Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra set of arms & hands? So many times I find myself wishing for that. I could accomplish twice as much as I do now. That would be wonderful!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written~ too long! I feel bad about it. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write, I’ve just been so busy with my work. Unfortunately I’m not one of those people who are good multi-taskers. There are so many things I’d love to make, but they all require a lot of time. In the interest of trying to get more items made, I decided to concentrate my efforts for a while~  and that’s why I haven’t been here. There is still  so much that I want to make,  so I can’t commit to a regular writing schedule , as I hope to be able to do someday,  but I intend to pop in more frequently and let you see some of the things I’ve been working on.

I recently finished a custom order Christmas dress for a customer that was probably the most difficult order I’ve ever worked on. It was a real challenge,  but I was determined to do it. I worked on this dress for a month, twice even staying up all night working because I had to see what it looked like~ and if I’d captured the scene pictured in my head.  In spite of the difficulty I have to say that I really enjoyed the challenge this dress presented. Creating it helped me learn a lot about perspective & how to fit a lot into a small space~

The order was for a Christmas dress in green fabric, smocked & with an embroidered scene that included a Christmas tree with colored lights, a little girl, a basset hound & a chocolate lab. Once the sides are smocked there is only about a 3 1/2″ x 3″ space left in the center to compose a scene. That’s really not much room at all. Most of my scenes usually have 1 or 2 major figures in them. That is usually what fits the most comfortably. This request was for twice as many figures as I usually have, so the major problem it presented was how to fit everything in and still have it look nice- and the figures be identifiable. When I thought about the scene, what appeared was an outdoor picture. When it came to actually embroidering the scene I pictured, I realized quickly that I was also going to have difficulty with the snow- and how to show that some of the figures were in front while others were further back. These were the two major problems that kept me up all night~ and taught me a lot. I have never been so totally engrossed in a dress as I was with this one,  and I’m happy to say that I was pleased with the results~ (the scene pictured in the upper left corner.)  If you look closely you will see that the string of tree lights begins in the little girl’s hands & extends down to the basset hound at her side. The basset hound holds a section in his mouth while the chocolate lab, having wound the lights around the branches a few times,  is standing behind the tree with his end of the lights held in his mouth~ and so the title, “Three to Light the Tree.”

Just before beginning work on the order for the Christmas dress I made a dress for my shop that is my personal favorite. When shopping for fabrics,  I like to buy cuts of whatever I see that I think would make a nice dress- without having any particular dress in mind. I bring them home, wash them & put them away until I’m ready to begin a new dress. That way I build an adequate supply of fabrics so that when I’m ready to start a dress, I can look at them & choose whatever I’m in the mood to work on. The fabric for this dress is fabric that I’ve had longer than any of my other fabrics. Every time I went to choose fabric for a new dress I’d pass this one over~ it just never seemed to “grab” me~ until recently. I think I even surprised myself when I opened the cupboard where I keep my fabrics,  spotted this and said, “Yes!” I never would have guessed that it would turn out to be my very favorite dress,  but that’s exactly what happened. Once I saw the fabric I knew exactly how I wanted the dress to look. It’s always a bit scary to me to combine fabrics as I’ve done here, with the collar & sleeves in white and the body of the dress in a small print, giving the dress a “jumper & blouse” look. It’s difficult to visualize which fabrics will look good in that style & which won’t. It’s definitely not fit for every print. This is only the second time that I’ve tried embroidering on the “puff” part of each sleeve, but I really like the way it ties the print of the fabric  together with the white sleeves, although it’s not an easy thing to do. In fact it’s very difficult to embroider from inside the small area that is available in the sleeve of a baby dress,  but I think it’s worth the effort and contributes to creating a dress that’s both unique and very special.

These are just a few of the things that have kept me busy in recent months. I’ve also been knitting, as I’m trying to build a supply of knit items for my shops as well, but more on that in my next post. I’m working on a new dress right now and I’m close to being finished embroidering the scene. I’m looking forward to getting to the part where the dress gets sewn together. I’m sorry to say that my sewing machine which has served me so well over the past 25 yrs. has finally said,  “enough!”  It’s replacement is sitting, still in it’s box, waiting for me to reach the stage where it will be needed. I’m anxious to see how it will work. Hopefully I’ll love it as much as I’ve loved my old machine and,  (whisper-)  maybe even a bit more!  I’ll let you know how I like it, next time I write~ must return to work now!

