- Oscar Wilde said, "One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art."

I think you'll agree we can all choose to wear a work of art.

Our guest today will show us how to use smocking on our clothing.

You can even do simple colors, simple stitches on a jean jacket.

Jean jackets are meant to be personal.

Think of this as a tattoo on your clothing.

It's fun, inspiring, and absolutely a work of art, today on Fit 2 Stich.

(calm music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Pendleton, (slow piano music) Vogue Fabrics, Bennos Buttons, Kai Scissors, OC Sewing, Mike Gunther Industries, and Sew Steady.

- As sewers, we all love all the little parts and pieces that we all do differently.

So many times I've been in a group of sewers and someone will have something on and we'll all sit there and look at it and pick at it.

"How'd you do this and how'd you do this?"

And we have a million questions.

Today for over 15 years I've known a guest Vaune Pierce.

And her thing, her specialty, her amazing thing that she's just good at is smocking, and doing it on grownup people's clothes, not little kid's clothes.

How'd you get into this?

- Many years ago, I used to babysit for a little girl who wore smocked clothes and fell in love with it.

So my mom bought us a pleater to share.

It took me about 10 years to actually learn how to smock, but once I started, I smocked for both my boys.

I smocked for both my girls.

- It is beautiful.

- And now that they've flown the coop, I've started smocking for myself.

- I've noticed it's on high-end.

Like high royalty.

- It is.

- Wear smocked clothing.

- Yes.

- 'Cause it does, how long approximately would it take to do a little smocked.

- I would say, - On a girl's dress?

- It's probably 20 to 30 hours of handwork for the smocking if you do a bodice on a girl's dress.

- But now we can do it on adult clothing.

- Yes, and you're not doing quite as much so it doesn't take as long.

- So you're gonna show us all the shortcuts and.

- Yes, I am.

- The tricks.

Where do we start?

This is really exciting.

- Smocking really is just embroidery on top of pleats.

So all of your basic embroidery stitches-- - Now you said that really fast, let me just hear that in my brain.

Smocking is.

- Is embroidery on top of pleats.

- Embroidery on top of pleats.

So you pleat it first and then stitch on top.

- Right, so all of your basic embroidery stitches are used in smocking.

They're just done over pleats.

- Oh, is all pleating, is all smocking done by hand?

- Well, there is a smocking by machine on your sewing machine, but it-- - It's beneath us, we don't wanna use that.

- What happens when you do it on the machine, is it loses the elasticity that all those pleats give it.

- Oh, that makes sense.

- It makes it something different than smocking really is.

Smocking really originated in England about four or 500 years ago.

And the smockers, not the smockers, the workers in the field wore smocks over their clothes.

And because it was cold, they had a lot of fabric in these smocks to keep them warm.

And the way to control the fullness was to smock.

- Oh, that's fascinating.

That's fascinating.

So, it controls the fullness.

It's been around for a long time.

It kind of transferred over to children's clothes, but now it's gotten back to the point where-- - It is.

- On adults.

- And I see it all the time in adult clothing.

Like, I was looking at this.

That is just beautiful.

Because I see that in high-end clothing and I discard it because I think I can't do that, I'll have to do something similar.

But that's beautiful.

- It's easy.

This is basic, traditional smocking.

It's done with, the pleater put the pleats in here.

I used tone on tone so it's black threads.

- [Peggy] I love that tone on tone.

- I use Swarovski crystals in here, but it's tone on tone.

- So when you do something like this, are you creating the pattern in your head or are you simply, are you copying something or a little of both?

- I personally do a lot of my own patterns but there are a lot of patterns out there that you don't have to do your own.

- Because this is simple, this is not, but it's beautiful.

- Yes, it's very easy.

So this is a traditional smocking example.

Another example that I have here is done on the back of this blouse.

- Oh, that's so cool.

- And instead of putting it through a pleater, what I did was, I actually took a thread and needle and I pleated the stripes on this so that the humps of the pleats on this side were all white.

If you look at the back side of this, they're all gray.

- That is beautiful, so it's a real play on stripes.

- [Vaune] Exactly.

- Stripes are so popular, they're just everywhere.

- Exactly, so this is-- - So on this, I notice that, so here you just kept those together and it's pulled the two stripes.

This is beautiful.

It's just beautiful.

- That's called a spool stitch.

