Today I am welcoming Tawn back to the blog.
Tawn has shared her Antique Thimble Ornament and her Bobbin and Spool Ornaments with readers of this blog in the past. Today she has a lovely smocking plate to share with you all that she designed with the help of her granddaughter, Reese! Thank you for your generosity Tawn!
I belong to a very active smocking chapter here in the Houston, TX area. Midnight Oil Smockers boast a membership of over 40 fabulously talented members. One of the activities our members enjoy is the ‘smocking or sewing challenges’ over the past years. This year’s challenge was the “Princess Charlotte Dress”. Members were instructed to review media pictures of Princess Charlotte and her ever precious smocked dresses and then to create a dress that would be perfect for either HRH Princess Charlotte or their favorite princess.
I immediately thought an English Garden design would be lovely. I pulled several smocking plates of flowers from my stash and began to consider which would be most appropriate. My granddaughter, Reese, was with me and she looked over the design plates and said that I needed to add some hearts to the designs. I thought that was a sweet suggestion and began to consider where best to add hearts to which of the design plates.
After awhile it became obvious that to incorporate the hearts to an already competed design I would need to do a lot of adjustments to the rows above or below the hearts I was trying to add. So, rather than continue to make the changes, I started with hearts where Reese suggested, and then created a design that fit the hearts. An original design smocking plate… “Reese’s Garden of Hearts”. I hope you like it as much as she does.
Many of the photos of Princess Charlotte included a sweater over the smocked dress, so I knitted a sweater to coordinate with the dress and crocheted flowers to embellish the sweater. I tried to crochet a few hearts, but it just didn’t give the same ‘English Garden’ effect.
The pattern I used for the dress was “Creations by Michie”, #146 and the knitted sweater pattern is ‘Brittany’ by Heirloom Stitches. My yarn shop ‘Twisted Yarns’ has this pattern available.
A special thank you to the lovely models and their mothers who helped show off Tawn's amazing designs.