Look what arrived in the mail!

Silk.

Ribbon.

Yumm.

The buttons are stash.  They’re glass and while they look really dark here, they’re a darn near exact match for the fabric.  They’re just the right size, too so hurray for serendipity.

When we last left our intrepid heroine, she was here:

And here’s the progress I’ve made.  (And no, the fabric hasn’t changed colour – I took these last night, under artificial light.  Went from blue to kinda greyish – darn colour temperatures!  The pictures I took in natural light are accurate.)

Not a ton, admittedly, but I have completed the smocking on Flower Power, made the Valentine’s pouches and made a sample for the quilting class I taught last week.  Plus worked and wrote and generally kept my family fed and dressed and out of the pool halls 🙂

As you can see, I completed the top band and have made about five rows of progress on the second.  Haven’t started in on the beadwork yet, but that will come as soon as I finish the trellis diamonds.  The backsmocking is done, too and when that’s done, I can pull out the pleating threads and get on to the ribbon work.

This is one of the projects that sort of got started by accident.

It started because I wanted to make one of these for each of the boys:

Adorable, eh? The tutorial is here on the At Second Street blog. She’s got some cute stuff and I don’t get to make a lot of ‘cute’ stuff for the boys. There’s way more girl-oriented stuff out in the blogosphere, so when I saw these I knew I had to make them.

*rummage, rummage* Pink scraps, red scraps, red corduroy, fusible web, handful of mismatched red and pink buttons. Check, check, check. But what to use for the lining?? The only red and white fabric that was remotely large enough was a metre and a bit of this red and white dot. Lovely stuff, great colour, not too girly.

One problem. I’d picked it up last summer, intending to make my niece a top. There was no way to get more. What if I cut out the linings for the bags and then didn’t have enough for the top? Err….to cut or not to cut, that was the question.

So what should have been an easy job suddenly got more involved – that ballooning thing that seems to happen sometimes when you have to do one thing before something else can happen. I traced off the pattern from “Smocking for Toddlers and Tots”, cut out the top, pleated and hemmed it, just so it was done and then got around to cutting out the linings. It worked out – I’ve got just a few small scraps left, and the top actually took less than the pattern indicated, so it was very straight forward if convoluted fix.

The pattern is “Flower Power”.  The sample garment in the book is a very girly, white top, with lots of embroidered bullions, paired with floral capris.   I loved the ruching effect and the slightly a-line look of the back so I cut it out in a size 2. I know, where are the bullions?  The botanical bounty?  They’re not there  because I actually borrowed the plate and the inspiration from another design in the book. It’s for tweens – way too big for my niece – but I loved the casual look and thought that I could combine the sizing of the first pattern with the style and fabric choice of the second.  

The entire top is worked in Van Dyke.  I love Van Dyke – its one of those less common stitches but it’s so stretchy and really easy to work.    Unlike most stitches, it is worked right to left – you can see my incomplete rows are unfinished on the left side.  This top has worked up very quickly – a couple of evenings work has brought me to this point.  I’d be further ahead except for one teensy-weensy thing.

Apparently, I can’t count.  Or more particularly, I can’t divide.  Although I centered the Van Dyke rows correctly, I miscounted the stepped van dyke points and started them off of centre.  That’s what happens when you get ahead of yourself.  “Ooh, I’ll just try this part,” you say to yourself.  “Work on something different for a while…”  The result?

Sigh.

None the less, I’m really, really liking this pattern and I’ve got some ideas on variations that I’ll share in the next little while.  I’ll also show you the pouches this week. I’ve got to finish sewing on the buttons before I debut ’em.

I started this post last week with the grand intention of naming and shaming all my 2010 UFOs that have been lurking and that I have been working on, off and on, in a very desultory fashion.

Like this this angel sleeve bishop, which I am smocking as the final assignment for my Advanced Stitches course. I finished the sampler for the course back in the summer but I delayed getting started on the dress. Now I just want it DONE! so I can move on and complete the first level of my artisan program. I’m close. The smocking, which features a whole bunch of less common stitches, like closed chain, closed herringbone and wheat stitch, has been enjoyable but endless at times, especially because of the density of the design and the frequency of the colour changes. There’s a lot of smocking in a bishop and it’s multiplied when it’s smocked with so many different stitches and colours. But nope, still not done.

And this very bright, very fun bishop. It’s just a play dress. I started it back at the beginning of December, when we moved into our new house and found myself facing a week with no TV, no internet, no nothing. I didn’t even have my sewing room set up but I did have this fabric and my pleater available, as well as a 12mth bishop pattern, so this was the result. It’s almost done, except for the bullion flowers, the arm and sleeve bindings. The plate is one I smocked before, just worked in the round this time, rather than straight like before. Works very nicely on a bishop, too, but I don’t really feel like working on buttonholes and bindings today so I’m no closer to finishing this, either.

Finally, there is this dotted swiss, front closing bishop. It’s from an ancient AS&E (1997 or 1998) called Cherie. It’s adorable, tons of heirloom details, twenty-two zillion bullions. It’s also wrinkled like crazy so I can’t show you the lovely fabric because it looks like I’ve run over it with a bulldozer. I love this dress but it’s fine, fine work and I’m just not in the mood for another bishop. I’m bishoped out at the moment although I *do* intend to get this done in time for Easter. Err, hopefully.

So what am I smocking? This:

Isn’t it pretty? The plate is called ‘Felicia’ and it’s from Sew Beautiful, Issue 98 from 2005. It’s one of my all time favourite SB issues – there are some truly lovely things in it, with lots of scope for imagination. It’s a classic square yoke dress, which makes a welcome change from those bishops I’ve been struggling with. There’s just so much smocking in a bishop – hundreds and hundreds of pleats that make my eyes cross at times! I picked up the fabric a couple of weeks ago. It’s a cotton with some sort of a glaze on it – very crisp, smocks nicely, wrinkles madly 🙂 that I picked up for $2/m a couple of weeks ago during the after-Christmas sales.

Haven’t gotten too far yet. No pearls, no silk ribbon embroidery but it’s going quite quickly, since it’s only a trellis, which is great for TV watching. I finished the top half and started the tiny six-stitch flowerettes. They’re really nice, very subtle and add some interest to the pleat texture. I like ’em. I think I’ll like ’em even more when they’re framing all the other stuff! 🙂