Lazy, that is. Because instead of walking down the hall and applying my makeup in front of the bathroom mirror, I fired up Photobooth on my MacBook and used that instead.
Hey, at least I wasn’t using the rearview mirror while driving L to ballet …
One of my Try It! projects for the year is to add some tutorials to the Craft Addict blog. I’ve had several requests for tips on creating the inset ruffled panel seen on the outfit on the left, so I decided to share a tutorial so you, too, can add this fun and decorative touch to your sewing projects.
I’ve used these ruffles to embellish the underskirt area showing between the peek-a-boo panels of this top’s overskirt, but you could easily use them anywhere you can imagine. Think of a tote with ruffles cascading down the sides. Or pants legs. Or even the hem of a skirt. You can do as many rows of ruffles as you want; it’s up to you.
The tools I use to create mine include a rotary cutter and mat, a clear acrylic ruler, a fabric marker or chalk, pins, a sewing machine and a serger. Is the serger absolutely necessary? I don’t believe so but it will require that you gather each ruffle by hand and then basting them to a strip of narrow binding or ribbon. Using a serger is infinitely easier and faster, and this tutorial is illustrated with serger-created ruffles.
Before you begin, you will need to decide how large of an area you want to inset with ruffles. On the top shown here, I measured the opening between the overskirt panels and added a half-inch seam allowance to compensate for the additional seams I would be adding to the underskirt. If you are adding ruffles to a pattern piece and will extend them from edge to edge of the pattern piece, you won’t need to worry about adding seam allowances.
Next you’ll want to determine the size and number of your ruffles. I wanted a fair amount of pattern showing between the ruffles, so I measured the height of my panel and subtracted one inch to allow for the seam allowance at the top of the bodice and a 1/2-inch hem. The resulting number was easily divisible by four, allowing me to place my ruffles about every three inches. I then cut strips about twice as long as my panel by two inches deep. Before gathering the top edge, I hemmed the bottom edge. (Why? Because it’s a lot easier to hem a flat piece of fabric than one that’s already been gathered — especially when the gathered edge is so close to the hemmed edge.) I then used my serger to gather and overcast the top edge of each ruffle strip. It’s OK if your ruffles are longer than the panel (mine often are) because you’ll trim everything up neatly after you’ve finished sewing them down.
Use your ruler and fabric marker/chalk to draw guidelines for your ruffles. If you are adding ruffles to a panel that has a curved edge, use your pattern piece to make curved lines at regular intervals instead of straight lines. This will let your ruffles follow the natural curve of the hem.
Now we’re going to do something a little wacky: you’re going to turn your panel upside down. Why? Stop asking so many question and just do it! LOL! Actually, it’s much easier to pin your ruffles if the fabric is turned this way. Obviously, YMMV and if leaving it right-side up works better for you, then by all means do that. What does matter is that the ruffles should be pinned to the panel with right sides together and the top edge of the ruffle on top of the guide lines. This is the exact opposite of how they will hang when you are finished with your panel. when you are done with each row, you’ll have something that looks like this:
Yes, I pinned all of my ruffles to the panel at the same time. If you prefer, you can pin and sew each row individually. This is what works for me, so that’s what you’re getting in this tutorial. When you’re ready to sew, take the panel to your machine and set your needle position on your sewing machine so that it’s just to the left of your gathering/serger stitches. (If you’ve done your ruffles by hand and basted to a binding strip/ribbon, you will instead use that as your guide.)
Continue to sew until all of your ruffles are attached to the panel. If you did not remove the pins as you were sewing, do so now. (I’m trying to break the habit of sewing over pins; please ignore the photo evidence to the contrary).
Your pin-free panel is getting that much closer to being finished! Take it over to your ironing board and press the ruffles down so the wrong side is touching the panel and the ruffles are hanging in the proper direction (see photo below). You may need to gently tug the ruffles down and away from the fabric panel to make sure you are pressing a nice, clean top edge without any “bubbles” of extra fabric.
When all of your ruffles are pressed down properly, return with the panel to your sewing machine and topstitch closely to the top edge of each ruffle. This will help keep your ruffles neatly hanging properly, as well as hide the attached edge below. I used a contrast stitching on these ruffles but you could use a coordinating thread to make the stitching less obvious.
Now use your ruler and rotary cutter to trim of any excess ruffle hanging over the edge of your panel (see photo below, left). Your finished panel will then be ready to insert into your garment! (photo below, right)
The edges of the ruffles will be caught in the seams of your garment, like so:
So I have two yards of this Alexander Henry fabric and I have no idea what to make with it. I bought it intending to make a messenger bag from it for my friend Eryn’s birthday; she liked another fabric better, so this one’s been curing in my stash for about a year.
Each girl is about 12 inches tall, so it’s definitely a bigger print than I normally use. And I’d rather make something for me with it than for Miss L. My default item these days seems to be a skirt, and I guess I could do that but I was really looking for something different — not that I think I could name what it is.
Throw some ideas at me! Please! I’m really trying to work my way through this stash of mine and I’m itching to sew up this one.
