My youngest daughter is getting married in November and my mind is filled with designs for a bridal purse.  I’ve really fallen in love with the channel frame purses.  They seem like they are easy and fast.  Plus, it seems like the straight channel would be perfect for a smocked design.  There are no corners or curves.  It isn’t a sew-on frame but I’m hoping I can glue it and crimp it and it will be just as secure.

I wanted to make the purse out of some duchess satin with smocking, beads and silk ribbon embroidery.  Duchess satin is a beautiful polyester satin that is very easy to work with, so I decided to try running it through my pleater.

 

 

The polyester in the fabric reacts differently when passing through the pleater so you have to go VERY, VERY SLOWLY.  As I turned the crank, I heard crunching sounds and my heart stopped, thinking that I broke a needle right at the start.  Thankfully, that crunching wasn’t the needle.  It was the polyester fiber.  So I continued very slowly, easing the fabric onto the needles gently.  I managed to pleat all the way across the fabric with no issues.  No split pleats.  No bubbles. No skipped pleats.  And I ended up relatively on grain!

The pleats looked a little wonky but I just pushed them very closely together and pinned the fabric edges to my shaping board. I tugged at the top and bottom to straighten out those little bubbles.

 

 

Then I spritzed and steamed.  Then I spritzed and steamed again.  I pushed the pleats to the other side of the pleating threads really close together and repeated the process.  After the pleats were cooled off, I had lovely peaks and valleys that will smock up very nicely.

 

 

I’d say that’s a success.  Now the real test comes when I try to do it again!