A gift for you....

Sometimes when we are designing a pattern one element or another doesn’t always work.

I usually file these little nuggets away for future use in some other form or pattern but this time I thought you might enjoy this design graph. It is just too sweet to store away. I hope you will this the same.

Smocked on double layer of Imperial Batiste

Why when this is such a pretty little design? Well if you look carefully at the photo you will see how the yoke bubbles slightly. I did everything you are supposed to do, let out the pleats to match the area of the yoke  to which it was to attach, spread my pleats, smocked more loosely at the bottom than the top. But when the seam was sewn, oh no!, it wouldn’t sit right.

 

Out with the steam iron and spray starch but no matter of work with these two was going to solve my problem. Of course it may have been that the piping in the seam was the problem but I was not going to take a chance and publish a design that wouldn’t work.

If it was the piping, I may have stretched it ever so slightly  so that when it relaxed, it ‘bounced back’ to its original length. Nothing short of new piping (I had trimmed off the end of course) and taking everything apart  to re-stitch it all, would have solved this problem.  I am too fussy and yet at the same time too impatient to re do all that stitching. But you are the winner!

I used iridescent seed beads and the faintest variegated floss for the borders and matching pink floss for the central section. You could make bullion roses in place of the seed beads.

Send me a photo of how you have used this design and I will post it here.

So until next time, keep stitching……