And this is another basic pattern that I used, but I just added fullness in the back of the shirt.

- Sure, you can just cut a seam, add seam allowance and go from there.

Very pretty.

- Okay, the next one that I brought to show you is just a little swing jacket.

And what I did on this was, I pleated it with a pleater but this is a wool boo clay and it's really heavy.

So instead of picking up every pleat, I picked up every other pleat.

And I used-- - And in this case your ribbon is actually your thread.

- Right, I used silk satin ribbon for this to pleat it and I pleated it backwards.

I started it here, and worked my way up and came from the ends to the middle so that I had two thread that I could use to tie this.

- So again now, did you actually just create that in your head?

- Yes.

- Or had you seen that anywhere?

- Nope, this is something that I created in my head.

- So as you get the basics down, you can play with them.

- Exactly.

- As long as you're getting it to fit your pattern piece and all that.

- Exactly.

- [Peggy] It's just really, really pretty.

- [Vaune] Thank you.

- I love that.

I love the, I just really like that.

- And the last one I brought to show you, this is the type of smocking that's called fabric manipulation.

This actually doesn't go through a pleater.

Dots are drawn on here and then I pull up the dots with the needle and thread to form these different pleats.

And the pattern of the dots and the order that you pull them up will make different types of pleats.

Sometimes they're in flowers, sometimes they're in straight bars.

- That's beautiful.

You know what I love about it, I love the texture.

I found that just really love texture.

And so you take just a regular piece of fabric and you can just add texture like that to it.

It's really pretty, really pretty.

- And again on this one, I put the crystals in here too to give it a little bit of bling.

So I don't have to be five years old to do smocking.

- No, you don't have to be - That's good news.

- five years old.

- Especially because I don't have any granddaughters.

I don't have any female children that would appreciate my, how many hours?

- A lot.

- All right, so you're gonna tell us how.

- Okay, so first of all, you're going to need to put pleats into your fabric.

This is a piece of fabric that you, so generously, gave me.

- I did because I wanted it to be something that I would be more contemporary with.

Or, I don't know, I just kind of wanted to see something that I had no clue what I was doing and I just picked a fabric I like what it would look like.

- Yeah, and there's lots of different colors in here.

You know, there's beiges and greens, there's a little bit of maroon and a rust color here.

And a lot of times when you're pleating something, what it looks like after it pleats can be very different than what it looks like as a flat fabric.

- Totally, especially when you're dealing with a print.

- Exactly.

So even though, and I've done this many times, I have all my threads picked out before I pleat it.

Once I pleat it, I kind of have to put those away and start again because I've lost some of the colors.

One of the colors on here is this really nice maroon, but this is a pleated piece that I did and you can see in here, the maroon is completely lost.

- It's gone.

Yeah, you see a little of the rust, but the maroon's history.

- Yeah, so when I had pulled out maroon to look at this, I put it away.

Because to have maroon in here would just not make sense at this point.

- Sure.

And pulling out these colors, really is just going to take a little bit of experience.

- It does.

And sometimes-- - Are you looking for the colors that pop up to you?

Or are you looking, you know like when you sew, you go a darker shade of thread, kind of as a rule.

- It depends on what you want.

Sometimes when you're smocking, you want it more muted, a tone on tone.

And sometimes you want the colors to pop.

On this, if you wanted it to be really outstanding, I'd focus more on the rust colors.

Because even though you don't see those as much, they're in there.

- [Peggy] They're down here.

- And they'll pop it up.

Where as, if you use more of the tans and the beige's, that's more muted and it will give you texture without giving you added color.

So it really depends on the look that you want.

- Just kind of think it through.

- Yeah.

And sometimes it's trial and error.

- Unfortunately.

- Sometimes it's a lot of trial and error.

- Sometimes we want a little formula that will just get us there.

- And it just doesn't work.

So once you've got your fabric picked out and you wanna put the pleats in there, there's a couple ways of doing this.

This is called a pleater.

And what it is, is it has metal bars on it that have slots that are about 3/8 of an inch apart.

And needles go into these slots, and the needle is curved like this so that the top bar sits right in that groove of that needle.

And you thread the needles and then you put the fabric through here and you just turn the crank.

And as the crank turns, it feeds that fabric through here.

- [Peggy] That's incredible.

- So you've got these little pleats.

And I, like I said, I pleated this one last night.

