It is possible to give hems an inexpensive but stylish makeover by adding ruffles. With a little experience, these can be made in a matter of minutes.
As a flexible adornment, ruffles may be seen on a wide variety of garments, making them one of the most important aspects of ruffles.
The ruffle may be found in anything from 18th century clothing to children’s gowns to your favorite skirt.
Let’s have a look at the many ruffles available and how you may incorporate them into your clothes or craft project now.
What are Ruffles?
Everyone has seen and possibly even worn ruffles at some point. A ruffle is a piece of cloth that has been gathered uniformly on one side.
Ruffles, despite their seeming simplicity, may be challenging for first-time sewers because of the difficulty in creating complete, even gathers of cloth that lie correctly.
It’s preferable to use a tried-and-true method for making robust ruffles.
Making ruffles may be done in several methods, and you can choose the one that best suits your needs in terms of design style, material availability, and sewing expertise.
Types of Ruffles
There are a variety of ruffles to choose from. When it comes to ruffles, SewGuide breaks them into six distinct categories.
The sort of ruffles you wish to create should be noted, since this guarantees that your fabric has the proper widths and hemlines for the ruffles you intend to make.
Single Edge Ruffles
A ruffle in this style is what most people envision when they consider home design.
A basting stitch is used to collect a piece of cloth at one end to produce this ruffle. Use them along the hemlines of dresses, skirts, or blouses.
Double Edge Ruffles
For double-edged ruffles, one or two basting threads are used to collect the cloth in the centre.
A ruffle on both sides of the cloth is the outcome of this. They’re often employed as a decorative element, and are commonly used to hide hemlines.
Double Width Ruffles
In the same way as the double edge ruffles, but using two strips of material instead.
There are a variety of ways to fold over a piece of cloth, including using the same or different materials, and using the same or various lengths.
Changing the pattern or kind of cloth is all it takes to come up with a unique design in this fashion.
Waterfall Ruffles
When making waterfall ruffles, you collect elastic thread along the fabric’s seam instead of around the edge.
Off-the-shoulder dresses and hems with elastic seams are the most popular places to see this style.
Circular Ruffle
As an accent or adornment, a circular ruffle is often created. They’re made by collecting a circular piece of cloth in the centre to form a gathered band.
Cascading Ruffles
Cascading ruffles are often used to decorate necklines and the back of dresses, respectively. To produce this kind of ruffle, you first need to adjust the shape of a circular ruffle.
In order to get the desired cascading effect, this technique is often performed on a large-width piece of cloth.
Adding Ruffles to a Dress
Beginner sewists will discover that adding ruffles to all of their garments is more difficult than they expected.
If you’re making your first ruffles, you’ve probably noticed that they’re uneven, stuck to one spot on the cloth, or otherwise fragile. This results in painful hands and wrinkled fabric for novices.
What are your possibilities for creating ruffles? There are two ways to go about this: Even if you don’t have any specific sewing equipment, a basic sewing machine may be used to help make ruffles.
Ruffles may also be made by hand as an alternative. We’ll go through both possibilities and how you can utilize them in various ways to personalize your designs.
Traditional Methods
If you don’t have a heavy duty sewing machine or if the fabric you’re using isn’t suited for a machine, you’ll have to go old-fashioned while stitching ruffles.
It’s important to learn how to construct ruffles without additional equipment in order to better comprehend what it takes to achieve good, clean gathers, even though specific techniques exist.
What’s the most common method for creating ruffles? Sewing a basting thread around 14 inch from the edge of your cloth is the most simple approach.
Create gathers in your cloth by leaving long tails at both ends of the stitch and then pulling on one end of the thread.
If you’re a newbie and have a tendency to make mistakes, this strategy may not be the best option for you. Traditional basting stitch methods may be modified to avoid this problem by ensuring that the stitches stay firm when the edges are pulled.
Creating two basting stitches is the finest variation. As a support for the initial basting stitch, a second basting thread will be inserted 14 inch below the first to provide more equal gathering.
Sewing Machine
For crafters, sewing machines are a great investment since they speed up and improve the accuracy of your work.
To make your sewing machine uniquely yours, you may choose from a wide variety of add-ons. The collecting foot and the ruffler foot are the two most often used ruffle feet for beginners.
Gathering Foot
Using the collecting foot, you may put the material flat beneath the foot before advancing the gathering process. Both the tension and stitch length may affect how much fullness you get from your gathers.
As a general rule, larger gathers may be achieved by using a greater needle tension and a longer stitch length. Larger gathers, but with less fullness or bounce, may be achieved by using a longer stitch length with bottom-level needle tension.
Set the needle tension and stitch length to its maximum levels for really huge gathers. Gathers may be made more pronounced by gently squeezing the threads of the needle.
It’s important to keep in mind that the settings for this machine are dependent on the fabric you’ve selected. It is possible to use gathering feet on both finer and heavier textiles, such cotton and acrylic.
In order to correctly evaluate the extent to which your fabric gathers, it’s usually a good idea to do a test on the cloth you’ve selected.
There’s a good chance that even if you’ve worked with the same sort of fabric before, it will behave differently after it is collected. To see whether it works, just cut a 12-inch-long piece of cloth.
