Hand Smocking, Machine Smocking or Shirring? How to Tell Them Apart
Key Takeaways Smocking gathers fabric into even pleats and holds them with embroidery stitches worked across the top, so the stitching is both the decoration and the structure. Shirring uses rows of elastic thread instead. The fabric puckers, but there are no defined pleats and no embroidery on the surface. Machine smocking tends to look flatter and very uniform, while hand smocking sits slightly raised, with small variations from one stitch to the next. A few simple checks, such as looking for elastic, running a fingertip across the panel and tilting it in the light, usually reveal which technique was used. Smocked pieces last longest when washed gently, never wrung, and reshaped while damp. Walk through any shop that sells classic baby clothes and the word “smocked” shows up on bubbles, gowns, dresses and bibs. Look closer, though, and those panels are not all made the same way. Some are worked stitch by stitch by hand. Some come off a machine. And some are not smocking at all, but s...
