July 8, 1997
e-Mail: smockingstore@att.net
Website: Garden Fairies Smocking & Needlearts Catalog
Smocking Newsletter - Beth-Katherine Kaiman, copyright 1997-2004, all rights reserved. Please respect my creativity and hard work and ask permission before you copy something from these newsletters for your non profit goup, I always ask that you quote me correctly and give me credit with a way for people to get back to me. Thank you. IF you wish to quote me in a venture for profit please contact me separately concerning royalties.
From our Readers
Smocking History
Embroidery Stitches
Beginner's Corner
First off I want to say how much I have enjoyed writing this newsletter, it has filled a gap in my creative life and I do appreciate your appreciation - thank you.
I wrote in issue 10a "Some ladies serge their seams and swear by them for the ease in which they go through the pleater but many of us prefer the look of french seams."
Kathleen replied:
"I always use the serger to make French seams. I have the luxury of having both the sewing machine and serger out at the same time, so I serger the seam to get the small seam allowance I need, get it trimmed and bound in one step, iron it, then move to the sewing machine to encase it and iron again. That way I get the effect of the French seam, but don't have to spend time trimming, ensuring it's narrow enough to look the way I want, etc. It's so fast! - Kathleen
* * *
"Okay, for my first question, the obvious. What kind/brand pleater would you recommend for a beginner? (Is that something you can answer???) Thank you! Susan"
Buying a pleater for the first time requires a bit of forethought. The first question to ask yourself is what am I going to pleat: will it be always dolls clothes and children clothes, no more than 16 rows. Will I ever want more than 16 rows and want to pleat slightly heavier fabrics? Please look at the notions section of my web site at the pleater information. The direct URL is: http://members.aol.com/garfairies/notions.html
1920's
The dresses that were of the Liberty Aesthetic dress movement sparked the creativity of a whole generation of home sewers in the 1920s, it's influence is still felt today. Many of the styles of dresses for children, bishop & basic square yoke, are still being made today over and over again. The availability of the sewing machine with it's labor saving advantages allowed time for embellishment and so smocking as we know it had it's birth with the home sewers. Pattern companies came up with the style of smocking known as North American Smocking with iron-on transfers which were the patterns, all one had to do was follow the lines.
Simplification was the impulse that pushed society at that time - machines were invented to accomplish almost every goal. You can see this impulse reflecting itself in the style of clothes of women and children. No longer were we stuffed into corsets and layers of layers of protection, the freedom we were gaining in society reflected itself in our clothes. The factories of the clothing manufacturers which engaged in the mass production of clothing cut down upon the need of having to make clothes by hand or hiring a dressmaker. This simplification allowed women time and freedom to create more beautiful things and what was then made at home was made from a space of creativity rather than utilitarian necessity. Magazines such as Delineator (Butterick) sprang up geared towards educating women on different embroidery and lace making techniques and gave projects each month for them to work on. The sewing machine, which took away the drudgery of handsewing seams, (though the tradition of sewing seams by hand is still with us) gave women the time to make lovelies for themselves and family. No longer were beautiful hand embroidered clothing only for the wealthy, the middle class woman had more time to make such lovelies for themselves and family. the times were changing. The creativity that blossomed from the period when the sewing machine came into our homes is still with us today as women then experimented with the machines, some of the most beautiful lace and machine embroidery work was done on straight stitch machines. Yet smocking was still done by hand.
The Victorian Era and the Edwardian era (the time periods in most people's minds when they think of lace and insertion, tucks and heirloom sewing) was a renaissance of machine made lace. It was abundant and fairly inexpensive, as opposed to handmade bobbin lace, and every woman could afford to wear it and so they did, lots of it. There was still the snobbery, however, that it wasn't hand made lace it wasn't lace, but the quality of the machine made laces won over a whole generation or two of women and actually the fascination still continues today as the same manufacturers in France and England are still making lace. An interesting side note about how the World Wars I & II changed the course of fashion history would fit in here but that's another story.
For some beautiful examples of the Victorian Era of the 1850's see the following web site Godey's Lady' Book Online Home Page:
http://www.history.rochester.edu/godeys/
(Thanks to Jean Kopp for this URL)
Way back in issue 6 I promised to continue the bullion explanation with a section on making bullions on pleats. This is a bit difficult to do without illustrations but I will try my best. Bullions are best done on tight surfaces so working on pleats is a bit tricky but not too hard.
One of the easiest bullions to make is the fisheye bullion which is done over four pleats. Usually this is added within an open space of your design whether it be in a cable wave combination grid or as an accent by itself.
With a Milliner or Straw needle (the shaft of the needle is the same width as the eye), come up at your normal spot on the left side of the first pleat. Count over four pleats and while keeping your needle parallel to the pleating row, bring your needle through the four pleats ending up where you started. DO NOT TAKE THE NEEDLE ALL THE WAY THROUGH!!!!!!! With just about 3/8" of the eye of the needle showing, place your thumb on the eye and hold in place. With the other hand take the floss and wrap around the needle slowly 7 to 9 time, pushing them down the shaft of the needle when you are done. You should wrap slowly and evenly close to the needle but not too tight, nor too loose. When you are done wrapping, push the wraps down to the fabric and hold onto them between your thumb and forefinger of the hand that did the wrapping and pull the needle through with the other hand holding onto the wraps until the thread is almost pulled through.
