Good gracious! Y’all have given me WAY too much credit! I meant to mention The Smock Shoppe in my last post, but it just got soooo long that it slipped my mind. I SMOCKED all three outfits, which means, I did all the decorative stitches around the top part of the dresses and the panel on Buddy Man’s bubble.
Everything else came from The Smock Shoppe, a little gem here in Dothan, Alabama. I say it’s a gem because there are so very few locally owned, sewing and embroidery shops left in the country. There are fewer still that not only sell the tools of the trade but teach the trade as well. Mrs. Mary Strickland started The Smock Shoppe thirty-four years ago. She is the same “Mrs. Mary” I remember as a little girl, showing me a corner of her shop where I could look at books while she taught my Mother silk ribbon embroidery. The same Mrs. Mary who helped my grandmother pick out the fabric and lace for our Easter dresses. The same Mrs. Mary who let me walk into her shop very flustered, with a baby on my hip, a few weeks before Easter and assured me that she could help me do the impossible–create three keepsakes in three weeks.
I pulled a few from the archives 🙂
I smocked these two and Grandma put them together.
I went in first and picked out the fabric, ribbon, lace, and smocking plate (or pattern) I wanted to use. The traditional “Bishop” is the pattern of the girl’s dresses themselves–smocking all the way around the neck and then a straight fall to the length of your choice. I usually get them all the way to their ankles so that they can wear them longer. You will be seeing those dresses for the next year or two at LEAST. The team at the Smock Shoppe is happy for you to do any of the steps yourself that you want to, but I paid for them to do every step but the hand work–the smocking. So, after you decide on what you’re going to do, here are the next steps:
1) Cut out the dress pattern from your fabric. 2) Sew the pieces together (not finishing the dress just sewing 1/2 of the back, to the sleeve, to the front of the dress, to the other sleeve, to the other half of the back) {These are the only two steps I COULD do myself, BTW. My sewing skills–with a machine–are atrocious} [When you start having to pick out different looking parentheses because you’re using them so much, do you think that’s a problem? :)] 3) Pleat the fabric. There’s a machine to do this, although it technically can be done by hand–just not very well. I actually have one little outfit from when I was a baby that my Mom pleated by hand. It’s beautiful in its ugliness :). My dear friend Lauren, who lived across the street from us in Birmingham, is the person who taught me how to smock and embroider. She had a pleater and I have sweet memories of clearing off her dining room table and pleating dresses with babies crawling around our feet. Why can’t I stay on task? This is why I don’t do tutorials and I rarely answer people’s questions in the comments. I can NOT just answer. I have to tell a story with each bullet point until y’all can’t even be sure what I’m numbering anymore. 4) SMOCK your design on the top of the dress. It really is easy, I promise. There are two basic stitches to learn–a cable and a wave. Except for the simple “Lazy Daisy” leaves on either side of my roses, those are the only two stitches on all three outfits. And, if you start after Christmas, it’s mindless work for idle hands to do here and there while you’re talking to your husband, or watching a movie, or even (with a little creativity :)) while you’re nursing! 5) Finally, take the dress back to Mrs. Mary, or your grandmother, or anybody who can put more seams in than they rip out–like me–and let them construct the dress.
Here, Pace is wearing the first dress I ever smocked.
Now let me warn you, before you go running down to The Smock Shoppe to start dreaming and designing to your heart’s content. This process is not cheap. If you’re looking to save money by making your own clothes–think again. If you can do steps 1-5 yourself and you’re not particular about the feel, and weight, and drape of your fabrics, then you might save money, though certainly not time. If you pay to have the process done for you, you will most likely be shocked at how quickly you can drop money in such an innocent-looking little shop :). Every time I’ve smocked anything, I have a moment of crisis where I wonder why in the world I am putting myself through the process…and then, I see my girls wearing dresses I made, and the satisfaction is so deep, or I think back to my memories of my Mom making our dresses and how proud I was to tell people that my Mom and my Grandma made them, or I pull out the chest of our clothes, lovingly preserved, still just as “in style” today as they would have been 100 years ago…and I know it’s worth every dollar and minute spent. They’re not just dresses, they’re art and they are treasures.
Mom made the crab dress for Pace. This is the Fourth of July.
Mom made this Watermelon dress for Pace's first day of school. Here, Mary Aplin is wearing it.
I tied the last knot at 11:30pm on Easter Eve, but I DID finish.
