{"id":1456,"date":"2011-05-20T19:36:13","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T23:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/?p=1456"},"modified":"2011-05-20T20:18:05","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T00:18:05","slug":"advanced-stitches-project-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/?p=1456","title":{"rendered":"Advanced Stitches Project Complete"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been struggling to hack down the UFO pile that’s been teetering and tottering on the corner of my sewing table. \u00a0Slowly, slowly, progress is being made.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This angel-sleeved bishop is one of those UFOs that I finished this past weekend and I’m happy with the results. I made it as my final project for my Advanced Stitches correspondence course<\/a> that I blogged about last fall.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They give you a year to complete all of the units; it took me 13 months, which isn’t bad. \u00a0Although, funny girl that I am, I had announced plans to have my final project finished by January. \u00a0 Hah!<\/p>\n

I have already decided to enroll in another distance education course because I found I learned tons of new info from the class. \u00a0One of the reasons I struggled for a while with this project because, as usual, I’d had grand ambitions and at times getting the reality to align with my grand plans wasn’t always easy. \u00a0But that too was a learning experience and overall, I’m satisfied with the final results.<\/p>\n

Let’s talk about the dress and not my poor time management skills, shall we?<\/p>\n

The fabric was an ecru poly-cotton with all-over embroidered blue dot and scalloped edge. \u00a0 I’d planned an entirely colour palette but when I discovered this fabric at Lens Mills, I thought it was too cute to pass up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The pattern I used for this dress was an older (1980s) bishop pattern that Nancy, my instructor, provided as part of the course. \u00a0Nice little pattern but much less full than the bishops I’m used to smocking. \u00a0That small stylistic difference wouldn’t have been an issue if I was smocking a traditional geometric bishop design: something with lots of waves or trellises. \u00a0If I was making the dress again, or use the bishop pattern again, I will add width to the front and back pieces, so that they’re fuller. \u00a0I think that this amount of fabric would have been perfect for a heavier fabric like a quilting cotton or even a fine\u00a0corduroy\u00a0but the poly-cotton I used was quite light and as a result, the pleats were quite widely spaced along the bottom row of the\u00a0bishop. \u00a0This, coupled with the embroidered dots, \u00a0made getting my wheat-stitch ovals even and symmetrical difficult along the bottom. \u00a0Of course, my wonkiest one is right at CF. \u00a0Murphy’s law. \u00a0 But since it was a learning piece, I decided to leave it as was. \u00a0I may yet rip it out but for now, I’m OK with it.<\/p>\n

I used a lot of unusual stitches in the execution of this plate: \u00a0closed herringbone, wheat stitch, raised cable and cable. \u00a0For the embroidery, I stitched bullion roses, detached chain leaves and bullion-wrapped buds. \u00a0Gotta say,\u00a0I do like my bullion flowers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Aren’t they pretty? \u00a0I wasn’t planning on the limited blue palette when I started the dress. \u00a0I had a nice selection of pinks and soft greens all\u00a0lined up to go along with the blues. \u00a0But as I started smocking, I found I liked the restrained colours. \u00a0They remind me a little of delft pottery, with their soft, muted tones.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I closed the back of the dress with seven vintage blue buttons. \u00a0These were new old stock that I literally unearthed from Nova. \u00a0None of the blue buttons they had were quite right. \u00a0Too green. \u00a0Too blue. \u00a0Too grey. \u00a0Too big. \u00a0Not right. \u00a0I was getting desperate so I got down on my hands and knees and started pulling out all the old boxes of buttons that they have scattered throughout the shop. \u00a0I finally found the perfect buttons. \u00a0I had to blow the dust off the big box before pulling them out but I’m glad I found them. \u00a0Price on the individual card? \u00a0$0.30. \u00a0Guess they’d been there a while. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I also would have changed how I tackled attaching the neck binding. \u00a0I was taught to start at the top of the plate and work down. \u00a0In this case, that meant working a row of chain stitch in dark blue along row 1. \u00a0Since then, a friend suggested waiting to stitch the upper row of smocking until after the binding has been sewn down. \u00a0This eliminates a lot of the rip and fiddle that occurs when putting on a binding because you can make sure the stitches are perfectly spaced below the neck. \u00a0I got mine on pretty evenly, but in the future, I’m going to try her suggestion and see if it streamlines the process.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Finally, I do love my hem treatment. \u00a0I utilized the scalloped edge of the fabric for both the sleeves and the lower hem. \u00a0Hey, anything to save me from turning up a hem!<\/p>\n

Then I added three rows of 1\/4″ tucks. \u00a0Each tuck is made along one of the rows of embroidered dots, so the three rows of tucks are all identical. \u00a0It’s a tiny thing but it makes me happy.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been struggling to hack down the UFO pile that’s been teetering and tottering on the corner of my sewing table. \u00a0Slowly, slowly, progress is being made. This angel-sleeved bishop is one of those UFOs that I finished this past weekend and I’m happy with the results. I made it as my final project for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,7],"tags":[72,75,73,74,301],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sewing-for-children","category-smocking","tag-bishop-dress","tag-bullion-roses","tag-closed-herringbone","tag-raised-chain-stitch","tag-smocking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1477,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}