Let go of the wraps and look at them to see if they are even. If they are not then park your needle between the wraps and the thread and gently tug on the floss petting your wraps in the direction they were wrapped. When they are even and smooth then place your thumb on top of them and pull rest of the floss through. Make another bullion just above this one in the same manner, place a french knot in the middle in a darker color, or use a colonial knot or bead or pearl.
"It may be that our whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others."
Tug up, tug down to tighten your stitches - this rhythm gives you beautiful and even smocking. (The tugging is done flat against the surface not up in the air.)
I would like to recommend that everyone who smocks have a copy of The Pleater Manual by Sarah Douglas, the well known pleating expert. This book has the answers to every question that you may have ever asked about working with a pleater and with pleats - you don't have to own a pleater to gain from owning this book. Sarah spent hours analyzing her first pleating project and the book is the result of this analyzation. She also spent hours working with every type of pleater and written about each one. Ms. Douglas has been a member of the Smocking Arts Guild for at least 15 years and has served on the national Board of Directors many, many time. She knows what she is talking about and has a gift for going beyond what is obvious - a very discernible mind. Last night I read an article by Sarah in the Spring Edition 1985 of The Smocking Arts Magazine in which Sarah describes her first encounter with her pleater and I wanted to share it with you:
The Pleater and I,
by Sarah Douglas
"Like most people, I unpacked my first pleater quivering with delight; I skimmed the directions and began pleating wildly. I was enthralled. I would have pleated and smocked the cat if she hadn't had more needles than the machine!
"Hours of work disappeared through those gears in minutes. I could have a blouse, next week, not next month. I bought a pattern, skimmed a book.
"Iron on dots ... fill in the "missing dots" with a pencil? what missing dots?? Gather it by hand ...!? What nonsense was this? Why did I own this glorious machine if not to do this with ease. Surely one could just pleat around this neck. I pitied the woman who wrote the book; she hadn't had a pleating machine.
"I cut it out, seamed it up, and set up for new heights. But the neck went sliding away down the needles, and the top of the seam was here ... and the bottom of it was ... somewhere else. Whoa, machine!
"I yanked back on the top of the seam. I jerked the neck back up to the proper needle. now the bottom of the yoke was jammed in the end plate; I dragged it though . Panic stricken at the mess I had gotten myself and my cherished machine into, I tugged, pulled and yanked. I pleaded and coaxed and got the seam through the gears. It ran across six pleats.
"Whispering (lying) promises of 'never again if you will just live through this,' I struggled on, pulling and twisting the fabric. The next seam only ran across three pleats.
"The Pleater and I sat and looked at each other. I spread out the pleated mess and studies it. At this second seam, where I had been pulling the fabric through, at the bottom, the stitches were wider than tat the top. Up there, I'd been dragging back on the blouse. The top row was off the edge or down three quarters of an inch in the fist sections, but it only wavered about half an inch in the second.
"We had a cup of coffee, the pleater and I, and thought it over. I spread out the pattern and LOOKED at it. Yes, the seams sloped out from the neck. Straight pleats wouldn't fit. And the neck curved. That made sense to me, if not to the pleater. Most necklines curve. Section two was better; the pleater could be fooled.
"The second seam went across fewer pleats. Some of the stitches were longer than others ...If I pulled the fabric into the gears, the pleater took big bites; if I held it back, little bites. So if it took little pleats at the top, and big pleats at the bottom it would take the same number at both ends, and the seams would match the pleats. No "missing dots." No weird design problems.
"'We'll do this systematically,' I informed the pleater. It did not disagree. At every turn, I straightened the top edge and dragged on it. Between turns I rattled the roller and loosened the fabric at the bottom, as I turned the handle, I held the loose fabric against the gears. I watched for the seam, not daring to breathe. it came into view...bottom first! I'd over done it. I tried just straightening the neck, not dragging it away from the gears, and holding the bottom in to the gears. That was easier; it only took two hands.
"We crept on. The pleats were slanting toward the next seam; a great bubble formed in the middle. The machine slapped it down, pleating a horizontal fold in to get rid of the extra fabric. NO! Thanks for trying, but no. I'll adjust, you pleat. I pulled at the top and the bottom, paralleled with the gears...turned the handle with my little finger. The bubble disappeared.
"Pull forward at the bottom, back at the top, up at the top, down at the bottom...it was a constant balancing act...one pleat and then another pleat...too much, too little. Twitch. Ease. Tighten. Loosen.
"The finished blouse was a mess. One seam was right. One leaned forward, two back. This was a learning experience blouse, no doubt about that. I cut another, seamed it and spread it on the floor. The pleater and I stared at it. If we knew when to pull harder, when not to pull...
"I go a chalk pencil. "This line is center front," I told the pleater. "This line is halfway between the seam and center. Here is the middle of the sleeve. Here is halfway between the seam and center. The grain should be straight about the halfway mark, get crooked again at the next mar. In between, all we have to worry about is the neck."
"I marked all the pieces, rolled up the new blouse and tied again. It worked much better. We bickered constantly about who would take care of the bubbles, but with constant tugging and easing, I won most of the arguments. By the fourth time through, we really had it down. It was simply a matter of continual, pleat by pleat correction, of figuring out where to turn, where to pull.
"I wondered if there had been a hint in the instruction that I had missed. This time I READ the instructions. They said it couldn't be done! I raised my coffee cup to the pleater. It was smugly and triumphantly, silent."
"I'm telling you. People come and go in this Forest, and they say, 'It's only Eeyore, so it doesn't count.' "
-- Eeyore