For centuries women have used cloth as a tool of comfort and as an expression of beauty within their homes. Creating cloth for warmth, cloth for shelter, our female predecessors embellished these linens with hand stitch using laborious and time consuming techniques thereby enhancing the functional beauty of objects which enveloped and protected their families. Inspired by these women I hope my creations pay tribute to and recognise the devotion expressed in cloth by our female ancestors .







''the use of traditional often time consuming process alludes to the devotion of a mother''. c K. A. Ruane 2007







Friday, March 7, 2008

I am in the process of applying text to the silk panel which I intend to smock for my current cloth. I am optomistic that I will finish this some time today, then I can damp stretch it before smocking. These transfers are available to buy as an aid to smocking, but they can become very expensive, especially when you need to smock half a metre of fabric because each pack only prints a small area.




I tend to do it the DIY way, marking out the dots on the reverse with tailors chalk. Obviously this takes a lot longer, but hey, you know me, laborious, time consuming, I love it!

Then it all has to be stitched with running stitch through the dots before drawing it up tight and embellishing the front. I love how this looks when it is done. This piece is just a sample but when the panel of text is put through this process, embellished and the ties removed, trust me, it will look divine.



If everything goes to plan I should have this completed before the weekend is over. I then intend to do a few things for the shop. My purses have sold out which I am delighted about and I have ordered more purse frames to replace the stock. There is also a tiny germ of an idea growing in my head, I hope to have more on that soon.

2 comments:

Gayle said...

Thank you for sharing this. It's a great introduction to smocking. I love learning about new products but also love seeing it done more traditionally. Your posts are wonderful.

Ulla said...

These pictures reminded me of a dress I made for my daughter when she was little. I think it was my mother's unfinished project intended for my elder sister, and I did the smocking in front and put the dress together. It was a plaid fabric so I didn't need to mark the dots, and it was a very little dress.