Gathering Threads

Fall is in the air

Posted by on Aug 27 2010

I’m on newstands again this month, with a lovely cross-stitched pumpkin in Create n Decorate‘s October 2010 issue.

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I was inspired to stitch the pumpkin-shaped band sampler by the antique marking designs that were published so prolifically during the 19th and early 20th century.  You can download the cross-stitch pattern for the pumpkin band sampler from Create n Decorate’s website here; the supply list for the threads and linen plus the working directions are in the October issue.

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Used to mark everything from aprons to petticoats to home decor, simple one and two colour booklets like the ones that I sourced many of the cross-stitch patterns for my design from were put out by the boatload by thread manufacturers like Coats and Clark and DMC in an effort to get housewives stitching.

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You can often find original paper copies at flea markets and antique shops but thanks to the miracle that is the internet, there are literally dozens of example on the web, too.

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I’ve downloaded most of my Victorian and early twentieth century versions from the Antique Pattern Library but there are lots of people who collect early cross-stitch and embroidery designs and share them online.

kreuzstitchexample2From simple borders to elaborate and detailed Turkish pillow designs to beautiful monograms and alphabets, there is sure to be a pattern that will suit any stitcher’s taste.

WIP: Gail Doane’s Eloise

Posted by on Aug 05 2010

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m working on a version of Gail Doane’s exquisite smocked wool dress, Eloise, from AS&E 87.

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I don’t usually succumb to buyer’s lust.  I try very hard to be controlled in my stash building, especially when it comes to ‘wanna-sews’.  There aren’t enough hours in the day and if I gave in to the collecting bug every time it struck, in forty years, they’d find my lifeless body, crushed by a cascade of sewing magazines.   Not an attractive image, that!  But this time, I didn’t care.  I saw the cover, I wanted to make the dress.  End of discussion.

Luckily for me, I live in a town with some great fabric shops and finding the fabrics and notions I needed was very straightforward.  I found the exact shade of grey wool, in a lovely Italian summer-weight, at Ann’s Fabric.  Talk about gorgeous.  It just feels like…gorgeousness on a bolt! And I was able to get the silk organza for the collar (the real stuff, not a nasty synthetic knock-off)  at The Textile Centre, which always carries beautiful specialty fabrics.  I even found the darn near exact buttons that the dress uses, and best of all, they were 50% off, which, when they’re $10/card, is a good deal.

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I’m always willing to pay a little more for quality fabrics because they’re such a pleasure to sew with (I’d like to think I’m discerning, not snobby!) but frankly being able to buy nearly everything locally adds up to significant savings when it comes to shipping and exchange rate fees anyway.   And I find that knowing where to go and who carries what means that I usually get my fabrics at very good prices while having the comfort of mind of knowing these are quality materials.

I shaped the lace for the collar Saturday evening.  It was a surprisingly straightforward process, given that I’d never done any lace shaping before and I’ve very pleased with the results.

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Here is the one half of the lace collar, after it has been stitched to the organza underlay.  Still a little messy and untrimmed but it’ll look lovely when it’s done, I think.

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My lace was narrower than the pattern called for, so I ended up with five rows rather than four but I really like the symmetry and the juxtaposition of the geometric and floral rows.  It will be edged with entredeux and then finished with this lace, which has a very strong presence and should really make the collar pop.  Doesn’t it show up beautifully against the charcoal grey wool?

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But why, you might ask, if I was making such great progress on the collar, didn’t I finish it?  Because yours truly didn’t realize she’d used the last of the entredeux in her supplies, thus neglecting to reorder more in a timely fashion. *grumble, grumble* self-inflicted lack of planning, she mutters under her breath.  It’s the one thing I just can’t seem to source locally – at least not on a reliable basis, so getting more is always a production.

