Session 3: How to Sew and Attach Three Kinds of Ruffles

When it comes to ruffles, I feel like they can be used on just about anything. So I've created a project that utilizes three different kinds of ruffles, and they're all together on one project, but they're not competing with each other and they all still look cohesive on the project. So, first I'm gonna talk about the different kinds of ruffles and how you create them. I'm gonna set these two aside real quick because I think this is what people first think of when they think of ruffles. And this could be, you know, something you're adding to the bottom of a skirt or maybe if you're making doll clothes, this could be the skirt in general. Or even a something for a little girl, you can make a much larger ruffle and that could be the entire project. But when it comes to making a ruffle like this what we're going to do is essentially just start with a strip of fabric, finish one edge and we're going to ruffle the other. So here I have just a strip of fabric and you can see I have one raw edge and one edge that has a hem. Now, all I did was a simple half-inch double fold hem. I measured a half-inch, folded it, folded it again, and stitched it. That's a double-fold hem. And this I find is a great way to finish the bottom edge of a ruffle like this because since we have folded the fabric so many times, it makes it a little bit more rigid and it really gives the ruffle some body at the end and makes it so the bottom wants to flare out, whereas the top we've ruffled it in so tightly. So that's my preferred way to finish the bottom edge of a ruffle, especially out of something like cotton fabric like this, but you could do other things. If you wanted to surge the bottom edge, if you wanted to do a really narrow almost rolled hem along the bottom, you could do that too. And how you decide to finish this bottom edge may depend on the type of fabric that you're using. But no matter what kind you're using, you want to finish the bottom edge and then we're gonna ruffle this upper edge. Now, in the case of this ruffle, I attached it to the bottom edge of this apron pattern here. And this apron pattern is available for download with this class, if you want to make this exact one here. So I constructed this apron using 1/2-inch seam allowances. So that means that when I am making my basting stitching that I'm gonna use to ruffle along the top edge here, I want to be stitching on something that is less than a half inch. That way I can make sure that any stitching I used to gather, if I don't want to take it out, can be hidden within our seam there. So I am going to stitch roughly 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch from the upper edge. Now I'm gonna be ruffling this by not back stitching at the beginning or end, I'm going to leave fairly long thread tails, and then I'm going to pull on my bobbin thread. And I want to make this a fairly easy process, so I need to lengthen my stitch length. I like to lengthen it as long as it'll go, Now on this machine, it's a five millimeter. Yours may only be a four and a half, yours may even go longer than that. But in general, right around the five or as long as your machine will go. I am going to just line the edge of my fabric up with the edge of my presser foot 'cause I know that's roughly around 3/8 of an inch, and I am just going to stitch right along this edge. Again, I didn't backstitch at the beginning because I don't want to make it harder to create this ruffle. And I'm gonna stitch right off the edge. Now, if your machine has an automatic cut feature, this is where you don't want to use that 'cause we need those long thread tails. So you want to take it out from under your machine, pull off enough that it gives you enough thread to work with, and then cut your threads. So you have stitched along the upper edge and you have long thread tails on both sides. Now for me, I find that it is easier to pull on one thread over the other. And for me that's usually the bobbin thread is easier to pull on. Mine got tangled up here. I just want to grab only one so I'm just using a pin to separate them out. But I find it's easier to pull on the bobbin thread. You might find this easier to pull on your needle thread. Whichever one works for you to where you can pull on it, you're providing tension, but you're not pulling so hard that you're gonna snap this thread. Because if you do that, then you have to start over. So all I'm doing is holding onto my bobbin thread, pulling on it in one direction same time I'm pulling my fabric in another, and I'm simply creating ruffles. Now this strip of fabric is not very long, so I could ruffle entirely from one side. If yours is much longer, like what you would have if you were making this apron, you may need to ruffle from both sides. So I would just flip it around, grab the other end of my bobbin thread and create my ruffle. Now in general with patterns, especially with this one if you download this pattern and choose to use it, you are given a starting length of the strip of fabric you cut for your ruffle and a finished length that you need to ruffle it down to. So in that case, if I had, just a scrap of fabric here, but if this was how long I needed my ruffled to be, well you can see I've over ruffled it a bit. So that's not a problem at all. All you do is you go and you start pulling it back out in the other direction. So I'm easing it out a little bit getting rid of some of those ruffles, making it longer, and then I would keep going until it was whatever