Smocked Soda Can Bracelets

Picture this.

Woman sitting a craft room, creating like mad. There are bits of fabric flying. Random buttons may be flung as projectiles at any moment. Elastic snapping. Sewing machine whirling. Faint whiff of hot glue in the air.

Woman muttering to herself. She probably hasn’t brushed her teeth yet. Hair possibly, but if so, it has not been attended to in some hours.

Two children are playing on the computer next to her. They may or may not have earned the computer time like they are supposed to have done.

Bits of elastic and trim litter the carpet. There are boxes piled around. The piano bench has been dragged in from the front room, and sitting on it is a smallish ironing board (thrifted) and an iron (not thrifted) and a pair of scissors and various other bits and pieces.

And the mad woman sits up from her chair, and exclaims, “I’ve got it!” with a sort of frantic, creative screech. The kids don’t notice. Too common of an occurrence to warrant much concern. . .

I’d been making soda can bracelets all day per this brilliant tutorial with a few modifications (since when can I ever leave anything alone?), and I suddenly envisioned a perfect marriage of her idea and my smocking tutorial. I have this impulse to start inserting wedding and light bulb metaphors, even Big Bang ones occurred to me, but I’ll just say that I really, really, really loved this idea.

It’s perfect if you’ve been wanted to try smocking but don’t want to give up hours of your time.


The red one I used a large swiss dot as marks. It didn’t take me long at all to work up.

The blue one I marked up with a quilting ruler. I stitched it while watching a movie with David. It was his turn to pick and he picked Pan’s Labyrinth which was a deeply moving, beautiful, very disturbing and brutal movie. It’s also in Spanish with subtitles. Yeah, not so good for the stitching. I still managed to miss very little of the dialogue and finish up the beaded smocking. Super easy. I just added a bead to the last step.

I've got about 5 more to show you, but I couldn't wait to show you these two smocked cuffs!

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