Now, despite that minor set-back of being momentarily entredeux-less, I have made progress and the smocking’s been blocked and the pattern pieces traced off.  Me being me, I can’t just make the dress exactly as written.  First off, I had substitute another pattern because the smallest size the dress comes in is a size 4 and my niece is only 2.  But a quick leaf through my smocking mags offered a solution and I substituted a basic yoke dress with long sleeves from AS&E 44, lowering the horizontal yoke seam to compensate for the deep collar.   I have also decided to go with a sash at the back, rather than the belt, because I though the style too severe for a toddler (although it’s a very good choice for an older girl who wants to look less ‘bow-y’).

The most visible change is the fact that I substituted another smocking plate because I wasn’t willing to shell out $80 for decorative buttons as per Eloise’s instructions.  Instead, I chose a geometric plate from the book “Smocking Inspiration” by Margie Prestedge and Sheila Bennett.

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‘Caroline’ is a 9 row plate, which is a good depth for the tinier dress.  It will have the narrow white silk ribbon woven through the wave stitches, and I thought that it resembled a lace pattern, especially when it was worked monochromatically.  The teeny-weeny white silk ribbon criss-crosses through the centre band and I think it’s going to look lovely.  The ribbon is fantastic stuff and very narrow and will be threaded through with a narrow bodkin.

This is definitely an over-the-top dress, for all its steely understatement, but I’m so enjoying the creative process that I don’t begrudge the time at all.

Book Review: Simplified Smocking by Helena Buehler

Posted by on Jul 23 2010

I picked up this interesting book, “Simplified Smocking” by Helena Buehler from Abebooks last year for a song. My copy was published in 1916; I’ve since since re-prints issued by several online sellers on Ebay and Etsy. This book is notable because while several of my Victorian-era embroidery books mention smocking among other techniques, it is the earliest book exclusively on smocking in my personal library.

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It’s a interesting little book, part how-to, part catalogue, with adorable illustrations. It showcases an interesting method of smocking that has all but disappeared since the advent of the pleating machine: namely iron-on smocking designs that create the pleats and the smocking design in one step.

Essentially, this technique is a variation on the better known linear smocking dots technique, whereby pleats are created by picking up a regular pattern of iron-on dots and then smocking worked across the pleats. But in simplified smocking, the dots are patterned and when they are picked up and pulled tight, they create cable, outline, wave and trellis stitches as they form the pleats.

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This method was used by pattern companies like Vogue, McCalls, Advance and Simplicity well into the 1960s and it has some advantages. Certainly the time savings that were gained by consolidating the pleating process and the smocking would be attractive; the downside were a limited repertoire of pre-determined designs and the challenge of removing the iron dots from light or delicate fabrics (although some companies apparently got around this by offering their iron-on patterns in blue and silver, for dark and light fabrics respectively)

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Frankly though, the appeal for me are the illustrations in this book.  Like this baby, plump and replete.

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And these little coats and dresses for girls:

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If that doesn’t make you want to go ‘awww’, I don’t know what will, frankly.

They’re a fantastic treasure trove of charming vintage design with lots of interesting ideas for incorporating smocking into a whole range of outfits. There’s a definite Kate Greenaway charm to these children and I always enjoy studying the whimsical designs for vintage inspiration.  This little girl with the lantern is my favourite, though.

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Doesn’t it remind you of John Singer Sargent’s classic impressionist work, “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose”?

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The smocking patterns aren’t detailed with stitch instructions  – they’re photographed in black and white and numbered, catalogue-style, with the reader encouraged to visit their local 1916 shop for purchase :). However, most of the patterns are clearly discernible and recreating them would not present a challenge to a determined smocker.

Buehler plate No.4

As a bit of fun, I’ve recreated one of the EZ Smocking Patterns, which sold for the exorbitant price of 25 cents. Click Here for a pdf download.  You are free to share the link to this plate with smocking friends and use it for personal or charity sewing. Please credit my website and don’t repost or resell the chart on your own site.  Enjoy!

