Ruffle Questions

I got some great questions about the post dealing with making ruffles yesterday. Thanks!  One was a question that asked "what if the ruffle is too tightly gathered for the area I'm pinning it?"   The answer is easy and slightly less so. The weight of your fabric and how tightly it is woven will have a lot to do with how fully your fabric strip is gathered. Please experiment first with a similar strip of fabric and try different things.

The best thing to do is to leave a very long tail on your thread when you cut it from the maching after sewing the ruffle strip. Then, if the ruffle is too tight, as you pin it along your item you can easily "un-ruffle" it as you go along. Nice and easy does it, and it is simple as pie.

Question 2 was how do I attach my ruffle. In the photo above, it is completely okay for the top edge of the ruffle to be raw. I ruffled it raw and pinned it onto the base raw. Then I use normal pressure on the foot, a normal stitch length and stitch over the top of the stitching line made when the ruffle was born. I'll go over the top of the raw edge with a simple machine overcast stitch when I'm done. If you have a double ruffle or turned down edge you stitch it onto your base in exactly the same way, the difference is that the top edge of your ruffle has been finished in some way. If you have a serger you can serge the top edge before ruffling allowing maximum fullness as well as a finished ruffle (assuming the bottom edge was narrow hemmed.) You'll see a line of air eraseable marker on the photo above. I measured the lines I wanted my ruffles to be sewn on and I butted the ruffles up to this line.

Remember, if you have a raw edge you can always sew the ruffle on 'upside down', and when you give the item a shake the ruffle will fall down over the raw edge. It's all up to YOU!

Do you have more than one ruffle? If you start from the bottom it is easier than if you start from the top!

Ruffle on!