Pajama Pantaloon - Sewing Ruffles

It's time to make ruffles:)

Gather your supplies:

Iron and board

Spray starch - optional but helpful

Sewing machine- cleaned and ready for work

Thread- All purpose to match your fabric

Ruffler foot - optional

Narrow hem foot - optional

Scissors - I prefer small embroidery type

Fabric strips- see tutorial from 8/10/11

Press your strips using a liberal amount of spray starch.  I really like the Best Press starch because it never clogs or spots your fabrics.  I really like their lavender scented, but unfortunately my allergies will no longer allow me to enjoy scented anything...sigh.  So it's the unscented version for me.  I pick mine up at our local quilting store, but I noticed that she has some other very intriguing products on her site.....

Ruffler                                    Narrow hemmer                             Adapter

To begin sewing we will hem our strips using 1 of 2 methods. 

Method 1 will be with the narrow hem foot. 

Method 2 will be without.

Method 1:

The Narrow hem foot in the center creates the tiniest of rolled hems, simply lovely. 

The drawbacks to this foot though are that it cannot hem the first 1" or so of your project.

 Nor can it sew over seams as the bulk will not feed through properly.

It also does not perform well on bias edges.

It is perfect though for our strips, and  say dust ruffles. Any long straight lengths.

My narrow hemmer is an old foot from Singer that came with my Singer 301.  I can use it on my Bernina with the help of the adapter.  Old sewing feet like ,my narrow hemmer, screwed on, but the newer machines use various kinds of quick release features, which are handier than having to pull out a screwdriver every time you change your foot.  Using the adapter allows me to screw my singer foot on to the bottom, and then attach it to my Bernina. For information on where to purchase the various feet mentioned here please check this post

Thread your machine and attach you narrow hem foot.  To see how to use it, watch the video:

Now cut yourself an extra strip of fabric at least 12" long and practice using your hemmer. 
Comfortable?
 Hem all your strips along both long sides.


Now to Ruffle.
Place tape 1" to the left of your needle to use as a guide to stitch down the center of your strips.
Attach your ruffler foot by printing up these instructions from Singer.
Set your pleat spacing to 6 stitches between pleats and your stitch length at 2.5
Watch the video:

Grab your sample strip again and practice pleating up your fabric strips.

Practice?

Pleat up your strips....its fun....so enjoy:)

 

 

Method 2:

Press your strips as instructed at the beginning of the post.  Now you will prepare your strips for a rolled hem. 

 

 Fold the long edge of your strips to the wrong side a fat 1/8".  I would recommend preparing one side of each strip this way, then after sewing return to do the other side.

 

I use my #37 foot/quilters foot for sewing rolled hems and I move my needle position 1 click to the left on my Bernina. 

 You will need to do some practicing and experimenting to see which foot and what settings are easiest for you. 

Roll the pressed fold of your fabric towards the center the same fat 1/8".  Position your fabric so that the fold on the left sits just within the inside edge of your presser foot and stitch, continuing to roll the edge over as you sew.

Once your strips are hemmed on both sides.  Lengthen the stitch on your machine to 4 and starting 1/2" from the short end stitch down the center of each strip, ending 1/2" from the end.  Be sure you leave a thread tail at the beginning and end of each strip.

Your strips are now ready to be gathered into ruffles, but lets wait until you have sewn your pants up.

Method 1 will have ruffled strips like these.  Method 2 will be flat and not gathered yet.

Next Friday we will dig into sewing the pantaloons together.

Let me know how you did, and please ask for help if need be.