I hope you enjoy the beautiful fall weather that’s either just arrived- or will be arriving soon!  Fall is my favorite season, so I’m looking forward to cool, beautiful days!

Spring! It’s everywhere I go, filling me with inspiration to create in it’s image;  things that are flowery & light as the breeze spreading its signature scent. Pulling weeds in my garden under the appletree, I was captivated by the subtle, sweetly-spiced scent of appleblossoms~ how to express that in a creation?

Pascal (my dog,)  and I, walk daily. Camera in hand, we alternate between downtown, with its beautiful fountains & planterboxes, and Heather Farms- ( several local acres of designated open space that’s been set aside as a wildlife preserve,  with walking trails, gardens,  ponds, meadows and a duck-filled canal.) Spring being such a short season, my camera clicks tirelessly as we walk, attempting to preserve the beauty Spring has scattered in its wake~

Currently, everything  I make reflects my experience of Spring. Looking at my photos I immediately want to make notecards~ I’m excited!  Here in my hands, the  pictures enable me to hold onto Spring,  long after it has passed. On the trees, the wind & rain can destroy the beautiful blossoms, but  here on my notecards, they are saved;   preserved  in all their beauty – How wonderful to be able to have Spring always within reach!

As with the notecards, my handsmocked and embroidered dresses reflect my experience of Spring-  One  recently finished dress, A Dressful of Blooms, was totally spring inspired. Looking at it,  I recall the spicy-sweet scent of the apple blossoms on my tree. Perhaps looking at it , you too will have a sense of  the flower-scent~?       

Today on our walk at Heather Farms, in addition to all of the new spring flowers, resplendent under water drops left by yesterday’s rain, we witnessed a very special spring addition~

Walking down the path beside the canal I saw what looked like something moving in the grasses on the far side of the canal. I stopped to see if I could tell what was there-  At first I saw the mother duck. Her dark coloring blended in so well with the hillside that she was difficult to discern at first.  She was standing very still looking back at us. Incredibly, Pascal didn’t bark! Watching her, I suddenly saw movement in the grass behind her and watched in awe as 5 tiny ducklings shuffled awkwardly to get close to her. After watching us for a while, I guess she decided we didn’t pose much danger, because she started walking down the bank towards the water, the 5 little ducks following close behind~ in one straight line! Down the hill they stumbled & into the canal,  gliding on the water, mom & her 5-  in one straight line,  swim masters already!

We followed them a short way down the canal and then stopped and watched again as the babies followed their mom out of the water, up the bank and across the path towards the larger pond~ in one straight line!

These pictures, along with others taken that day will be available on sets of notecards in my shop. Spring passes so quickly that I’m so happy to have caught at least a bit of it before we move into summer~ which I know, is lurking just around the bend~

I’ve just finished this dress that I call “Winter”; my third in a series of four long- sleeved dresses that I wanted to add to my store.  My goal is to have at least one long-sleeved dress in each size available. I just finished cutting out my fourth one,  a size 4, so hopefully before much longer, there will be one, OOAK,  long-sleeved dress in each size in my shop!

I thought I’d speak a bit about “Winter, ” and it’s creation,  because its appearance was a surprise even to me. I know that seems strange. It’s not the first time that I’ve been surprised by one of my dresses. The whole process of creating something  has always been a bit of a mystery to me, and making this dress,  is a perfect example ~

Not always, but often, before I begin working on a dress,  I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do with the dress. I usually have a picture in mind. It’s not always a completed picture, but it’s at least a basic idea. What puzzles me,  like what occurred while making this dress, is what happens between the time I begin working on a dress with a particular image in mind, and the time I finish the dress—–and have created something entirely different from the idea envisioned when I began -

Finishing the dress before “Winter,” I began thinking about what I wanted to do with the size 1 that I planned to create next out of a piece of printed white cotton fabric.  I suddenly got an image of a white dress with green, or possibly white, smocking. The dress I envisioned had a very simple, pretty design  of smocked zig zags, interspersed with embroidered red, green, and white candy canes~  Yes!! That was it! I ran & got a piece of paper & a pencil so I could sketch a simple picture of what was in my head. I don’t usually write my ideas down, but this looked so cute the way I pictured it, that I wanted  to be sure it wouldn’t be forgotten.