length I wanted it to be. So, if I was going to use this ruffle and I wanted to attach it along the bottom edge here, I would just treat this as I would any other piece. I'm going to layer them right sides together, like so. I would match up my raw edges, put some pins in, and stitch. Now what you want to try and think about before you stitch this down and make it permanent is that you want your ruffle to be fairly even. If I went like this, I'm gonna have this big flat spot in the middle of my ruffle and then really ruffled here, really ruffled here, and it's not gonna look very good or not gonna look the way that I want it to. So you want to try and get your ruffle as even as possible. And then I like to start in the middle, work my way towards the outer edges while I'm pinning it in place. So we'll just pin it to our little scrap of fabric here so you can see what I mean, but I'm gonna put a pin roughly in the middle. I'm gonna work my way about 1/2 inch, 3/4 of an inch to the right, making sure my ruffle is laying flat and put another pin. And then I can kind of gauge, right? If my next inch so is too ruffled, I can smooth it out. If it's not ruffled enough, I can add more. But I want to be going along the edge, making sure that it looks even as I place my pins. And doing this method and placing your pins so close together really forces you to do that rather than just ruffling it and then holding it in place and stitching it. So you're really making yourself see whether or not your ruffles lay how you want them to. So again, I worked my way all the way to one edge. I would do the same thing going back along this edge. So it seems a little bit too ruffled right here. Pull it out just a little bit, put a pin in place, continue all the way down. Again, I have kind of a bunch together. Pull it out. Oops, I messed up my pin. That's okay. Just kind of evenly distribute that, like so, and then pin it in place. Okay. Couple more pins and then we'll be ready to stitch it. Okay, now again, we have ruffled or created our ruffle, that 3/8 inch. Now if you want to just stitch it on a half inch, that would be what you could just go back and stitch right along this edge. And this is the one time where I like to leave my, pretty much leave my pins in. I won't always stitch right over them, but I'm gonna get right up to them as close as I possibly can get before I take them out because I don't want to mess up these ruffles. And the whole point of a presser foot is to make sure that your fabric is feeding evenly as you're going through the machine. So obviously it's applying some pressure on top of these ruffles and they're just going to move them out of the way. So I'm gonna stitch, even on this one, I stitch right over my pin. I'm going super slow. I'll know whether I'm gonna hit it or not. So I'm not worried. If you're worried, you can stop right at your pin, right before it, and take it out. But I'm going slow enough, adjusting my fabric as I go, making sure everything's laying flat to where I feel confident that I'm not going to injure myself or break a needle or a pin or anything like that stitching this in place. Let me just keep going along. You can see I'm kind of adjusting this fabric over here, just because I want to make sure that it's not way up out in the way, or it's gonna get attached anywhere I don't want it to be. And I would just sew straight across there. Take my pins out and I'll show you what that ruffle would look like along the edge of your garment, or your pillow, or around whatever you want to add it to. And you can see it just by keeping all those pins in, by making sure that we were even meticulous, if you will, about how even our ruffle is, you can see that we have nice even ruffles all the way along the edge, and this would look super cute on really any project you want to add it to. So that's how you create your basic standard ruffle. Another ruffle you can do as a fun one to add down the front of something, it looks really good as a vertical ruffle, and so that's what we've done here along the front of our apron. We have these fun stripes, if you will, of ruffles that the edges are not finished. This has just been pinked so it's not gonna ravel. And then I stitched down the middle and gathered it. And it's kind of fun because I picked a fabric that actually has natural stripes on it, and then just used a ruffle, cut it the width of that stripe maybe a little bit bigger, and then covered it up. So the fabric already had those stripes on there anyway and I just accentuated that stripe by adding a ruffle. So again, to do that, all I have done is cut a strip of fabric, I have pinked around all of the edges just with some pinking shears, measured on the back and drawn a line straight down the middle, and I'm just gonna stitch along this line. Now I didn't worry about using a removable fabric marker or anything like that, simply because I didn't care if you could see this or not. It's on the back, so I'm never going to see it once it's stitched in place. Again, I've put it back to a very long stitch length and I'm gonna stitch directly on this line. Remembering to leave a long thread tale at both ends and I'm not cutting my fabric, or sorry, not back stitching at the beginning ends, leaving long thread tails. And then I'm gonna gather it the exact same way. Pick whichever thread is easiest for you to pull whether that's your needle thread or your bobbin thread, and you're just going to gather it just like that. Again, I'll grab, if your thread gets twisted up, so that one's, it's getting twisted up between my needle and my bobbin, I'll just take a pin, get it in there, separate them apart so I can grab just one. 