It’s All About Me!

Posted by on Jul 22 2010

After a mammoth couple of months of ‘business’ sewing, including five Christmas/winter articles, a Valentine’s Day cross-stitch and more, I’m finally taking a bit of a break from ‘gotta-dos’ to sew some ‘wanna-dos’.

Last night, I cut out the lining for my Ottobre raincoat. Yes, yes, I know it’s taken me until now to get started on a project I’d sworn to undertake in the depths of winter, but cut me some slack…I had everything traced off and pre-washed. I just had other sewing that had to get done first.

I’m using a really nice t-shirt knit for the lining. I’d been hmm-ing and haw-ing over what to use for the lining. You wouldn’t think white t-shirt knit would be difficult to locate but it was, surprisingly enough. I’d priced out some knits at a few of my usual suspects, because that what the pattern recommended, and the fabrics I found were either so cheap and thin or so outrageously priced that my fiscal conscience balked.

Then, by chance, while I was in my favourite notion store, Nova Sewing Centre, getting elastic, I saw a big bolt of white knit fabric on the shelf. They don’t carry a lot of fabric, so I hadn’t even thought of them originally – mostly it’s just linings and interfacings and such – but this was perfect. Nice weight, right shade of white and best of all? $3/m!! What a score!

Take that, you $29/m over-priced knitwear fabric! Take that!

So now, I’m going to be working on assembling the lining, using it as my muslin before I cut into my beautiful laminated fabric. I’ve done a rough fit and made my usual pattern changes, including petite-ing it and increasing the cup size but knowing Ottobre, I don’t expect too many challenges. Cutting the fashion fabric though will be fiddly, I’m sure, because I will have to cut the coat shell in a single layer, so that all of the large damask motifs align perfectly.

And when alignment becomes a chore, I’ve also started on an exquisite smocked dress for my niece based on Gail Doane’s out-of-this-world dress, Eloise, which is on the cover of AS&E #87. Grey wool, white french lace collar. Mmmm, delicious.

Do You Know This Man?

Posted by on Jul 13 2010

It’s been a very hot few weeks in Ontario and while it eased a little over the weekend, according to our weatherman, we’re once again due for a nice mix of mugginess and thunderstorms.

So, given all this heat and stickiness, what am I working on? Something cool and seasonal? Hardly.

Guess:

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This is an mid-point picture of my latest WIP, which has since been finished as a small pillow. It’s worked on a very fine summer-weight navy wool, and the picture smocking is done with a variety of cotton flosses, blending filaments and Petite Very Velvet thread. Normally, the latter is the exclusive preserve of counted canvas work but I’ve been experimenting of late with smocking threads and I have to say I LOVE THIS THREAD. It’s the perfect weight for picture smocking, it doesn’t fray, it’s got a fantastic, velvety texture and it comes in a whole host of colours. I will definitely be working with this thread again. It’s absolutely great for smocking!

For people who smock, you may also notice something else a little peculiar: namely I’m not using the multiple needle technique. In traditional picture smocking, the picture is built row by row, like knitting, so that when you change colours across a row you will have 2, 3 or sometimes 4 needles being worked at the same time. The working threads are carried across the back and it makes a terrible mess, frankly.

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I hate it.

Working with all those needles and having the unworked threads dangling down drove me batty. So I ignored the textbooks and now I picture smock like I would cross stitch, working blocks of colour one at a time. It gives me far greater flexibility in terms of the complexity of the designs I work, my backs are neat and best of all no *!^%$#&* threads hanging down the back to get tangled all to heck.

He’s scheduled to appear in a magazine later this year, so I can’t show you the finished product quite yet but he’s all done now and he’s lovely and richly decorated, with beads and blending filament and lots of bullions and french knots. For once, I also remembered to take photos at regular intervals, so once this ‘mystery’ man makes his debut, I’ll definitely do a post detailing his development and let you see just how he came to life.