I began the dress with my original idea, working  white smocking into a zig zag pattern on the white fabric,—– and somehow worked my way into the scene you see pictured in the photo above. It seems to have just “happened.” I don’t remember consciously making a decision to abandon my original idea, nor do I remember ever having visualized the scene that emerged on the dress. It’s as if my fingers just took over; as if they had planned the scene from the very beginning-  and I was there simply because I was attached!

Now that the dress is finished, I look at it and feel very fortunate. Though it was not at all what I had in mind when I began, I’m pleased with the way it turned out-  Fingers did a good job! Once again I’m left baffled by the creative process, but that’s o.k.  Sometimes it’s nice to just be surprised!!

Many of my photos come from my favorite “haunt,” Heather Farms. This is a huge open space park with both natural, wild environments and carefully planted and tended, beautiful gardens; a photographer’s dream place! I could go there daily forever and still see different things each time.

While a majority of the scenes on my cards come from pictures taken at Heather Farms, we also often go downtown for walks and I always encounter something unexpected there, like the koi pond that I posted photos of a few posts ago. I haven’t used them yet, but I may decide to use some of the koi pictures on notecards in the future. There are also scenes taken from my own garden as well as scenes from other places that I walk.

Do you like this cottage in the picture above? It has a rather funny story to go with it. A year and a half ago my daughter gave me this wonderful little camera for my birthday. I was so surprised and excited,  I couldn’t wait to go try it out.  I quickly browsed through the manual, learning just enough to know where the button was to push for a picture, and a few other basics, but otherwise, I really knew nothing about using the camera. I took Pascal, and of course my new camera, downtown for a walk the following morning.

I parked the car a few blocks outside of the central downtown area and thought we’d walk into town from there. I had walked by this old cottage many times before, and each time wished that I had  a camera to take its picture. I love this cottage!  So- here I was, finally!  Me, Pascal, the cottage……. and my new camera! When we got to the driveway of the cottage I made Pascal sit while I pulled out my new camera  and “click, click-” just like that, took a few quick pictures and continued into town, taking  pictures on our way. Once home again, I downloaded the pictures to my computer and was pleased to see that yes, my picture of the cottage looked, well,  just like the cottage-

Several months before I got my camera I came across a photography site online, Zytu.org that had different daily slideshows of pretty and interesting scenes; photos that I enjoyed looking at, so I added them to my homepage.  After downloading  my photos to the computer I decided to post my photos on the web pages Zytu offered. Now that I had a camera I thought it would be a good way to keep track of my favorite photos and also thought it would be fun to see if anyone else looked at them. In the back of my mind I remembered reading something earlier about Zytu adding some photos to its daily slideshows taken from pictures they found on the pages on their site. I didn’t really think about that when I put my pictures on their site. I just barely knew how to use my camera. My photos wouldn’t be picked.

This picture of the cottage was one of the first  that I uploaded to the Zytu site. A few days later I happened to walk by my computer which I had left on my home page. My eyes hit on the zytu slide show just as the photo of the cottage flicked past! I thought I was seeing things. It couldn’t be-  It must have been a photo of another cottage that was similar to the one that I took-  But I waited for the twenty photos to flick by so I could see  this “other” cottage again. There it was! It was no “other,”  it was mine!! I was so excited, I must have watched it flick by a zillion times that afternoon.

Zytu is fun because it keeps track of how many people click on each individual picture. Not only did I never expect to see my photo in their slideshow,  but everytime I think about it, it makes me laugh~  this photo of the cottage made it to their section titled, “Most Viewed Photos”-  It is not only in that section, it is the first photo on the fourth row of the first page of that section, where it has been for the last year and a half! To date, this photo now has 816,889 views!! If someone had told me this was going to happen, I would never in a million years have believed them. Sometimes I wonder what the people who own that cottage would think if they were to be told that 816,889 people from all over the world have seen their home. Do you think they’d believe it?

