Sweet Apple

Last month was insane. Totally and completely insane. With symphony services 6 days a week, my sewing machine has not seen much use. It was all I could do to get the kid out the door in the morning and make sure we all had clean clothes to wear and food to eat. Plus, it was still in the 90's here so I had little motivation to work on cold weather clothing.

I did find time to get a new smocking project going. Alice is now in dance class twice a week and I have had a lot of visits with the fertility doc lately which has meant a lot of time spent waiting. I hate to sit and wait. I feel much better with something to do. I picked an ambitious pattern:

This is "Sweet Apple" from Australian Smocking and Embroidery #89. I have never made an exact copy of a dress before, but I fell in love with this fabric (and it was on clearance!) so I went for it. It's hard to see in the picture, but it has extensive bullion embroidery. The embroidery you see on the collar is also in the bodice of the dress. This will be Alice's Christmas dress, provided it fits. The pattern only goes up to a size 5. I'm going to enlarge the pattern and I gave it a VERY generous length when I pleated the fabric.

Here's where I am so far:

This is just from sitting and waiting. and waiting. and waiting. I haven't worked on it more that 15 minutes at home.