I know now why I haven’t done this before.

A few weeks ago our local Spotlight store had a sale on sewing patterns and I bought three.  One of the patterns was a Vogue pattern at a ridiculously low price, one that I couldn’t go past, and as this was the only child’s pattern that appealed to me so I bought it.

You can see in the background the reverse side of the fabric I selected to make the dress for my youngest granddaughter.

I didn’t realise that I would have to transfer all the dots to the fabric in order to do the smocking.  I don’t own a smocking machine and I am not likely to now.

This is what a smocking machine looks like.  Obviously it would only take a few minutes to pleat the fabric whereas it took me several hours by hand.

I thought I had carbon paper for transferring the dots but I only had white and that wouldn’t show up on the fabric so I had to go and buy some new dressmakers’ carbon.

You can see from the photo how old my carbon paper was compared to the new one.

I set about transferring all the dots, what a job that was.

I then had to sew all the gathering threads,

and pull up the gathers to fit the paper pattern of the yoke.

Now I have all that bit done I can start on the actual smocking.  It would need to be a terrific result after all this work.  I hope I don’t make any mistakes.

The only smocking I have done before was way back in 1967 when I smocked the yokes on my younger sister’s and my bridesmaids’ dresses for my elder sister’s wedding.  It was nowhere near as complicated as what I am doing at the moment.

My how fashions change.