Anyway, this cottage is also going to have a place on one of my notecards, so if you like it, it might be something to watch for~

This photo was taken at Heather Farms and is one of my favorite photos of Heather Pond. This too will be on a note card,

as will

this

and this, all from Heather Farms. My next post will be a bit about my second series of notecards, Notes From Rabbit Whiskers~

I know. It’s been way too long since I’ve updated my blog. I have been working on this dress called, A Few of My Favorite Things and I’ve just finished it.

Making this dress has been the strangest experience! I felt as if a magic spell had been cast over me and I wasn’t able to put it down.  None of my other work, including a blog update,  got done. I was sewing until 1:00 A.M.- mainly because I wanted to see what it was going to look like.  I kept thinking, Oh I’m almost finished- might as well keep sewing so I can see-

You’d think by now, after having made close to 450 dresses,  I would know that what looks like just a small area  to finish, can take hours- sometimes days. You would also think that after making so many dresses, the thrill of seeing another one would have worn off. That most definitely wasn’t the case with this dress.   There is so much tiny, intricate detail sewn into this scene, that what seemed like it would take minutes to do, in fact took hours-  For example, if you look at a tiny head of cabbage, it seems like it’s so small, it should take only a few minutes to make one.

What happens is that yes, the area is small- until you picture the width of two strands of thread. It is the width, or thickness, of two strands of thread that has to fill that “small” cabbage space- a width probably about the same size as the width of one of the letters I am typing right now. In comparison, that cabbage space suddenly seems quite large. It takes lots and lots of stitches to fill up that small space- but then, it takes even more stitching to make it look like a cabbage.

If you look closely, you will see that the cabbage is stitched initially in a deep purple thread. Layered over that base is thread of a lighter purple shade to fill-in, and accent certain spots, giving the cabbage depth and more of a leafy look.  Layered on top of the two purples is some white stitching to better define the leaves. What initially looked like it might take a few minutes to complete, in fact, took a whole lot longer- There were many parts of this scene that required multi-layers and many hours, like the cabbages. But I can also say that although I felt  captivated by this dress, I thoroughly enjoyed creating it! I have just finished cutting out my next dress, again a size 4. This dress will be pink and I hope to get started on it this afternoon. I’m looking forward to working on it, but I do hope that I won’t be so captured by this one and will be able to work more realistically  on it, accomplishing other things in my life that need doing as well-

Last week Pascal had another grooming session which again inspired his “groom gloom” attitude and that reminded me that it has been my turn to talk for way too long. The next post is Pascal’s turn, so be sure to look again soon. I know there is a lot he wants to say!

I don’t know what the weather has been like where you are, the past few weeks, but in nothern Ca. last week we had yet another week of beautiful spring weather and I was able to get some photos of the trees in beautiful full bloom. I’m not certain, but I think these trees on the left are plum trees, and the one on the right is a flowering crabapple-  Isn’t it gorgeous? This week it has rained all week which is wonderful because we really need the water, but I’m very happy I was able to catch photos of the trees before the rains came, because they probably knocked most of the beautiful blossoms off~                                               

And it truly was that morning, however one essential element to this scene is missing in the photo; and it was the  element most dominant to the scene. Because of its nature, you can’t see it here. The clouds, the trees, the grasses, even the tiniest mustard flowers, were vibrant with the discordant shrieks of geese and ducks, combined with the clear, high, trills from the meadow filled with red-winged blackbirds.

I stood there for a few moments trying to take in the sounds, sights and scents of the magnificent scene that surrounded me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a loud display of bird sounds in a single place before. It was as if one-hundred people were all speaking at once, as loudly as possible,  each in a different language! To get an accurate view of what Pascal and I really saw and heard that morning, imagine what that would sound like, then, holding that in your mind, look at the photo again!

