A Winter Dress

Posted by Claire on Feb 20 2013

I’ve been working on this dress on and off since the summer. If you’re wondering why it took so long, it’s a ‘swimming’ project. What’s a swimming project, you ask? Well, it’s closely related to the ‘soccer’ project; swimming projects live in an easy-to-carry bag during the week and the only time they come out are while I’m sitting on the sidelines while Thing 1 and Thing 2 are swimming/gymnasticing/music lessoning etc. The projects are always easy to do without a pattern and simple. This all over, one colour trellis definitely fit the bill.

Since I always intended it as a winter dress, it’s a long-sleeved partial yoke dress. The cuffs and bodice are smocked and it’s a size 4.

The plate and inspiration are from AS&E. I’d show you the original but right now, I’m *still* renovating my sewing room and all my magazines are packed away. It’s from a fairly early number, though. 34 or 35. Mid-90s, at any rate.

I had a few issues with the fabric – there were misprints, where the ink didn’t take. After washing, they left small white spots. I was able to cut around most of them but it wasn’t a very efficient use of fabric. It’s a good thing I got as much yardage as I did.

Overall, though, I like the dress. The colours make me think of a cardinal, with the reds and browns. I didn’t have enough fabric to do a sash like I had planned, so I improvised with a button band instead. It worked nicely, although I was squeezing out every last drop of fabric I had to make the piping.

I also piped the neckline and while it’s not a common look, I like that, too. It’s very clean and it gives a really nice, well defined look. I used piping instead of the neck ruffle that the original garment featured. It was a dated design feature and on a tiny neck, it would have been way, way too much.

The smocking is simply red trellis diamonds, worked to points and accented with red and peach roses and detached chain leaves. Very simple but the roses add a touch of lightness, I think.

Spring Bouquet Update #2

Posted by Claire on Feb 18 2013

Ta-da!

I’ve reached a big milestone with my LBQ applique project. I’ve finished cutting and prepping all nine of the centre blocks. Each block has between 45 and 75 individual pieces, so I’m approximately 60% of the way through the prep. Here are some close-ups, in no particular order.

I think they look fantastic, don’t you? I had to put it on the back burner before Christmas because work was crazy but since the New Year, I’ve been a girl on fire and finished four complete blocks. This one’s still missing flower centres but that’s TV work! Each border piece has more than forty circles and petals that require gathering stitches so a few extras in the to-do stack aren’t going to matter all that much!

During my first update, I calculated that each of the blocks took about 10 hours to cut and prep; with practice, I’ve cut that time down considerably and can now complete an entire block in about 6 hours.

Now I’m tackling the borders. There are 104 pieces in each border, (but who’s counting? ha!) plus all the bias stems. Like the blocks, I’ll be cutting the borders oversized and then trimming them down once I’ve stitched down the pieces permanently.

As you can see from the photo above, I’ve started on the first of them but I still need to cut the backing fabric for them. We have a snow day today. I can’t think of doing anything nicer than working on a quilt project, warm and toasty, while the snow falls outside.

Blank Smocking Graphs

Posted by Claire on Jan 08 2013

I know I often offer free smocking plates for folks to enjoy and share. But recently, a member on the Martha Pullen sewing forum asked where she might find blank smocking graphs so she could chart her own plates.

When I offered to send her some via email, I didn’t expect to get a dozen emails the same day from other forum members asking for the same charts… OK, so clearly she wasn’t the only one who was interested blank graphs! 🙂

So here, for you to fill with your own creative endeavours, are a blank geometric smocking chart and a blank picture smocking chart.

As always, you are welcome to share this link with friends but please credit my website and include the link to the original post.

Spring Bouquet Update #1

Posted by Claire on Oct 10 2012

I’ve started climbing Mount Everest.

A quilted, appliqued Mount Everest better known as Laundry Basket Quilt’s “Spring Bouquet”.

