Week 4 – Project 7
Ruffled Cafe Curtain – Designed by Patricia Hoskins – page 36
Alicia chose Alexander Henry’s fabric June Bug June Blooms in Blue and June Bug June Dot in Black/White. The curtain adorns the window in her guest room. Alicia was so inspired she created pillows to coordinate (also from the June Bug collection).
Alicia’s Tips and Thoughts -
- The directions were easy enough to follow for a new sewist with 3.5 hours of sewing experience.
- My window was slightly wider than recommended (35″x 35″), but the curtain still fits.
- Traditionally cafe curtains are designed to hang at the half way point of a window, but that looked too short in my square window. So I positioned the tension rod at various spots and clipped the fabric with binder clips to play with the length. I settled on about 3/4 length of the window.
Beautiful work Alicia! Now you are officially a Sewist. Woo Hoo!!!
Week 4 – Project 8
Smocked Pillow in the Round – Designed by Welmoed Sisson – page 38
Kathy selected Liz Scott’s Sugar Pop Floral Andrea Pink with Dots Dot Dot Dot Eggplant for the covered button.
This is an extremely precise and well-designed project. Be sure to get your Zen on and enjoy the meditative quality of the hand sewn smocking. The use of a square pillow form inside was brilliant, it pushed out the smocked edges to create a perfectly plump and firm pillow.
Kathy’s Tips and Thoughts -
- Step 4: Mark a line 5″ from each side of smocked section. We recommend marking this line before smocking the fabric just to make the process easier. You can still wait to cut until the smocking is complete.
- Use doubled thread for strength to gather the ends of the pillow. Use a strong thread such as 100% Polyester all-purpose thread
- Plan on 2 hours to create the smocking template and transfer it to the fabric. Plan on another 5 to 6 hours to do the smocking.
- Place a layer of light weight solid white cotton fabric behind the print fabric when making the covered button. It will make lighter areas more vibrant looking.
Bonus footage: Kathy’s smocking in action:
The smocked pillow has been in the shop for several days now and we can’t stop touching it. Not only is it beautiful, it’s super soft and inviting. Time for a nap!
How to participate: One Yard Wonders Sew Along Details
Kathy Mack
Carrie + Diana
Excellent! This project needed a visual step by step how to. Love the finished project.
The pillow is beautiful!
The fabric choice is perfect.
I am really tempted to give this project a try. I really like the fabric covering the button in the bottom photo too.
Hi Claire,
That’s my favorite button too, I have to confess I had never covered buttons before! For the second side I used a fussy cut piece from Sugar Pop Summer Flowers Pink (http://www.pinkchalkfabrics.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=37_47_604&products_id=5358)
The lightbulb went off for me and now I see every piece of fabric as a potential covered button!
xo Kathy
I love all of your projects so far, that cushion just looks beautiful, worth the effort I am sure. I love the fabric choice for the cafe curtain, it looks great. Can’t wait to see what you create next.
Great idea to play with the curtain length! That’s the kind of thing I come up with after I am done with a project…
I found myself mesmerized by this process. Admittedly, I have no idea how you begin, but I loved the concept and look!! Thanks for sharing! (Great video as well!!)
love the curtains, the room looks so lovely and bright. the pillow looks great, but i don’t think pillow is my thing, ha.
love the curtains, the room looks so lovely and bright. the pillow looks great, but i don’t think smocking is my thing, ha.
Great projects, but I LOVE the June Bug fabrics. Off to check out the whole collection…
Thank you so muh for including the video. The pillow you made was a labor of love. The finished product is amazing.
Thank you for the video! I’ve always wanted to make this pillow but the smocking was so intimidating! This is great!
Oooh, I love that smocked pillow. And among other things — it’s designed by Wilmoed Sisson. She’s almost like a pioneer blogger — she had a sewing website that was much like blogs but long before blogs. I lost track of her years ago, so it’s interesting to see her blog again!
That video was SO helpful. I picked up the book at the library this week. There are tons of cute projects! I like the pillow, but the instructions didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Thanks for clearing it all up. I totally want to make it now!
love both projects! the fabric chosen is wonderful too!
Oh well done!!!
Wow! That smocked pillow is amazing.
What a SUPER CUTE pillow, I’m debating making my own for a bench, this just may be one to try!