Besides loving to get out and walk in the fresh, early morning air, as I have mentioned in previous posts, I find that walking is an excellent way to clear my mind. I also find these walking experiences, the sights, the sounds, the scents-  are the best fuel for inspiring design ideas for my dresses.  Almost all of my dresses  have flowers on them, and a growing number of them have entire scenes, such as you see on this dress- These scenes I’m sure, derive from our walks.

And then I think of Pascal. He was there too, experiencing the very same scene~ only in a very different way- from a very different vantage point~     

I think it was the poet, William Blake, (but I could be mistaken,) who wrote about the beauty in a blade of grass~ Pascal’s perspective?  Great things going on in that little pup’s mind!

The pillows that I hope to make will differ some from the ones that I saw in the pictures. I will hand-smock them; probably on an insert that will be sewn into the front of the pillow, or perhaps I’ll smock the entire pillow front. With hand-smocking I have the freedom to compose my own designs and make them as elaborate as I choose. While the things that are machine smocked look very nice, the designs are usually basic and common. (That’s not to say that hand-smocking doesn’t use basic or common designs; they often do.) Then I will hand-embroider something like the scenes that I embroider on dresses. I’m thinking that it could be a throw pillow to decorate a child’s room; perhaps a pillow to sit in a rocking chair.

I think smocked throw pillows would also look great on a couch or daybed. If they were to be used in a room other than a child’s room I would do an elaborate smocked design and perhaps even embroider flowers or something very general on some of them. Anyway, I’m very eager to try these new projects. I have a couple of dress orders right now, but hopefully when I get them finished, I’ll be able to try one or both of these ideas. When I complete either the wall hanging or the pillow I’ll definitely post photos. I only wish this work weren’t so time consuming and that I could work on more than one thing at the same time- (four, why not six, hands would be nice!)  It’s difficult to have the patience to complete one thing before thinking about the next~

When I’m making a smocked dress I like to think of the dress fronts as my canvas which I  will design and “paint”  with embroidery floss. My favorite part about making my  dresses is creating the smocking design and the picture that grows out of it, (the little scene that I embroider into the smocking.) People often comment about how much they like the picture I’ve “drawn”, so it occured to me, why not do a wall hanging; a hand- smocked, hand- embroidered picture that could be hung on the wall?  I think that the scenes I’ve put on my dresses would be adorable on a child’s bedroom or bathroom wall. So you can expect in the near future to see on my website a hand smocked, hand embroidered picture that will strictly be for hanging on the wall. I have another idea for a smocked project that I will tell you about in my next post.

Following the adults example, ( or maybe it’s the adults who are following the children’s,) the shorter dresses worn over leggings make adorable tunics.They can also be worn over a pair of long pants or jeans. A light-weight matching cotton or acrylic,  long-sleeved t-shirt can be worn underneath the “dress/tunic;”  toss on a coat for outside,  and your child is not only dressed in the latest style, but is toasty-warm as well-

Naturally, in warmer  climates this wouldn’t be necessary, but  you would have the option of two different looks from one dress. The dress could be worn as is with the matching socks, (or tights if preferred for winter,) on one occasion and on another, it could be worn as a layered outfit;  t-shirt, tunic, leggings- two different looks from the same garment!  Besides being fun to wear, the smocked dresses are really  very versatile.

The long dress, (size 3L and 4L,)  that I’ve recently added to my collection, is equally versatile and adaptable to colder climates. It can be worn exactly the same way as the shorter dresses. The only difference would be that when worn as a tunic with leggings, it is a long tunic-  again, very stylish this season. This is a dress that she will definitely have fun wearing all year long!

I just began work on a pretty, violet-blue fabric strewn with flowers of purple, yellow, blue and pink; reminiscent of a spring meadow. As I create the rows of smocking I’m busy thinking about what I might embroider into this meadow- perhaps a lamb, a bird, a tree-? Definitely more flowers- a bee? Hmm, we’ll see-

Look forward to”Meadow Flowers,” size 1 – upcoming in the next few weeks ~

Sneak preview:

The area to be hand-smocked and hand-embroidered on a girl’s dress doesn’t appear large, until you stop to think about filling that area with thread that’s less than 1/16 of an inch wide. If I’m smocking, each pleat has to have at least one stitch in it, and often more than one, depending on the design; that’s one stitch per pleat, every row. Often there are as many as twenty-five rows.

