I took a brief respite from sewing to work on the baby blanket that I started knitting for my grandson a year ago. I was starting to worry that if I didn’t concentrate on getting it finished, he’d be ready for college and I’d still be working on it, so I’m  pleased to have finished it while he’s still a baby! I love knitting. I find it relaxing and enjoy  that it allows the mind so much free time to think about things. Knitting the baby blanket, having had all of this “free-thinking” time,  I’ve come up with a few new smocking ideas that I’m excited about trying and hope to begin as soon as I finish work on my dress order.

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.