This fabric, it pleats like butter.

It's really soft, it's really fine.

And sometimes when you pleat very thin fabrics like that, you'll get little bubbles in your pleats.

And the way to stop that is, before you pull it off the needles, just take a steam iron and (imitates steam iron).

- [Peggy] Oh, that's a great idea.

And let it dry for a couple minutes.

When I'm doing this-- - It'll relax it a little bit.

- Yeah, when I'm doing this at home, I'll steam it and then I'll go do a load of dishes, put laundry in.

- Just let it sit.

- And the next time I come back, I'll pull it off, turn it a few more times, steam it again and then let it sit and go do something else.

- So these little pleaters, if you don't want it as wide as this, could you not thread as, you can control.

- Yes.

- So you wanna buy something that's wider than what you need and then work backwards.

- Right.

Actually, the largest pleater is 32 rows, which, it's hard to control that.

Most of them are 24 rows.

This is a 16.

They don't even make these any more.

But there's 16 rows in here, if I only need this much, then I'll only thread up eight rows.

- Sure, so if you're doing a cuff or something, you just do narrower.

- Exactly.

- You don't wanna do more than you have to do.

- No, and you don't want extra needle holes in your fabric that you've pulled out because you've done too many.

So you just wanna pleat what you need.

And you usually do an extra row at the top and an extra row at the bottom as, we call them, holding rows to keep the pleats nice and straight while you're smocking.

- So as a sewer, I'm terrible at like, I can't stand loose threads hanging all over it, looks-- - [Vaune] Well, you're gonna just have to deal with that.

- I just wanna make sure if I cut those off, I just ruin everything, don't I?

Just checking.

- Once you pull the fabric off the the needles, it will hold those threads in place until you're done.

I use extra long threads because it's easy to cut away extra, it's hard to add where too short.

- And you don't cut these, I mean, this is what, you'll lose your pleating if you cut these.

- Right.

- You have to, okay.

- And when you pleat something, the pleating threads, which are these, the pleating threads stay in there until you've smocked it.

Once the smocking is done, you pull the threads out.

- [Peggy] Oh, I see.

- And the smocking is what holds the pleats in place.

So these will disappear-- - [Peggy] This is so cool.

- [Vaune] Before you construct it.

- [Peggy] So, are you purposely using a contrasting thread, do you need to see those pleats?

- Yes, you wanna see the pleats, and I try to use alternate colors just to help me when I'm going through my designs.

- Oh, sure.

On top of it.

Okay.

- So you just pull those through there.

Another way you do this, is if you've got a fabric that has some type of print in it, you can go through, draw grids on here, and pick up pleats yourself with a needle.

- So you drew the blue lines?

- I drew the blue lines on with a water soluble marker.

And then on this side, I picked up the pink pleat.

On this side, it's the white that's showing.

- [Peggy] That's really cool.

- So you have the option of adding or subtracting color into your garments if you've got fabric that's got a stripe in it that you can pick up.

You can do it with a gingham or any kind of stripe.

- It's another great way to just manipulate stripes.

- Exactly.

So that works.

- Very cool.

- If you don't have stripes, you just have a plain piece of fabric, you don't have a pleater, you want to put some pleating in there, then all you have to do is draw the grid both horizontally and vertically.

And then go and pick up your stripes.

- [Peggy] So this just saves you a whole lot of time.

- It saves-- - And with the precision, obviously the precision is there versus doing all of this.

- If you're gonna be doing a lot of this, I would recommend the pleater because it does save a lot of time.

Or just-- - [Peggy] Or get a friend.

- Get a friend.

- [Peggy] Find a friend who has a pleater.

- Or there's some shops that have pleating services.

If they do any type of heirloom sewing, you can go in and pick out.

- Oh, you can just have a section pleated?

- They'll pleat it for you.

- Not smock it, but they'll pleat it.

- Pleat it, yeah.

Not smocking, just pleating.

- Wanna make sure we clarify those two things.

You can't go in and pay someone to do it.

- Well.

- We won't go there.

- I wouldn't be doing that, so, you might find somebody, but it wouldn't be me.

- Got it.

- So those are the different ways you can put pleats into your fabric.

- So that's step one.

- That's step one.

- That's your fabric.

You kinda have a goal in mind and then work it backwards a little bit.

