Well, in between working out and taking my sweet girl to the pool while my husband has been out of town I have been working on Heather Ross' Mendocino Sundress. Can I just say "Nightmare"? Maybe someone should have told me I needed to practice smocking on about 20 small pieces before I tried doing this to an entire dress cut out of Amy Butler Lotus that my sis-in-law gave me for my birthday. Ugh! It was going to be so pretty.
First of all the directions don't give much insight on how to set up your machine for this. Being a newbie I don't have alot of experience with having to adjust my tension or stitch length but this is what someone suggested doing out on the web. I also looked at Sandi Henderson's tutorial on shirring which gives pics and tips but something still did not work right. In between hand winding the bobbin after every row(no fun!) and ripping out stiches for poor tension, I now have a piece of fabric that looks like the elastic has been stretched out.
So what is a girl to do? I am not giving up. I am either going to rip it all out and start over (going to need more elastic thread) or I am going to modify it into something else. To be honest I think it would be easier to make a tailored dress out of the pattern than to smock all those rows.
Oh well I am just going to look at it as a good experience and keep trucking.
On a lighter note, I'm toying aound with the idea of doing a quilt sometime soon. A local fabric store is going out of business and I got a super cute quilt pattern(for cheap) that looks like it might be a good start for a beginner. It's called Salt Water Taffy. Doesn't that sound fun? Anywho, I'll leave you with a pic of my "Beautiful Disaster". 
(It's wrinkly because I was desperate to see if it was going to work. I put it in the wash on spin and then into the dryer but still no luck. It's supposed to magicaly shrink up, no magic here. )
Later,
e-
No comments:
Post a Comment