Ruffles for Miles

Post from July I'd managed to miss publishing.

Puff ruffles! Puff ruffles were super common when lots and lots of ruffles were needed. Puff ruffles were used over a wide period in the Victorian era, especially out of light weight and sheer fabrics. You fold your fabric in half and gather both raw edges together as one, creating a puff. That's ruffled.

Unfortunately,  the silk gauze didn’t like my ruffler foot, and would unfold as soon as the tuck was made, fighting the ruffle tooth and nail. My gathering foot wasn’t consistent enough with this fabric either.  

So I have to make my puff ruffles BY RUNNING A GATHERING STITCH AND PULLING IT. But how do you gather and finish 60 yards of fabric and not go insane? 

Laid out in their poofy goodness. The pleats are another tale.

But how the hell do I gather that much and do it consistently? Not have them wiggle too much and scoot around? I sure as heck can't pin the heck out of them on the gown until I get the right look, it'll take years. They aren't getting spat out of a machine all ready to go.

The answer: Selvages are your friend. Your ruffles are sewn together selvege to selvege. Run your gathering stiches selvage to selvage. Tie off, and gather to a set length, tie off again. Move on to next strip.

Math and the sewing playing Goddess says 55 inches becomes 14 inches.

Here's the sewing playing Goddess in action.

More oomph needed all around.

That's better. Yes, that's 4:1 and 9:1.

I used my mathy math ruffle calculation method, coming up with 13 strips of fabric per 180 inches of hem. Times at least 3 rows of ruffles.  That’s 63 yards of ruffles to make. *Cue questioning my existence*

Much fabric tearing later....

I used a trick I caught from a quilting how-to video that makes sewing the the 13 strips faster.  Keep going! Don't bother to start and stop.

When it came to the actual gather stitches, I screwed up once and realize it was the way to go. I had been starting and stopping at each selvage. Taking time and effort to tie off. Don't stop. Keep going. 

When it comes time to actually gather, just pull the threads up at the selvage and tie them off to each other. Pull the long threads, then tie it off to the start of the next section. One knot per section, not two. (well 2 vs 4 rather, as I run 2 gathering stitches.

No clue if I was just being an idiot for not figuring this out earlier.  Clipping gathering stitches is not to be feared! It can be done! And will save you all kinds of time!

42 yards of ruffly goodness. 21 more yards to go.