A number of tests may be necessary to get the desired result, depending on the needle tension and stitch length.
Gathering cloth using the gathering foot is explained in detail in this tutorial.
Ruffler Foot
Rather of using needle tension and stitch length, like with the gathering foot, the ruffles foot pleats the cloth. At a certain number of stitches per foot, one foot stitches, while the other stitches.
Ruffles may be pre-pleated by changing how many stitches the ruffle waits before pleating.
The ruffler foot will just sew a conventional basting stitch in the first setting, which is denoted by a star.
A pleat will be created every 12 stitches on the second setting, denoted by the number 12. Every six stitches will be pleated in the third setting, which uses setting number six. Every stitch will be pleated in the final setting, which has the number one.
The fullness of your gathers will also be determined by the length of your stitch, much like the gathering foot. Larger gathers may be achieved by increasing the length of the stitch while decreasing the bounce.
Ruffles are best utilized with lightweight fabrics, despite the fact that this item can manage heavier materials. Because of this, it is an excellent answer to issues such as how to collect tulle and other delicate textiles. “
See this tutorial for instructions on using the ruffler foot.
What’s the Best Option?
Gathering is the primary distinction between the feet.
The collecting foot is can to be manually changed if you feel it isn’t functioning to your satisfaction since it uses needle tension.
The ruffler, on the other hand, offers a wider range of customisation choices.
Even if you like the ruffler, keep in mind that it’s not the ideal option for heavier textiles. If you’ve opted to work with knit or wool, the gathering foot is the ideal option.
Additionally, the machine you possess may influence your decision. You should nevertheless double-check this in advance so you don’t find yourself trapped with an item and a technique that you can’t utilize.
Needle Feet Not Required for Sewing
It’s possible to experience the same difficulties while generating ruffles by hand using a gathering foot or ruffler foot.
It’s also possible that your sewing machine doesn’t have an appropriate foot for gathering or ruffling. There’s no need to use the special feet on your sewing machine if this is true.
To sew ruffles without the need of special feet, try this option from the Seasoned Homemaker, which uses a basting stitch and two different colors of yarn.
The longest needle setting should be used. When you’re done, you’ll have a lot more room to stuff your fabric into.
Add a bobbin of colourful thread. This is the stitch you’ll use for gathering. Insert a different colored thread into the needle. Because you’ll be removing the bobbin thread later, you may dye it whatever color you choose without worrying about it altering the finished outcome.
Stitch the fabric together with a basting stitch along its whole length. Make a single stitch when you get to the end of your cloth. When sewing your ruffle to another flat piece of fabric, you may need two more stitches to make sure it stays in place correctly.
After twisting the fabric to the right, make a second basting stitch, which is parallel to the first one you made. In the final product, you’ll get a rectangular shape with one open end.
Leave around seven inches of thread at the end of your second basting stitch.
To maintain the ruffles in tact, just remove the bobbin thread and leave the needle thread in place. You’ll have a lovely pair of ruffles with only just one action.
How to Add Ruffles to a Flat Piece of Fabric
Ruffles are often used as decorations. In other cases, you may want to attach ruffles to a flat piece of cloth. ‘
By hand, you will need to pin the cloth into position before beginning to attach the ruffles.
Always work on a level surface, sectioning off the fabric in order to guarantee that both parts are held in place at all times when sewing.
To minimize unattractive wrinkles or an uneven end result when applying a ruffle by hand, iron it beforehand.
Making the process of aligning two pieces of cloth easy by sewing ruffles together is a good idea. It is possible to use the gathering foot and the ruffler foot to do this work; just lay the second piece beneath the cloth and then stitch away.
Trying out Ruffles
At first, ruffles may seem difficult to master, but there are many approaches you may use.
When it comes to ruffles, finding a technique that works for you and honing it until you feel confident is all it takes.
You’ll be sewing ruffles on everything in no time if you put in the time and effort.
FAQ’s
What Stitch is used to create ruffles?
To make a ruffle, sew two lines of straight, broad machine stitch over the width of your strip. (See illustration.) Using one long edge, stitch a line down the center to produce a conventional ruffle, or sew down the centre to create a double ruffle.
How much fabric do I need to make a ruffle?
You’ll need to produce a ruffle that’s two to three times the length of the region to which you’ll be attaching it in order to accommodate the extra length. Allowing 2.5 times will generally result in a nice ruffle, but three times is a good rule of thumb to be on the safe side just in case. If the cloth is very heavy, the length may be reduced.
What is the difference between ruffles and frills?
As a result of your inquiry, we’ll explain the distinction between frills and ruffles in this way: A frill is a strip of pleated cloth used as a decoration or trim, while a ruffle is a gathered strip of fabric used in the same manner.
What kind of material is utilized for the ruffles?
In the Chanel collection, ruffles were used on light and airy silk fabrics with designs and stripes, whereas in the McQueen collection, they were used on translucent and sheer fabrics in nude and neutral colors. The designer Roberto Cavalli gave ruffles a more casual twist by using dye-printed taffeta for super-dramatic mini-skirts and lovely blouses that were combined with jeans or leather.
