{"id":1539,"date":"2011-06-09T12:25:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T16:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/?p=1539"},"modified":"2011-06-09T12:54:54","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T16:54:54","slug":"a-new-project-underway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/?p=1539","title":{"rendered":"A New Project Underway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that soccer season has started and I’ve got two boys playing this year, I’ve started another smocking project to keep my hands occupied on the sidelines. I know, I know, what kind of a parent smocks during the game? Who am I, daring to look away from all the scintillating action of 12 five year olds meandering round the field after a ball like a bunch of neon coloured lemmings? The kind who has to sit through 2 games and 2 practices every week from June to the end of August, that’s who. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I cheer. I encourage. I smock. I think it’s a fair trade off.<\/p>\n

Here are three things I can promise you about the new dress:<\/p>\n

1. It is not a bishop.<\/p>\n

2. It does not have bullions, detached chain leaves or surface embroidery of any kind.<\/p>\n

3. It does not have lace, insertion, beading or edging, either.<\/p>\n

Because I need a break from all of those things.<\/p>\n

I’m using a really lovely red and white striped cotton. It’s glazed so it’s got a bit of a sheen to it and 36″ wide, rather than the more common 45″. I picked it up a while back on a buy 1, get 2 free deal so for $6, I got plenty to make a dress.<\/p>\n

For the first time ever, I’ve hand gathered my pleats. I did it this way, rather than trying to get it through my pleater so I could be assured of a nice regular pattern. The stripes are perfect for this, as the white stripes are approximately 3\/16″ and the red stripes are 1\/8″.<\/p>\n

Wasn’t hard, just took a bit of time to get it done. I drew faint pencil lines on the wrong side, each 1cm (3\/8″) apart, which is the same spacing as my Read pleater then picked up the pleats with a running stitch.<\/p>\n

Here’s what it looks like from the front side:<\/p>\n

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And from the back:<\/p>\n

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And here’s what it looks like when it’s gathered. As you can see, the white dominates as I had wanted. I’m going to be smocking a simple geometric design in red, so I wanted it to stand out. (I think it’s fair to say, this won’t be a *subtle* dress when it’s all done up :))<\/p>\n

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My pleating ratio worked out to about 3.6:1. I didn’t tie off super tight since I’m not an overly tight smocker. Once I block it, I’ll see what the final numbers look like but they’ll be close to that, probably about 3.2:1. I will have to add width to the sides, since I’m making a partial yoke dress and the fabric is too narrow for the size 5 I’ll be making.<\/p>\n

And for all the folks who’ve been downloading my Illustrator tutorials for designing your own smocking plates, I have been making good progress on writing the third tutorial on geometrics. I’ve finished the plate and am now writing the step by steps. I expect to have it up in the near future, so keep your eyes open for that. I’ve had a lot of feedback from people who’ve found them really useful and that makes me happy I can share my knowledge so other smockers’ design efforts are that much easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that soccer season has started and I’ve got two boys playing this year, I’ve started another smocking project to keep my hands occupied on the sidelines. I know, I know, what kind of a parent smocks during the game? Who am I, daring to look away from all the scintillating action of 12 five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,40],"tags":[86,84,85,303],"class_list":["post-1539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-smocking","category-tutorial","tag-girls-smocked-dress","tag-hand-gathered-pleats","tag-partial-yoke-dress","tag-wip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539","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=1539"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1539\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairemeldrum.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}