Rufflicious Day 1: The Old Fashioned Ruffle

This is the first post in our Rufflicous series! Everyone knows there's more than one way to skin a cat-- and sewing is no different. Each day this week I'll cover one ruffling method, when to use it and when not to use it, and when to avoid it like the plague.

To keep things simple we'll only discuss methods that use a sewing machine and thread-- no sergers, special feet or hand sewing required..

Today we are going to look at the Traditional or Old Fashioned Ruffling Method.

The How To:

1. Set your machine to the longest stitch and pull out 6-8 inches of bobbin and needle thread.

 2. Sew 2-3 lines of stitching along the area to be ruffled making sure to leave a long thread tail at each end of each line of stitching. These are your basting stitches.

Once you remove your fabric from the machine you should have a something that looks like this:

 Grab your needle threads and gently pull to gather the fabric.

Although the gathers will have to be top stitched to make sure they stay in place, I like to tie all the threads on  each side together at this point to prevent them being from pulled out.

Pros:

Some great things about this method

• Small, even gathers 
• Easy to adjust to an exact length
• Ruffles less likely to shift during sewing (especially when using 3 rows of basting stitches)

Cons:

• Both sewing and adjusting the gathers is time consuming. 
• Thread can break while adjusting
• It's difficult to get a large amount of ruffles (for example, ruffling a strip of fabric to 1/3 or 1/4 it's original length. 

When To Use:

This isn't one of my favorite methods, mostly because it takes so much time. I'll only use it when the fabric length is less then 6-10 inches.

This is my preferred method for small bits of gathering  that will be the feature of a project, like gathered pockets or a neckline. I can hand adjust the gathers until the ruffle looks perfect and is precisely the size I need it to be.

Try It Out:

My absolute favorite project using this method is Noodlehead's famous Gathered Clutch Tutorial. This little pouch comes together very quickly, and it's a fun way to showcase a bit of ruffles without being too frilly.

Photo from the fabuolous Anna of Noodlehead

See you tomorrow when we talk about tension ruffling!

This tutorial was part our Rufflicious Series. For more ruffling tutorials see:

The Old Fashioned Method

The Tension Method

The Couching Method

The Scrunch Method

Rufflicious Wrap Up