Way back in February I had a fairly poor attempt at shirring a pillowcase dress using shirring elastic.  I’ve finally given it another try and this time I’ve figured out how to do it properly!

This is a op-shopped pillowcase.  There was only one seam, so I rotated it to the centre back of the dress.  After chopping about seven inches from the closed end of the pillowcase I made four narrow straps.  The skirt was already hemmed because it was the open end of the pillowcase.  I made a narrow hem around the top of the pillowcase where I’d chopped some off, then got out the shirring elastic.

I wound the shirring elastic onto the bobbin by hand without stretching it, then did some test sewing on the leftover piece of pillowcase I’d cut off earlier.  For my machine I needed to lengthen the stitch length to 4 and loosen the bobbin tension significantly to get a satisfactory gather and stretch.  I did 13 rows of shirring one centimetre apart, then tried it on Clare and sewed the straps into place.

She happily danced for the camera, of course!  This morning it was to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker – we’re going to see the ballet next month so the music is on high rotation in our house.

Whenever Stella hears music from the Nutcracker, she says “Barbie” (we have the Barbie and the Nutcracker DVD on high rotation too).  Poor Tchaikovsky has been ousted by a plastic doll.