Mary De Tutorial - Part 2

I didn't think I'd ever get to part 2!  Whew!  The smocking took much longer than I had anticipated.  In hind sight, I should have waited until it was totally complete before doing the tutorial.  Lesson learned.

In part 2, I'll show you how I added rows to the smocking plate I used to get the number I needed, and I'll show you how I attached the insert to the yoke.

This is the original smocking plate that I bought just for this dress.  Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to the Mary De pattern on the number of rows required for my size.  So I had to do some major alterations in the plate.  I had this plate on hand (scroll to baby bugs and butterflies) and thought some of these rows would do well on the dress, so I incorporated some of them.  Then Ann came out with a new plate, so I ordered that one too.

So here is the finished insert.

And a close up.

So the original plate had smaller strawberries which didn't look right with the size of this insert.  These larger strawberries look so much better, plus they took up 4 1/2 rows!  I also used the waves beneath the strawberries from this same plate.  The top waves with the red weaved through I used from the baby bugs and butterfly plate.  I had a lot of backsmocking to keep the insert nice and tight.  I matched the blue floss to the background color in the dress to pull it all together.

Okay, so that's how I increased my rows from 7 to 14.  Now let's go through how I attached it to my yoke.

First, decide exactly how much of your ric rac you want showing on the front of the dress.  I wanted a fairly good bit.  You'll want to run a basting stitch right down the ric rac where you want the yoke to line up.

In my case, I wanted a good bit to show, so I ran my stitch smack down the middle of the ric rac.  My 1/4" foot was perfect for this, since it just hit both edges of my ric rac, and that made it very easy to get an even stitch.  Go slow here, because you'll use this stitch line to attach your yoke, so it needs to be as straight as possible.  Here is my stitch line from the back.

Do the same for the other side of the insert as shown.  See that wasn't hard at all was it?  This terrified me the first time I did it.  But the basting stitch can be picked out easily if you mess up!  Guess how I know that?

Now grab your insert and put it face up in front of you.  Now grab your yoke and place it face down on top of your insert (right sides together) matching the edges and pin in place as shown.

Now take it to your machine and stitch it on the same basting stitch you just did.

Just be sure and not catch the top part of the yoke in the stitching, which almost happened here.  Luckily, I caught this before I ran it through the machine.  Guess how many times I've managed to do that!  You think a girl would learn.  Sheesh!

You can either run a zig zag stitch over the raw edges or use your serger.  I usually serge mine.  Flip it back over and press it.  Be careful not to press your pleats flat and never iron directly over your smocking.  It should look like this.

Now very carefully cut out your arm hole where marked.  And it will look like this.

The next installment will be attaching the skirt to the bottom of the insert.  Normally, I would just run some gathering stitches in the skirt and attach it just like we did the yoke.  BUT, this fabric is much, much thicker than I normally use, and there was entirely too much bulk in that seam.  So I'm still tossing around ideas to eliminate some of that bulk.  So stay tuned.

Let me know if I've confused you or didn't make something clear.

Angela