking the top ten!) instead I want to make sure everyone in the smocking world understands smocking stitch terminology. The point of the background story is that I have been smocking for a LONG time. I have read a book or two on the subject. I have studied at the hand of the masters like Laura Jenkins Thompson and Elizabeth Travis Johnson. I learned from the goddesses of our art.

So the question, what is the difference between a TRELLIS stitch and a WAVE stitch? 

AGAIN, I say: NOTHING. The term is used interchangeable depending on the source you choose to quote.

1. Reference: Perfecting Picture Smocking, LJThompson; p.25.

Basic Wave or Trellis

“Rows 2 and 7 are formed as a baby wave (trellis)-5 cable combination. Waves or trellises give a chevron or ‘V” effect.”

The story continues on to show each term with the same diagram.

2. Reference: English Smocking, The Children’s Corner, Inc.; p4.

Three topics referring to the stitches, using the terms interchangeably:

“BABY WAVE

TRELLIS

TWO-STEP WAVE”

 

3. Reference: Simply Smocking, Jenny Bradford; p25.

Trellis Stitch

“(Often referred to as wave)”

4. Reference: London Gardens, Martha Pullen, Ph.D.; p 97.

WAVES AND TRELLISES

“The stitch can be known as a wave or trellis. Either is correct; I choose to call it a wave.”

I apologize to my readers who are fellow stash contest participants who might have missed the bonus points over this one question. IF you did, please feel free to reference my blog as documentation that you were correct.

smock on!

maggieb!