About the service
Smocking is arithmetic long before it is decoration. I mark the grid on the wrong side of the cloth — dots, rows, numbering — and pull the stitches in a strict order, because one knot tightened out of turn drags the whole panel off square. The first thing I count is yardage. A smocked surface eats three to four times more fabric than the area of the finished piece, and that calculation is done before the cloth is bought, not after. Come up short and a second cut has to be let into the middle of the pattern, and that joint will be visible from the doorway for as long as the cushion lives on the sofa.
The fabric is decatised before cutting: steamed and left to rest, or washed and dried exactly the way the finished piece will be washed later. Skip that and the first laundering takes the work back — the relief pulls in, a flower pattern goes crooked, and no amount of pressing brings it out again. After that comes the pleasure. Velvet holds the light in the folds of a basketweave, heavy cotton gives crisp waffles, and the same flower reads one way in morning light and quite another under a lamp. Covers come off: I set a hidden zip into the lower seam so the filling stays home while the cover goes to be cleaned.
In a child's room I do not make decor with long hanging cords or removable buttons — a trailing tieback tail and a button that can be worked loose are not ornament, they are a hazard. There I use short loops and relief stitched down for good. I come out to measure: a headboard is calculated from the board and the height of the bed, a valance from the rail rather than from the window, and that half hour on site saves a re-cut later.
— Cushion sets to match a sofa: basketweave, waffle and flower patterns, mixed sizes, one fabric family
— Upholstered headboard on a board: smocking combined with deep buttoning, wall-mounted or fixed to the frame
— Valances with tiebacks, calculated to the rail and the ceiling height of the room
— Hidden zip in every cover, filling chosen for the resilience you want — soft to lean on or firm to sit against
— Care and cleaning explained in writing: what may be washed, what goes dry only, how to steam a relief without flattening it
— Measuring visit, yardage calculation and a written estimate before a metre of cloth is bought
The fabric is decatised before cutting: steamed and left to rest, or washed and dried exactly the way the finished piece will be washed later. Skip that and the first laundering takes the work back — the relief pulls in, a flower pattern goes crooked, and no amount of pressing brings it out again. After that comes the pleasure. Velvet holds the light in the folds of a basketweave, heavy cotton gives crisp waffles, and the same flower reads one way in morning light and quite another under a lamp. Covers come off: I set a hidden zip into the lower seam so the filling stays home while the cover goes to be cleaned.
In a child's room I do not make decor with long hanging cords or removable buttons — a trailing tieback tail and a button that can be worked loose are not ornament, they are a hazard. There I use short loops and relief stitched down for good. I come out to measure: a headboard is calculated from the board and the height of the bed, a valance from the rail rather than from the window, and that half hour on site saves a re-cut later.
— Cushion sets to match a sofa: basketweave, waffle and flower patterns, mixed sizes, one fabric family
— Upholstered headboard on a board: smocking combined with deep buttoning, wall-mounted or fixed to the frame
— Valances with tiebacks, calculated to the rail and the ceiling height of the room
— Hidden zip in every cover, filling chosen for the resilience you want — soft to lean on or firm to sit against
— Care and cleaning explained in writing: what may be washed, what goes dry only, how to steam a relief without flattening it
— Measuring visit, yardage calculation and a written estimate before a metre of cloth is bought
