My Creative Space

Last Sunday at our ASG neighbourhood meeting we looked at shirring. I've tried shirring once before with limited success due to incorrect elastic tension and fabric weight. I'm happy to say I have had more success this time around :)

When I was in Japan earlier this year I spotted an awesome fabric that was perfect for shirring, it is only 1m wide but each side is finished with a scalloped edge and embroidery of bats, skull and roses. Due to my non-imposing height this is long enough to make a myself a dress. I purchased 2m of this fabric in total, in hindsight I should have gotten more. It is a very light weight fabric but still heavy enough so that it isn't see through.

Bodice Detail

This time I started by hand winding the bobbin with the shirring elastic making sure that I stretched it as I wound it onto the bobbin so that it had some tension on it to help it gather as I sewed. By the final bobbin I had decided to just wind the bobbin on my machine's bobbin winder, this seemed to work fine as well. Each bobbin held enough elastic to do 4 rows of shirring.

I set my stitch length to 5 and sewed each row of shirring 1.5cm (5/8in) apart. I used the quilting gauge that came with my machine to help keep the rows evenly spaced.

Once all of the shirring was done all I had to do was sew up the back seam, I ended up with a 9cm seam allowance as the dress was a bit loose and I also needed extra fabric to make some straps.

Hem Detail

Now all that is left to do it cut off the seam allowance, make two shoulder straps and attach them. Hopefully I will have time to finish it off tonight.

- Ky

PS: I believe Kirsty is on holidays so there is no Creative Space link up on Kootoyoo this week.