Thursday, April 3, 2014

Gathering Fabric and Making Ruffles

While making a skirt, I realized that it looked too flat. I decided to gather the fabric at the top of the skirt, in order to give it more body. Of course, that made the skirt too small at the top! So here we go, round two.

Cut your fabric, making it twice (or three times) as wide as your finished product will be.


Turn your tension to the highest it will go, and make sure the stitch is the longest it can be. And pull a good amount of both threads to create a long tail before you work.


Go ahead and sew! As you go, you'll notice that the fabric is curling up and "ruffling." Great!




Leave the tails very long, because you will need to pull the fabric after sewing. Measure the width you'll need for your finished product, and make sure it will work. GENTLY Pull the fabric until it's as wide as you need it to be. Start spreading it out from the outside, working your way in

Be very gentle with your new ruffly fabric edge, since the thread is pulled so tightly that it can break very easily. Put your tension back where it belongs (on my machine, it's in the middle, at the "auto" setting). Go ahead and run the ruffled fabric top back through the machine. Be very careful to keep the ruffles even as you sew; your presser foot will do its best to keep everything flat, and this may or may not keep things even for you. After a pass or two locking in your ruffles, you're ready to add the finishes.


Depending on what you're doing, you can just use some bias tape to finish it off. I made a skirt, so I made a tube of fabric and sewed it over the ruffles so I couldn't see the stitching.



What do you think? Easy, right?

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