{"id":9059,"date":"2010-09-26T22:53:18","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T02:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/?p=9059"},"modified":"2012-04-16T15:54:20","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T19:54:20","slug":"drakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/26\/drakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Drakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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These ready-to-smock garments are a real responsibility!\u00c2\u00a0 All were purchased for Robert and Laurel who have outgrown the remainder of my stash.\u00c2\u00a0 So now I am scurrying to finish up the boy’s things for 18 month-old Alastair.<\/p>\n

His mother has requested some duck themed clothing, since his Alastair’s middle name is Drake.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to go a little further and concentrate on the drakes.\u00c2\u00a0 So I pulled out some old smocking plates and designs and plan to combine them for something a little less repetitive than either scene.\u00c2\u00a0 The yellow graphs were someone’s good idea for miniature smocking but they never caught on.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, I bought one of each and have used them periodically for tiny designs.<\/p>\n

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I especially like the cattails in Jerry Stock’s plate and the drakes in the leaflet, though I see now that the ones I like are obscured by the graph design.\u00c2\u00a0 The scan on the right\u00c2\u00a0shows how dramatic they are. They should show up nicely on the white Jon-Jon insert.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

This Jon-Jon suit is a work in progress, something I thought\u00c2\u00a0I would finish while “vacationing” in NC.\u00c2\u00a0 Was I crazy?!#$???\u00c2\u00a0 With three children and outings and homeschooling, I didn’t do a stitch.\u00c2\u00a0 So now I am trying to get this finished before grandson #2 outgrows it.<\/p>\n

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TECHNIQUE:\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve learned some interesting things, already.\u00c2\u00a0 But be forewarned–they will\u00c2\u00a0 be of little interest unless you\u00c2\u00a0have\u00c2\u00a0a need to\u00c2\u00a0pursue\u00c2\u00a0 the fine points of smocking, though they make little difference to anyone but the stitcher.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In an effort to make the water a little more realistic and interesting, I had planned to combine two colors of blue floss.\u00c2\u00a0 This idea was drawn from a spectacular little daygown in Miss Dot’s Photo Gallery at one of my favorite sites,\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Farmhouse Fabrics<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The fabric is white dotted Swiss, with green dots.\u00c2\u00a0 Miss Dot smocked it white two strands of one green and a third strand in a lighter shade.\u00c2\u00a0 Check out this photo gallery if you are in need of inspiration or just some eye candy.<\/p>\n

After deliberating about the floss colors, I decided that I would just use variegated floss.\u00c2\u00a0 This was far more challenging and less successful than the two-color combo method.\u00c2\u00a0 First,\u00c2\u00a0each variegation is so long that you’d almost need a river to see any change in shade.\u00c2\u00a0 Additionally, I chose to use 4 strands, which left 2 behind.<\/p>\n

Normally, I would strip the floss, thread three strands through the needle and knot the same end of the remaining 3 strands.\u00c2\u00a0 This was put aside.\u00c2\u00a0 But by having only 2 strands–1\/2 needed–I had to pull out another whole length of floss.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, after stripping it and pulling out two strands, I realized that the variegation was not the same in each half.\u00c2\u00a0 I let it go.<\/p>\n

Now, it hardly matters.\u00c2\u00a0 But I did not get the variation in color that I wanted.<\/p>\n

The next thing I learned was that when tying off in the middle of a row, I’d best match the color of end of that strand with the beginning of the next.\u00c2\u00a0 But then the grain of the floss is going the wrong\u00c2\u00a0way and my floss would wear out more quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 So I had to make my way up the lengthy variations until I could match the ends.<\/p>\n

Does this make sense to you?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s really an easy thing to see when you are working with the variegated floss but a difficult thing to describe.<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say, that the next time I decide I want some variation in the density of a color, I will use Miss Dot’s technique of mixing two solid colors\u00c2\u00a0of \u00c2\u00a0floss rather than using variegated.<\/p>\n

I’d better get to smocking or Alastair will have outgrown this before he gets a chance to wear it, just like his cousin Robert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These ready-to-smock garments are a real responsibility!\u00c2\u00a0 All were purchased for Robert and Laurel who have outgrown the remainder of my stash.\u00c2\u00a0 So now I am scurrying to finish up the boy’s things for 18 month-old Alastair. His mother has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,4,27,24,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9059"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9059"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9067,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9059\/revisions\/9067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.janicefergusonsews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}