Canadian Smocking

Ugh, I really, REALLY don't need another hobby. BUT... I was looking through a book at B&N last night, called The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff. For anyone interested in sewing, it's a really neat book. (I would have bought it except someone had spilled coffee on the store's copy.) But in the book there is a chapter on smocking. The first thing I think of when I hear smocking is a little peasant blouse I had as a kid with the colorful smocking around the yolk. But there is another type of smocking called North American (or Canadian) smocking that really sparked my interest. If you gather the fabric from the backside certain pattern it makes it look like a basket weave on the front side of the fabric. This is one of those things, like origami, that would hurt my brain to figure out, but thank goodness someone else already did that and I just have to follow someone else's instructions, like those at Savvy Seams.com I really want to make a bag using this technique.