- Once you've got your fabric pleated, and this is what this looks like here, and you can see-- - That is so pretty.

- I steamed this so I don't have any bubbles in here.

Then you go through and, like I said, you pick out your colors.

And you can do, this might be a little bit lighter.

If you want it to pop, this is the family that I would go with.

If I want it to be more tone on tone, then these are more the colors I would go with on this.

- [Peggy] So pretty.

- But to me, half the fun of smocking is picking out the colors.

- Really?

- It is!

- Deciding where you wanna go.

So take your time and be patient with this process.

- Yeah.

- And I notice you've got a few colors here.

- Just a few, what can I say?

- Clearly to you, it's really important to, that smocking color is really pretty important.

- Exactly.

To me, I love color, I love fabric.

You know, I have a fabric collection, as we all do.

- Who does not?

- And I hardly ever buy fabric with something in mind that I know I'm gonna make out of it.

I buy fabric because I like the color, I like the print, I like the pattern, I like the texture.

- You like it all.

- And it's gonna sit there until I decide what I'm gonna do with it.

- [Peggy] It's like wine.

It has to age.

- It has to age appropriately before you can cut it!

And my problem is, you know, I've got this fabric there and then I think, well I could make out of it, oh, but that's not good enough for that fabric.

I need to make something better out of that fabric.

So that gives me an excuse to go buy more fabric.

- I don't think you're alone, Vaune.

- No, I know.

- I just don't think you're alone.

We've talk to too many sewers, who we all have the same outlook.

- And the only good thing about using your stash is if it comes out of your stash, then it's free.

- And most likely you like it.

- I love it.

- And I found that when it comes out of my stash, it coordinates with the other colors that I liked because I liked it all.

- Exactly.

- So it is nice that it blends together.

So most likely, I'll have something that I can wear this with, because I liked it all and it runs together.

- Exactly.

- So stashes are good things, can we conclude that?

And there's no rush to this, there's no hurry.

- No, no, no.

- I love these brown tones, but that's just because I love the browns.

- Well, and it goes well.

So once you've got that done, then what you're going to do is you have to have a pattern to smock on.

And a pattern that you smock on is called a plate.

And a plate is going to have a grid and then it will have the stitches that are on it that will go horizontal across the grid.

And that is what you follow when you're gonna be smocking a garment.

And even if you're making it up yourself, it's a really good idea to grid it out yourself because you forget.

- I confess, though.

- And then you make mistakes.

- I tried to do this freehanded and it just looks terrible.

There's no freeform that looks good.

- Yeah, it's a good idea to grid it out first and that way it keeps you in lines so that you don't end up with five on the top and four on the bottom to next row.

And it saves a lot of un-smocking, if you will.

From starting over again.

So once you've got that done, you're gonna have a piece of fabric and I have some needles threaded up here.

When you're smocking, and this goes with any embroidery, you can smock with almost any medium, on almost any medium.

I've actually-- - [Peggy] That's a good thing to know.

That's really good, say that one more time.

- Yes, you can smock with anything, and you can almost smock on anything.

You can smock on leather, you just have to be more careful about the holes-- - I've seen smocking on leather.

- That you put in there.

- And it's beautiful.

- It's gorgeous.

- And it's very-- - It really is.

- You talk about expensive, it's expensive.

Yes, I saw a purse at a high-end store that was all smocked on one side.

It was purple leather, it was gorgeous.

They wouldn't let me take a picture of it.

But I tried, I asked.

- [Peggy] That was your problem, you should've taken the photo without asking.

But anyway, did you notice how much the purse was?

- It was about $5,000.

- Yeah, it's beautiful though.

- Yeah, it was gorgeous and there's a lot of work in there.

Now if you're doing something like that, you're probably gonna have to punch the holes in there to put your needle through because it's gonna be hard to get a needle through leather.

I see smocked paper, accordion folded paper that's been smocked.

You can smock with cotton thread, you can smock with pearl cotton.

I smocked that jacket with silk satin ribbon.

- Yeah, that was beautiful.

And unexpected, very unexpected.

- Exactly.

You can smock with anything that you can put through the medium that you're smocking.

- And I those differences actually take it more away from our traditional children's dresses to something else.

It's very pretty.

- Yeah, you can actually smock with leather.

I wouldn't do leather on cotton fabric, if you're gonna be smocking with leather, I mean, use leather-- - I think it's always good to shop around and look around and see what's out there.

