The dress fabric is a lovely swirly red cotton quilt fabric. The kit comes with all the threads, fabric, buttons, needles and even cord for piping. I purchased this kit from a quilt shop in Vista, California, which closed down over two years ago. The owner would make several kits up and charge only for the materials, so of course I bought several to have on hand. I will make this up in a standard yoke dress with a smocked insert, with puffed sleeves and more of the black fabric for the sleeve bands and collar. Since I have to get this done in the next month, I will be posting quite a bit about my progress. So far I have managed to finish the line of snow along the bottom of the smocking design. It's not much, but I did just start it yesterday.
There is only one problem with this project, and it's a biggie. I've never done any picture smocking before. For those who aren't familiar with the term, picture smocking is done to form a picture in the smocking pattern, as opposed to a geometric design. I guess that is fairly self explanatory. So far I am being very meticulous, carefully stripping the strands, ironing them, and making sure they are laying flat against one another. As I progress, I'll show photos of the smocking. But since I only have the bottom layer of snow finished, it's hardly worth a photo.
I have a lot of other Christmas sewing to do, so we'll see how much of it actually gets done.
Lovely projects Cynthia! I've only done smocking one time so I can't help with your problem, but I can't imagine it's too much different than something like counted cross stitch where you have to keep track of where each stitch goes in relation to all the others. I have a sister who has done some really spectacular smocking projects, but she doesn't blog. Can't wait to see how it comes out!
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