I didn’t buy the pre-cut shapes or the QOM option. Firstly, I don’t like the idea of doing raw edge fusible applique on anything but a ‘daily use’ quilt. I think it looks messy and not appropriate for an heirloom style quilt like this. Secondly, it costs a fair penny to sign up for the blocks, especially when you add in shipping and then I’m limited as to the colours I’m working with. So instead, I chose to make my own selections.

All of the batik fabrics are from Connecting Threads.

I’m always interested to know what people spend on their creativity. So, in the spirit of disclosure, all of the fabrics, including the backing and background cost me $142.00, plus shipping and taxes. Incidental supplies like my new mini Clover iron, basting glue and mylar circles were another $40 for a total of about $215.00. Then I spent $6 on mylar for the applique shapes locally, plus $25 + shipping for the pattern itself. That’s a total of about $270, which is very good for the degree of work and the size of the overall quilt, I think, working out to a around $7.50/square foot, with batting still to be purchased.

So, enough about the bottom line. How’s the quilting going?

Slowly.

After five weeks, I’ve completed prep for four blocks at this point. 5 blocks and four borders to go. Then everything has to be sewn down. Originally, I intended to hand applique my pieces but I’ve given up on that plan and am going to machine applique them. It would be lovely to sew them all down by hand but the hundreds of hours that that would require are not something I can justify, or frankly, enjoy.

Each square represents around 8-10 hours each. That includes cutting the fabrics, starching and ironing the raw edges and then gluing it into place. It’s going to be an incredibly labour intensive project. Honestly, I really had no idea going in that there would be so much time involved – far more than the patchwork quilts I’ve sewn up to this point.

I’ve been using Erin Russek’s fabulous applique tutorial to prep my shapes and it makes for such lovely results. If you’ve been using freezer paper up until now, try this technique instead. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

applique tutorial

One trick I have come up with to keep my layouts straight has been to take a digital photo of all the pieces in situ, after I’ve finished prepping them at the ironing board.

Since each block has between 50-70 individual pieces, and each piece has to be fussy cut to showcase a particular colour, it’s no easy feat keeping 28 pink petals, a dozen purple ones and whole bunch of leaves and stems straight and looking nice without help! 🙂

Once I’ve taken a snapshot, I can take them off the layout guide, lay out the background and glue them back where I’d intended without worrying that I’m going to muck up the layouts. If I’m unsure, I just turn on my camera and zoom in on the image. It’s a big, big help.

Here’s what block nine looked like during layout. Haven’t taken ‘finished’ shots of the other blocks yet so that’s why I haven’t post them.

I’m just working away at it steadily. When I need a break, I take a break and work on something else. Recently, that’s been Hallowe’en costumes. They’re looking pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself. What have you been working on? Something really detailed or fun and fast? 🙂

A Bishop Save

Posted by Claire on Sep 15 2012

Did you miss me?

I know, I know, I’ve been shamefully remiss the last six weeks or so, with only one post to my credit. For a while, I kept expecting to see internet rumours about my demise to start circulating. LOL. I was sort of hoping for something heroic or interesting. While bungee-jumping in Nepal (except I loathe heights). Or while saving a pod of whales (except I live in a land-locked province). Just not while buried under a pile of unfolded laundry or rabid dust bunnies. Girl’s gotta think of her posthumous reputation, after all. 😉

I’ve just been busy. We spent some time on holiday at the end of August, we’ve been in perma-reno mode here at home when a small project ballooned into a big project seemingly overnight, started a new term at the college where I’m teaching three days a week and the boys have activities that require a taxi driver on a very frequent basis.

So, what have I done during my absence from the WWW?

1. Took my Plaid Stars quilt to Alison to be quilted

2. Completed all of the smocking and about half of the writing of a new correspondence course proposal I’m putting together for SAGA. Can’t give too many details right now but it’s coming together nicely and I hope it will be well received

3. Finished David’s Hallowe’en costume and started on Andrew’s. That’s one Luke Skywalker the pilot complete, one Kermit in a tux to go. Pics to come.

