Shir, why not?

She doesn't call it Shir Madness for nothing.

I found a shirring tutorial on Sandi Henderson's site PortabelloPixie.

I thought, ok, why not give it a whirl?

Here are my tragic results.

I had to hand gather as no 'shirring' occured. Very difficult as thread breaks, elastic breaks, my patience reaches breaking point.

This is my next attempt where I tried to get my thread tension right. You can see that some lines have elastic that is a bit loose and curly.

I tried to blast the elastic in an attempt to get some gathering happening but all I ended up with were wet blotches.

I asked some 'blog' friends for advice but none of which worked for me.

This included:

using a tight tension = straight lines and straight elastic but no shirring

winding the bobbin using the machine = no more needle thread getting jammed in my bobbin case but still no shirring

using the longest stitch length = yeah, ok.. still no shirring

Not to say that it won't work for you... it probably will... but in the meantime I have given up.

Off to work on some straight sewing.

If you have any tips please share them. I need to know!!!