I have a very talented sister who starts a project and always seems to have a reason for not completing it.
She has several half completed smocking pieces which she started more than a decade ago. Fortunately she has an eye for good fabric, colour and design; so that her pieces while unfinished, never date.
One of my goals this year is to complete all of her smocking ‘UFOs’ (unfinished objects) and sew up the dresses. Hopefully someone will get to wear one of these beautiful pieces.
Here are two of her UFOs, now completed. It was easy to find the colours of floss that she started with. This was thanks to the Anchor and DMC colour charts.
This was her first smocking project. She did not complete it because she said that there was a mistake somewhere. Well, I had to look really hard and eventually I found where she had gone wrong. I corrected the pleating error then added a few more rows of smocking. Now all I have to do is get some matching buttons to complete the buttonholes.
This is one of my favourite pieces started by my sister. She ran out of floss to make three little flowerettes and just abandoned the project, another UFO. I guess the reason why she abandons projects is really because she does not like neatening the back and snipping stray threads to the end. After two hours of neatening the dress was ready to be blocked. Then I discovered that there was not enough fabric to finish the project and then had to break basic sewing rules (like working against the grain) to finish. It seemed to work fine this time.