4. Finished the third and fourth lesson of my Exotic Smocking correspondence course and started on the final garment, a really cute corduroy jumper

5. Finished two Sew Beautiful articles, and started on a third

6. Started on “Spring Bouquet” – the applique quilt that I’ve been drooling over for months now. No pics today but I promise an update soon. Let’s just say, it’s going to be a big project and I’m hoping I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew. *gulp*

7. Finished two smocked dresses for Ellie: a smocked bishop and a partial yoke dress, both inspired by AS&E projects. I’m going to feature the red dress here soon because it’s really charming but I thought I would show you the bishop first, since there were definitely points I was tempted to bin it.

This bishop was a PITA. I started it last summer, didn’t have time to finish it then, so I tucked it away once the smocking was complete. The fabric, which is very well marinated stash, is a large scale fruit print in shades of dark olive, cranberry, cream and purple (I think I bought it before I had kids and David’ll be nine later this year).

The inspiration was this dress, Bambino, from AS&E #35 (1996). It was done, very dramatically on black, and the smocking features a really interesting cross-over pattern that was vaguely plaid like.

It looks a lot more complicated than it was and I smocked the majority of it from the sidelines while watching David’s soccer games. The process went something like under cable, trellis, trellis, glance up, “Great work, team! Keep your eye on the ball, Davey!”, over cable, trellis…. 🙂

As you can see,the inspiration was a round yoke bishop, a style I really like. And that’s what I’d planned to make this dress up as, until fate (or a wonky pattern) intervened. If you remember, I made one for Ellie a couple of years ago and it was a big hit with both her and my SIL, getting tons of wear and tons of compliments. At the time, I used the bishop pattern from “Beautiful Bishops” and I remarked then that there was something ‘off’ about the pattern, especially around the shoulders.

I stand by that assertion and raise you ‘one big headache’.

There’s something not right about this pattern. Either it’s my pleater and the ratio it uses up while pleating or the yoke is too small or the cutting directions or wrong, or some combination of all three but when I finished the smocking, I could not make this bishop fit the yoke. Didn’t matter how I blocked it. Just no way, no how. It would not fit. I went back to the pattern, checked that I’d traced the right size yoke. Yup, I’d traced the right size and the rectangles for the lower dress were right, too. And given how big AS&E dresses usually run, when something won’t fit, you know it’s off.

Well, darn it. (OK, I said something else, but this *is* a publically available blog, so I’m keeping it PG)

I slept on it and came up with a solution that saved this dress.

Here’s what I did. In a nutshell, I recut the arm holes below the smocking to turn the dress into a traditional bishop. If you look at a standard bishop and a round yoke bishop pattern, the only difference between them is that the arm scyes on the latter are shallower, because the bulk of the depth needed to go around the shoulders and neck are covered by the round yoke. Otherwise, they’re both just rectangles with the J shape cut out for the underarm.

So I measured the difference between how deeply the round yoke armhole and the standard armhole came, marked and stitched deeper J’s, then cut the excess away, stopping just below the smocking. Then I rezig-zagged the seam and completed construction from there. It worked really well.

Luckily, while the dress was too narrow through the shoulders, I had enough length to play with. I simply removed the tuck and made the hem a little shallower and since I hadn’t cut the sleeves to length, I had enough length there, too and made super shallow bound cuffs. Then I just fit it to Stanley’s neck, drawing up the holding thread and laying my tape on its edge to figure out how long the binding needed to be.

So it was saved, and on a galloping horse, it’ll be fine for school and the fall. I added some cranberry trim that I’d picked up in France for a little more visual interest. Low and behold, it matched perfectly, so at least something went together easily on this project.

But still, it was way more work than it should have been. I’m definitely going to have to try the Children’s Corner round yoke next time I’m in the mood for one of these dresses. Because there’s no way I’ll be using the Beautiful Bishop version again.