The girls stood in front of my bathroom mirror in their slips, as I secured their bows in their hair, and I was dumbfounded by how beautiful they were before those dresses ever went over their heads. 
My little chicken wings.
But go on ahead and look close at that smocking…
It doesn’t compare in the least with the little ladies it adorned on Easter morning, but it was beautiful…if I do say so myself 🙂
But this year, for the first time in the history of my life, there was a boy to get ready for Easter morning.
I left the pink rosebuds off of his tiny smocked panel, but he couldn’t help but look like a little rosebud himself.
And I think he was feeling a little cocky about it…
It takes a real man to pull off a smocked bubble. I’m laughing out loud right now.
But y’all know how I like to tell you the truth behind our posed pictures, so before I venture into our lunch, let me clue you in. The weekend before Easter we made another impromptu run down to the beach. We were sitting in Thomas doughnuts, when Jeremiah casually mentioned that he would be taking call the next weekend… … …
“That’s Easter!” I said, flabbergasted. “You mean the weekend after that, right? You called and asked me about taking call on April 15th, not April 8th!”
“I’m taking call April 15th too, but I’m on call this weekend as well. I didn’t realize this weekend was Easter.”
Now, when I tell you that I’ve been smocking every single free second I’ve had for the past three weeks, I’m not exaggerating. And when the culmination of all that work was finished–he was going to miss it. We’d talked about joining the church that Sunday. How was I going to do Easter morning–the bunny, the dresses, the cooking, the pictures, getting out the door and into the church wearing HIGH heels, carrying a heavy pumpkin seat, a diaper bag, a Bible and two little girls?? And all this smocking and dreaming of Sunday morning as a family and the charter member of our Maddox family was going to be MIA. I had some teary eyes and some angry words over my doughnuts.
For all those stressful reasons, when Kendall showed up in my bathroom at 8 am on Easter morning and said, “Tell me what I can do to help,” I felt like God had answered my prayers in a wonderfully tangible way. Thank you Kendall. Thank you, thank you, thank you. She took all of those pictures above, and got the girls dressed, and let me bark lots of other orders like, “Grab a bib! No, not that bib, a pretty bib. Oh, and a good burp cloth. No, well, we can use that one in the car but we need a different one for his diaper bag…”
Even without Jeremiah, we did manage to make it to church, and then we went to Dad and Konie’s for lunch, where Konie had done something AMAZING.
Grandma, Grandpa, Mimi, a smattering of sisters, brother-in-laws, aunts and uncles…and plenty of food brought by all.
And I wasn’t the only one who had some extra special help that morning. Jeremiah’s Dad and his sister Ashley both showed up at the hospital to help Jeremiah get through his morning duties so that he could join us for lunch.
Mary Aplin lovin’ on Mama B.
The start of the Easter egg hunt.
Grayson, my cousin Webb’s little boy. Does anybody have a spoon? I want to eat him and his sweet little personality right up.
He joined in the hunt with the girls.
And you can believe that his attitude was a lot better than this one’s 🙂 Here Mary Aplin is taking her time out.
And here we are enjoying our time out. That’s me back there, lounging in the sun in my Sunday dress. Taylor, who had yet to see the light of day this Spring ;). And Kendall who “slipped into something a little more comfortable” after church. 
After the egg hunting got old, the girls had their way with poor, unsuspecting Grayson.
Jay Paul, watching from the distance, began to worry about his future with two older sisters.
But I reassured him that, while he will probably find himself dressed as a princess from time to time, he’ll always remain our little buddy man.
Grandma was just happy she got to sleep instead of sew all night this Easter. That isn’t true, really. She just loves watching her great-grand-babies.
I guess now is as good a time as any to let you know that Jay Paul has acquired a new nickname–and it’s a strange one. He’s still buddy man, but just as Mary Aplin became Mapple Dapple and then became plain Dapples. So has Jay Paul become Bay Ball and now…Baybus. I know, I don’t understand it either. Pace is just thankful that her name was short to start with. Baybus gets kissed so much and so often, that sometimes he has had enough.
But all in all, I think he had a good first Easter.
(You can see here that Keke did manage to find a pretty, Sunday bib for his diaper bag :))
But, after all that sillyness, let me say, “He is risen!! He is risen, indeed!”