'Cause it's not gonna do me any good to grab both of them. I'm not gonna be able to ruffle anything. Okay. So using the same technique as before ruffling from both sides, eyeballing, making sure that everything looks nice and even. And the fun thing about this one is that it can be a little bit more forgiving because you have ruffles on both sides and they kind of balance each other out. Now, if I wanted to attach this to the front of an apron, to the front of a shirt, I could do multiple across the front of a shirt, I could do these, well really on anything I wanted, anything I wanted to add just a little bit of texture to the front of, I could pin this in place, like so. And all I would have to do is take that back to my machine and restitch along the line I just stitched on. And because I would be, in most cases, using thread that matched, I'm using gray thread today but it would be using yellow, it would be yellow on top of yellow, on yellow fabric, so you're not really going to see that thread. So you don't have to worry if you're maybe one stitch or so to the right or left of your initial gathering line, it's still going to look good once you stitch it down. So you would just stitch right along that line, stitch it in place to wherever you want to add that fun, little ruffle. Another ruffle you can make is one that's more of a pleated version. So you can see we have those here on the top of our, these are our fun little pockets on our apron, and these are, I'm gonna call them little pleats. And this is, you may have seen a larger version of these ruffles if you think of skirts that have been pleated and have all those little folds in them. They're just much longer, larger versions of this. So we're gonna create small versions and make fun little ruffles. So what I'm gonna do is, again, I have a strip of fabric and all I've done is press it in half. So you can start with the same size width as you just did for the one where we created the center ruffle or you can make it much larger. I wouldn't go much narrower than this, or it's gonna be really hard to work with. But all I've done is folded it in half and pressed it. And now we're gonna make some marks. Now I don't like to draw on the right side of my fabric. Even if a marker says it's removable, I don't always like to take the chance that it might not come out. So I like to try and do some of the marking with either laying something next to a ruler or using pins to do some of that marking for me. So what I want to do is I'm taking and putting a pin right about at the inch, I'm an inch in, I put a pin, and then I would go along another inch over, put another pin. And this is just my way of marking the fabric without having to write on it. And since I'm going to be doing a lot of folding to create the pleats of these ruffles anyway, I'm gonna need these pins to hold it, and all I have to do is move them since they're already in place. Put a couple more in and then show you how to start folding this. One more. Again, see, I just have my ruler laid right there. I'm not having to draw on there. Just simply placing some pins. Now I'm going to create my folds or my pleats and I'm gonna do this by folding one pin to the next pin, right like that. So I've just folded, I'm matching up my pins like so, taking them out, and then using one to hold that in place. And now is where you get to decide how full you want your pleated ruffles to be. For this one, I marked every inch, so I just brought two together. I would leave this one here and then bring my next one to it like so. That gives me a little bit of space between my pleated ruffles. And they're not right on top of each other. And it still has a little bit of a flounce to it once you put this on something. Again, so I'm leaving this one here, I'm not bringing this one over, I'm leaving it there and bringing the next one over to it like that. Okay, I take out one of the pins, use one of the pins, and it's right in place like that. And I would go along creating as long as the ruffle as I wanted, pin it, and then stitch it. You can see, I have one that I've done right here. So the same measuring technique. I went across, marked every inch, just like this. You can see I folded every other pin towards the next one, stitched it, and I have this fun little ruffle here. Now this can be attached pretty much the same way that our first ruffle can be. But in this case, it's so little that if you think about if you attach this to something using like a 5/8-inch seam allowance, there goes your ruffle. It's pretty much gone. So in the case of our pockets here, they are a little bit longer, but I attach these simply by creating a, it's a double-fold tape across the top. If you were, if it was a curve at all it would be some bias tape, but just creating a little tape to stitch over the top to cover the edge rather than having to enclose it in a seam. So that's another fun way that you can attach a ruffle to the front of something, even adding a little pop of color there with that tape rather than having to just finish that edge another way. So that's three very different ways that you can make ruffles and fun ways that you can attach it to projects. And if you want to try making this apron project again, the pattern's downloadable with this class. Or really, these ruffles can be added to any project you can think of. They're are a lot of fun and I hope you'll try them out.