Smocked Shirt and yo-yos

Last night I realized that if I kept making yo-yos randomly that I would never get the quilt done.  So I set a new goal of making five yo-yos a day at that rate I could have it sewed together in about six months.  They are so easy to do using the Clover yo-yo tool that I should be able to keep up.  I will need more fabric too!

Marking out and sewing smocking pleats.

Today I worked on the shirt.  I had a crazy idea that if I used spray starch on the fabric that I could use a box folding tool to make the pleats.  All it did was make it hard to breath from the spray.  So the next thing was to see if ironing pellon to the fabric would stiffen it enough to be able to pleat.  After using the pellon I marked two sets of lines on it to mark the pleats.  Using size 12 perle cotton I made sure the pleats marks were matching which took a great deal of time.  I will finish the pleats tonight and tomorrow start the actual smocking.  So far I am only smocking the front and may leave the back loose with a ribbon tie back.  The joy of making clothing is doing what you want!

Checking to see if the pleats would work.