My friend's little one was celebrating her first birthday so I decided to try to make her a little party dress. I am in love with the Weekend Sewing book from Heather Ross and when it finally came in from the library I was ecstatic.
The first thing I made was this dress. However, for people like me who do not have the book, I found a handy tutorial on Martha Stewart's website. I'm planning on making one my size soon.
I'd recommend watching the Martha Stewart video, but after you do that, here's a few tips that might come in handy for smocking:
- Buy elastic thread and hand wind it into the bobbin.
- Surprisingly you only need to use elastic thread in your bobbin. And the color of the elastic thread doesn't matter because the top thread you choose will be the only visible thread.
- Hand wind the elastic thread so that it is not stretched but isn't gapping or appear loose.
- You will use more than you think. Try to pay special attention to your bobbin to make sure you aren't going to go out of thread in the middle of one of your smocked lines.
For this dress, I used LizzyDish's new line of fabric through Andover Fabrics called Red Letter Day. I love this fabric. It looks like lollipops or balloons or whimsical trees. A great little print!
I'm noticing that many of the pattern books such as Weekend Sewing and Simple Chic Sewing have looser fitting garments. Smocking could be an excellent way to add a more fitted look to some of these potentially poncho-looking garments.
3 comments:
So cute! You are so gifted. Please remind me where you got your Lemmon tags? I think it's time I get some of my own!
SOOO cute! Did you put it in the flickr group? I can't wait to see the one you make for yourself!
This so cute for a one-year old. I did my 1st smocking dress for my girl 1yr old bday too. I'm doing her 2nd pcs after 4 yrs... opps. This time it would be a blouse n pants. Hope it turn out great.
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