When I embroider, I embroider right over the pleats, so I’m able to cover many pleats at a time, but it’s much slower than if I were smocking. With embroidery, entire areas have to be covered with thin thread and no spaces can show through. Working fine detail such as the detail in faces, is difficult, and requires even more time. I compose the scene as I go, requiring trial and error, which can also be time consuming. And strangely, for the extreme amount of time that it takes to embroider a picture, if I make an error, it takes even more time to rip it out!

Finally, I’ve designed the end of the scene–but I’m still not quite done. Almost always after I’ve finished a scene, I go back and add a few rows of smocking at the top and the bottom. Then I pull out the gathering threads that the pleater put in, and it’s ready to be sewn into a dress.

Once the dress is finished I hang it on the wall above my sewing table where I can see it while I work on my next dress. That way I can occasionally look at it from a different perspective, which allows me to make sure that the dress is done; that I don’t want to add more smocking or change something in the embroidery. Once the dress passes that week on the wall and I’ve made changes, if necessary, it gets put into the closet with the others that are finished and ready for a little girl to wear.

Before I could begin embroidering the scene on the front of the Rabbit Makes a Friend dress, I had to make sure that the pleats in the middle were secured. This I do either by smocking on the right side of the fabric as a part of the scene, as I did with the hills and a few rows above the hills, or by smocking on the wrong side of the fabric, which is called back-smocking. That way if the smocking doesn’t fit with the design or scene that I’m making, it won’t show. (I need to note that I’m now ready to begin embroidering the middle scene, but I still haven’t decided what that scene is going to be.) This happens often because every dress I make is an original. I make the scene up as I go, sometimes trying one thing and, not liking it, tear it out and try something else until I get something that I like.

I always start the embroidery with the head of the main character. I start with the head because I feel the most important thing is to create a face that is attractive; either cute or pretty. I want the character to be appealing immediately. If I can’t make that happen, I abandon the idea and try another. This way I’ll know before I waste time working on the body and the rest of the scene. Fortunately it’s not often that I have to abandon an idea.

March 21 was the first day of spring! When I sat down that morning and picked up my dress front to continue working, I had almost completed the rabbit and had finished embroidering one flowering tree. It’s extremely rare that I get that far into a scene without fully knowing where I’m going, yet that’s exactly what happened with this dress.

I was putting some finishing touches on the rabbit while thinking about what I was going to have her do. As I followed the curve of her arm with my thread, it occurred to me that she should be holding something, and then, “thank-you first day of spring, ” without another thought, I knew where my picture was going. If you look closely, you’ll notice a little bird in the rabbit’s hand. The rest of the scene will still require much time, but I am relieved that the main part, the most difficult, is basically finished and I finally know where I’m going with this picture! The remainder of the scene will be mostly background “fill-in” work. Even though I’m more than halfway through with the scene, it’s still going to require many more hours before it will be finished and ready to make into a dress.

There are basically two reasons the embroidery takes so many hours. The first is that it’s extremely important that all of the stitches lie smoothly, one right next to the other, if an area is to be filled in. They can’t be very long because then they will easily catch on something and pull, distorting the object they are depicting. This is especially important on clothing, because it is subjected to all kinds of things when it is worn. Because the fabric I work with is soft and pliable rather than stiff, it’s difficult to know how tight to pull the threads. If they are pulled too tight, the fabric pulls with them and alters the shape. If they are too loose, they lie in gaps, look sloppy, and get caught on things. They have to match exactly, the area being covered.

The second thing that makes it so time consuming is the embroidery thread itself. It comes in packets where six strands of thread are twisted together to make one thick strand. The floss can’t be used as it comes packaged because the thread is much too thick to make the nice, smooth-looking stitches that are necessary. When I smock, I split the floss in half and smock with three threads at a time. When I embroider, because I often sew such fine detail and because I want to have smooth stitches, I usually split the floss and use only two threads at a time. Because two strands of thread are extremely thin, I often have to go over and over the same spot to get the three-dimensional appearance that I like to have.