I am stopping in now for what just might be my last post before Easter…I’m about to START smocking Easter dresses/a bubble for my chicken wings/buddy man. Why yes, I should have started smocking approximately the day after Christmas, but Easter dresses didn’t cross my mind with baby and life filling my days–until about a week and a half ago when a cool Spring morning reminded me of the fresh newness that always seems to accompany Easter mornings.
The vision I walked out to find in my backyard yesterday.
I was sitting in the parking lot of the girls’ school when it happened: My windows were rolled down, the dogwoods were just beginning to reveal their blooms and our proud azaleas had already burst forth with reckless abandon…Easter…my heart stopped for just one beat. We’re back in the “High South” where Easter (at least for children) is the most formal event of the year, and I haven’t even begun to think about what everybody is going to wear!
Some random pictures from the fall that I never posted to follow...
It’s silly. I 100 percent admit that it is silly to go to all the trouble to make “Easter dresses” that God cares not one bit about. I said to a friend on the phone just yesterday, “Jesus is going to rise from the grave whether I finish these Easter dresses or not, but for some reason I feel like the day will not be complete unless I get them done.”
My sweet girls
I’ve laughed with my grandma about the Easter mornings of my childhood. My Mom would do the handwork for all FOUR! of our dresses and then my grandma would put them together. The problem was that my Mom, while she may start smocking after Christmas, never seemed to finish her part until the day before the big event. I don’t know that Grandma got to sleep on Easter Eve once between the years of 1983 and 1995. While my hair was being pulled back and fastened with a bow (that my grandmother also made) that was the size of my head, my squeaky new white shoes were being buckled on my feet, and my Dad was flying to my grandma’s house on two wheels to retrieve all four dresses straight off grandma’s ironing board.
Doing some of their own modeling. Thanks Mama B for our Thanksgiving dresses!
I cherish the memories though, of slipping all that lace, and starch, and handmade love over my head for the first time–twirling in front of my Dad as he admired how beautiful he found us–each one. And then there was that hurried push out the front door to stand in front of the blooming azaleas and capture a shot with a camera of our brief moment of garment perfection–a miracle in itself for four clumsy little girls who were sure to stain and wrinkle and even occasionally rip our masterpieces.
Keke baby, I bet you sometimes spilled food on your Easter dress, didn't you?
And after celebrating the greatest news on earth with friends who were also sporting their Sunday best, singing of the hope and joy that the resurrection brings, it was back to family home and food. Our dresses were carefully removed and laid in a pile on the bed, the stiff shoes were taken off and our bare feet took to the grass–with only little white slips left on our bodies we would hide and hunt Easter Eggs with our cousins, and sit down to a meal of baked ham, macaroni and cheese, butter beans, deviled eggs, sweet tea…
Keke, I don't think I ever did thank you for this impromptu tea party you served us.
And I haven’t even started smocking yet.
Adapted from Stephanie Kling and the Food Network
Crust: 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour, 1/2 cup cold butter cut into small pieces, 1/3 cup sugar
Filling: 8 oz reduced fat cream cheese (softened), 1/4 cup sugar, strawberries (tops cut off and halved–longways), 1/4 cup seedless red currant jelly
To make the crust, preheat the oven to 350. Combine ingredients in food processor until moist crumbs form (takes about a minute). Using your fingers, press dough firmly into mini-muffin cups SPRAYED with non-stick spray (makes about 2 dozen). Put muffin tin in oven for 10 minutes, or until crust is firm.
Remove and perforate each mini crust with a fork. Bake for 20 or 25 minutes, removing from oven halfway through and pressing down gently on crusts with a spoon if they are puffing up (and they probably will do this). Cook until golden brown and cool completely in pan.
Mix filling ingredients together in a mixer. Remove cooled crusts from pan by spinning them out with your finger individually (I wouldn’t try to beat and dump the whole pan if I were you). Put a dollop of filling in each crust and top with a strawberry half. (You can make these crusts ahead of time, but I wouldn’t assemble them until four or five hours ahead. The tartlett will stay together fine, but that shortbread starts to get soggy dog if it sits for too long.)
In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, melt jelly until it turns into liquid. Gently brush strawberries with jelly, or spread a little on top of the strawberries with the back of a spoon if you don’t have a brush–like me. Chill in the fridge until you serve them.
Serve them at your family Easter picnic, but be sure you take those dresses off before you offer one to your child. Strawberries STAIN 🙂