- Yes.

- So you can kind of, see what you like.

Not to copy it even, but just to see what do you like and what do you not like and why don't you like it and why do you like it.

I think if you go through that process, it helps you make-- - And you stick with what you like.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- And you'll be more pleased with the result.

- [Peggy] Even if no one else does.

- They don't have to wear it.

- That's right.

- You're the one who's gonna be wearing it.

There's some great new threads out there, blending filaments as well.

So if you wanna put a little pizazz in your smocking, you can use cotton thread, but using a little blending filament.

And that'll make the light catch a little bit more when it's on the sides, or on the front, or wherever.

One thing you wanna make sure you do, if you are using stranded floss, which is the floss that comes six strands, like what you would see in JoAnn's.

You wanna make sure that if you are using something like that, that you pull the strands out one at a time.

Typically you use three strands-- - Right, you divide it into two.

- of stranded floss when you're smocking.

But don't divide it in two.

Pull one, two, three.

Because what that does is it untwists the threads so that when you're smocking-- - [Peggy] That's a great tip.

- The threads lay nice and flat, they're not twisted.

- That's a tip from many years of experience on this.

- Yes, yes.

- Because that twist is really a pain to work with.

- Right, and the more it's twisted, the skinnier your threads or your stitches look.

Because your thread's thinner, because it's twisted.

- [Peggy] That makes sense.

- So every time I stitch, I look and make sure that my threads lay like this instead of like this so that it gives me consistent coverage.

- You're not too detailed on this, are you?

- I'm very, you know, particular when it comes to this type of stuff.

And I have to be, because when I'm doing this, somebody comes and looks at my garments, and not only do they look at the outside, the first thing they do is they look at the inside.

- Confession, I absolutely looked at the inside.

- You know, I have to be as picky on the inside as I am on the outside.

But that's kind of my personality anyway.

So I'm okay with that.

- [Peggy] Got it.

So I'm gonna show you how to do the two most basic stitches of smocking.

One is called a cable and that is a horizontal stitch.

And the other one is a trellis, which is a traveling stitch.

It's when you go up and down the fabric.

The cable stitch is probably the most basic stitch and it's probably the hardest stitch to keep straight.

But what you're gonna do-- - [Peggy] That's where those lines are gonna help you.

That's the kind of thing you could not do.

- [Vaune] That's why you have pleating threads in here.

So what I'm gonna do here is, I'm gonna take my needle and I'm gonna come up in the valley.

- [Peggy] Let me get that away from you.

- Of the first two pleats that I'm gonna work on.

A smocking stitch goes over two pleats.

The first stitch you take, it's gonna be two new pleats because you're starting.

But every stitch after that, you're gonna be bringing your needle out of an old pleat and then into a new pleat.

So it always covers two pleats.

So I've come up in the valley between the first two pleats, and I'm gonna bring my needle back through the first pleat.

And I hold my smocking over my finger like this.

Many years ago I was very fortunate, I got to go to Madeira, the island of Madeira and take some embroidery lessons at one of the factories over there.

And what they told us, was that the most natural motion you know is to eat.

This is the first motion that you learn as a child.

- You know, instead of showing us this, show us on the garments.

- Oh, okay.

- Can we do that?

- Sure.

- And then we'll have time to actually see them.

Just show us the differences here.

- Okay.

Let me do this one, because this one might be a little bit harder to see.

Nope, this is it.

Okay, so this top row here is a cable row.

It's going straight across, right?

- Oh, yes, and here's the traveling one you were just saying - And here's the trellis, so this is going down and up.

I'm still going two pleats per stitch.

- All right, so guess what, our time is up.

But will you come back?

- Yes, I will be glad to come back.

- All right, we will come back and we will continue.

But I know those kind of stitches are just the two basic kind, because actually what I did, is because I really wanted to do this as I was working with this whole project, I actually did it, you guys.

And it really is so much fun because so many things can be changed, just FYI.

Shell collar, notched collar, what's the difference?

What's the best use of each?

Join us as we discuss easy changes like collars, kimono sleeve.

Next time, Fit 2 Stitch.

(slow piano music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Pendleton, Vogue Fabrics, Bennos Buttons, Kai Scissors, OC Sewing, Mike Gunther Industries, and Sew Steady.

To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series eight, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.