Enough for now, I’ll continue to talk about the embroidery in my next post and we’ll finish up the dress.

The first step is to gather the dress front. That does two things. It holds the pleats in place until they’ve been smocked, and it gives me guide lines, marking the rows to be smocked. I use a pleater to gather the portion that is to be smocked. This is the only part of dress-making that I dread. It’s hard to believe, but at least for me, this is the most difficult part. The portion I’ll smock must be cut at least three times wider than the desired finished width. Even on a small child’s dress, this amounts to a large piece of fabric, making it awkward and difficult to work with.

I prepare the pleater by threading the needles with extra-strong, long strands of quilting thread. After ironing and laying the fabric out flat, the dress front has to be rolled around a 3/4″ round, long wooden dowel. It is crucial that the fabric be rolled tightly and evenly around the dowel. If it’s rolled crookedly, when it passes through the pleater the rows to be pleated will sit on a slant, causing the finished design and picture to be slanted. The pleats won’t line up, one row directly on top of another, causing puckers and gaps in the fabric and making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to smock.

Once the fabric is rolled onto the dowel I slowly feed it through the pleater. To begin the process, the fabric has to be fed into two grooves, one on each side of the pleater and, at the same time, a knob at the side of the pleater has to be turned so the eight threaded needles will catch the fabric and pull it in. To do this really requires three hands, so I use my chin to push the knob until the fabric is in far enough for the needles to catch it. It’s crucial that the fabric be fed through the pleater evenly. I hold my breath until I’ve finished pleating and can check to see if it went through correctly; if it didn’t, I have to pull all of the threads out and start over again.

With the dress I’m working on here, Rabbit Makes a Friend, I was pleased to see that the rows were even, indicating the fabric had gone through correctly, but then I noticed that one of the rows was missing a thread. Apparently the thread had gotten caught in a crack in the table where I was working, and pulled out. That meant I had to start the whole process over again! Fortunately, my next trial was a success.

Finally it’s time to begin stitching. I always start with the smocking. If I’m planning on smocking the sides and saving the middle for a scene, as I planned to do on this dress, I will smock the sides first, as you can see from the photo. In a dress of this design, I think of the smocking as a background; a sort of frame for the scene that will go in the middle.

The next post, I’ll write about how I begin hand-embroidering the scene.

I like to keep a wide variety of colors and prints of fabric on hand because unless I’m working on a special order, my choice of fabric for any particular dress is dictated by my mood at the time, although I do try to have a variety of colors and designs in all four sizes. Sometimes, if I don’t feel particularly drawn to any fabric or design, I’ll just open the trunk where I store my fabric, close my eyes, and take the first piece that I touch. I chose the fabric for the previous dress, To the Swimming Hole, because I felt a strong desire to do something with ducks on it. I settled on the lavender-blue fabric because it suggested water and because I thought that white ducks would contrast beautifully with the deep lavender-blue.

The Rabbit Makes a Friend dress is a bit more difficult to explain. I went through all of my fabrics three times trying to decide which to choose. I had no particular design in mind so I was hoping that as I looked at the fabric, a particular piece would suggest something (as often happens.) When still nothing suggested itself I chose this fabric simply because I thought it was pretty, but in making this choice, I also challenged myself. The rose-print fabric is beautiful–but it is also very busy, which makes it difficult to work with because it’s hard to make anything show up against it.

When I began smocking the sides, I decided that two white lambs would look good in the middle section. Choosing the right colors of embroidery floss always takes me a long time, there being so many colors to choose from, but after many minutes of looking and matching, I made a decision. With the selected floss laid out on my workspace, I put the other floss away and sat down to begin my work.

As I picked up a needle to thread it, I got a strong sense that no, lambs would not work on this dress but a rabbit wearing a pretty dress; something frilly and feminine, would better suit the fabric’s “dainty” design. Back went the embroidery floss I had originally chosen, and after several more minutes, out came a new selection. Switching my design from lambs to a rabbit made my work more difficult. The lambs, being white, would easily stand out from the background fabric, while it was going to require some creative thinking to bring the rabbit out–I definitely set myself up for a challenge!

In the next post I’ll go through the gathering and pleating process.