This is my fourth and final post on the process. After talking about the fabric, floss, gathering and pleating, and embroidering, it’s time to finish the Rabbit Makes a Friend dress. 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 [...]

The front of the dress has been gathered and pleated so in this post I’ll begin to talk about the hand-embroidery. 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 [...]

I’d like to tell you about the process of gathering and pleating the front of the dress. In my last post, I started taking you through the process of sewing a Rabbit Whiskers dress. I’ve already selected the fabric and embroidery floss. The first step is to gather the dress front. That does two things. [...]

So, you’ve seen the photos of my completed dresses and I’ve told you a bit about my background and interest in smocking. I thought you might like to see the process of sewing dress #393 (Rabbit Makes a Friend). In the next four posts, I’ll try to show you what actually goes into composing one [...]

Last post, I wanted to talk about why I started making dresses, so in this one I thought I’d describe the process a little. One dress takes a week to complete, of which five days are spent doing hand work; embroidery and smocking. Working exclusively for so many days, I develop a close relationship with [...]

This is the first part of two posts explaining some of the background on how I started making dresses for little girls. I began making smocked dresses thirty years ago when my daughter was born, teaching myself from a pattern that had six rows of simple smocking. When she could no longer wear the dresses [...]