Kathy, Fantastic video – thank you!! We love, love, LOVE your projects every week!! As a side note, I have the area rug and accent pillows that go with your curtains.
Love the pillow! I think it would be perfect in a solid as well.
Wow, that pillow is stunning. I don’t know if I have the patience to do five hours of smocking though!
I love the pillow!!
The pillow is gorgeous!
I haven’t seen a smocked pillow in years – so cute!!
Both projects are great! Really drawn to the smocked pillow in your fabric choices!
Smocking scares me. A lot. It looks so hard!!! But I’m going to watch the tutorial and maybe I’ll work up the nerve to try this sometime… And by the way, I LOVE the black polkadot ruffle on the curtain! You guys are totally inspiring me to be a better fabric-picker-outer! And PS, I won $100 from a contest today and guess where I’m finally going shopping! Your store! Yahoo for me! (I’m the abandoned online cart that has been filled and emptied, filled and emptied for several weeks now…) But no longer!
I love that smocked pillow – the more I see of this book , the closer I am to getting a copy. The projects are just so clever and varied.
3.5 hours of sewing experience? Are you kidding? Wow, great job on the curtains!!!!
Ok, after reading the time required for the smocked pillow, I am fairly sure I will never tackle it. Yours is stunning, thanks for the honesty of how long this would take!
WOW! You ladies did a beautiful job on both projects!
I love the curtain…and how the pillows match but aren’t matchy-matchy.
Kathy, that smocking is crazy! The pillow is gorgeous! I don’t know if I’m ready to try that, but more and more I think I need this book…
These are both fantastic projects this week – I need curtains in a couple of places and LOVE the fabric chosen – very inspiring!
wow, that sugar pop fabric is pretty awesome. I’ve never seen that and will ahve to look into it!
THey are both gorgeous projects, but I don’t know if I would be brave enough to tackle that pillow!
yep, turned out beautimous! love love love the pillow. i will have to come back to watch the video. right now i am typing with one hand – my left – and bouncing a poor sick baby with my right. lol
These are wonderful! I hope I get to see the smocked pillow in person tomorrow when I come to the studio to sew Little Dresses For Africa. I smell a perfect opportunity for a Pink Chalk smocked pillow class!?! You’d have me first to sign ip! Just a thought…
Both are lovely! Thanks for the video Kathy. The pillow is great but I have to say the smocking does look intimidating. But you never know until you try.
I love the pillow but it is WAY out of my league. Not that I couldn’t do it but I simply don’t have the patience for that type of thing. I love your website. Will this book be back in stock soon?
They should be here on Monday, thank you Rhonda!
The smocking on the cushion is so effective!
Yikes! The pillow looks wonderful – and complicated!
My butt just told me that it wants that pillow. It’s best to comply.
When my girls were small, I handmade the smocking for their little dresses.
The smocked pillow looks absolutely beautiful. I guess you need a lot of patience to do it!
Really like the ruffled cafe curtain and the tips – would need to check sizes too.
Your pillow looks fantastic! I’ve been doing a different kind of smocked pillow this week, one with a honeycomb pattern, and your pillow has pushed this project to the top of my list for next.
I think I may have found a way to save time on the smocking template: cut pattern drafting paper to the required size, mark the dots with a transfer pen or pencil, and use an iron to transfer the marks to the back of the fabric. (And the requisite “test first on a scrap of fabric,” of course.)
Thanks for the series and for the inspiration.
I LOVE that idea Elizabeth and will definitely give it a try. I attempted to let my erasable pen sit long enough at each point to soak through the pattern paper and mark the fabric. It was very tedious. I like the idea of marking and then ironing!
Hi Kathy,
I just finished my smocked pillow — I varied mine just a bit to include two fabrics — and let me confess that it took me at least a couple hours more than the aforementioned 5-6 to do the smocking. Any time I saved with my transfer pen (and I don’t know if that did save time, as I forgot about holding that iron down for 30 seconds at each press) got absorbed in the slow stitching and knotting. But it was fun and relaxing, and I am ready to make smocked pillow #2. Thanks for your tips, they were invaluable.
Elizabeth
Loved seeing the pillow and other projects Saturday at the Dresses For Africa event. Beautiful work!!!
Thanks for the video how-to, Kathy. Very helpful!
Thank you so much for posting the video tutorial for the smocked pillow… Im a visual learner and the directions from the book just weren’t doing it for me!
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