Just imagine how formidable those women must have been. Providing for her family, making sure they were fed and clothed all from her garden. Now, after trying smocking I am even more impressed by these women’s skills and talents.

I’ve just tried the honeycomb stitch here and I have to say I didn’t find smocking easy at first. I’m captivated by how pretty it is and its history, so its worth keeping at it though. Creating smocking is a little like a balancing act, you feel really unstable at the beginning, holding onto the gathers and thread and trying to get the needle in the right place but then, after a while, it clicks.

The basis of smocking is preparing the fabric, carefully gathering it into uniform tubes before you get to the exciting part of adding the colourful stitches and creating that familiar smocking shape and dimension. I used polka dot cotton which helped me keep the stitches even. More experienced ‘smockers’ can do without dots or checks and go freestyle. The main thing I struggled with was how to keep the loose end of the gathered fabric in place so that the folds can remain even. I wasn’t sure if I should tie the cotton to hold the gathers in and my books didn’t mention what to do there. I got it in the end though and I’m keen to experiment with more stitches and colours.

Something else to consider about smocking is that it isn’t the most frugal craft. It uses a lot of time, thread and the fabric must be measured out at one and a half times the finished product (because of the gathers). So, if you’re trying to craft green then that’s worth bearing in mind. The piece I made turned out to be about 10cm wide and it took me a few hours.

Despite all of these things I still love smocking and I especially loved learning about it from these deliciously 70′s books – ‘The Complete Book of Handicrafts‘, ‘The A-Z of Handicrafts’ and ‘Smocks and Smocking‘.

For a video on how to create the trellis smocking stitch take a look at the resources page.