Happy birthday, Katie! (Go check out her blog; she’s doing a birthday giveaway!)
I’m finding that I’m having a hard time with these later milestones. The early ones — walking, talking, self feeding — were so exciting to me. I looked forward to each and every one, always eagerly anticipating the next.
Today was perhaps one of the scariest milestones to date: My oldest child took his driving test.
I have been dreading this day and have put it off as long as possible. It finally dawned on me a couple of weeks ago that his learner’s permit was approaching two years old. Lo and behold, it was set to expire May 8. No more procrastinating; I registered him for an online driver’s ed course and made an appointment for his driver’s license testing.
He passed. With a 96.
Watch out, world. There’s a new driver in town. And he knows how to use those turn signals.
What do you think about my lame attempt at alliteration? Yeah, it’s a stretch. But we’ve got a lot of ground to cover — and I’m heading all over the place today.
Birthday: My baby is 15 today. OK, maybe he’s not really “the baby” anymore, since we do have a little bitty thing here in the house. He was “the baby” for the first 12 or so years of his life, though, so I still think of him that way. The irony of it all: He’s almost six feet tall, weighs 155 pounds and wears a size 11.5 shoe. Anyway … He had a doctor’s appointment today, so I actually was able to see him, when I normally wouldn’t (even if most of our time was spent in the car). I even picked up a couple of birthday cakes so he could share a treat with the rest of his company tonight. (We’ll do the family birthday celebration when he comes home this weekend.)
Boobs: My stepmother had her double mastectomy today. Got to talk to my dad a couple of times, including right after she came out of surgery. Everything went well and — best of all — the lymph nodes tested clear. Relief! The photo at left shows one of the two recovery pillows I made for her. I’m a member of the American Sewing Guild and the Anti-Ouch Pouch is one of our charitable sewing initiatives. (The fabric is a Martha Negley and one I thought Jo would like.)
Blog Giveaway: The fabulous Integer Generator was my handy assistant in determining the winner of my vintage apron giveaway. Oh, how I wish I could give each and every one of you this apron! But there’s only one and the lucky girl is commenter No. 24, JaimeM! Jaime, please email me with your mailing address so I can get your apron off to you! Thanks so much to all of you for moving, delurking and/or discovering my blog, and then commenting. It just makes my day!
Today has been a rest-and-recovery day for us. We needed it after two days of traveling and staying up late. Friday morning, we packed up the car and hit the road — Honey, me, Miss L and Ava — to spend the night in my cute husband’s hometown in Tennessee. Our favorite rocker aka my sister-in-law, had a show scheduled that night. Since she lives too far away for us to regularly see her, the fact that she was only 3.5 hours away meant a trip was in order. It also meant a little photo session was in order. Jenn and I have been talking about me taking some promotional photos for her since at least a year ago, but we haven’t been able to make it happen. This weekend provided the perfect opportunity, so I packed up pretty much everything I own in the photography department and hauled it with us. And I am so glad I did! Here are a few of my favorites: 
Jenn and I are both crazy about this one: 
(If you’re interested in seeing the rest — at least the 122 that are done so far — you can see them here.) I have to say, it was quite a change of pace to photograph grown ups. My usual subject is … less than cooperative at times. If you’re around three year olds at all, you’ll know what an understatement that can be. It was so amazing for me to say, “drop your chin a little” and actually have the subject comply. Plus Jenn was totally willing to try anything I asked of her. And it was just fun to hang out with her and chat, which we just don’t get to do that often.
Apparently, the new blog style has some issues with Internet Explorer. I am sorry. I’m going to have to tinker with it a bit as soon as I can figure out which (if any) computer in this house has IE installed on it. Any CSS experts out there have any tips?
Welcome to my new blog home! Thanks so much for making the trek. I hope you’ll stick around and maybe even add/update me in your sidebar and/or feed reader.
I made the move to my own domain for a couple of reasons:
1. Much easier to share this link with people than the previous URL.
2. I can finally get a working Flickr widget.
3. Custom CSS and graphics that weren’t available to me on my prior blog host. (Although this remains a Wordpress blog; it’s just Wordpress installed on my own domain.)
No. 3 was the biggie for me. I had a picture in my head of what I wanted my blog to look like and now it does. (Big, huge props to Shabby Miss Jenn Designs and her beautiful blog graphics, which are key to my new look.) More or less. I’m still tinkering a bit, so if you stop by one day and it looks like someone smacked my blog with the ugly stick, you’ll know I’m cussing at the CSS.
I’ve moved all my posts, comments and pictures from my previous blog to here, although I did have a couple of issues. For a very brief period, I was “mirroring” at this blog. Because I had changed my commenting link to here, if someone followed that link and posted a comment here, when I did my final post merge, it caused me to have double entries with separate comments. I ended up manually copying over the comments and deleting one of the duplicates; otherwise it would make me nuts.
But enough with the housekeeping. Let’s get on with the crafting (and the news I hinted at earlier)!
My current work in progress. It’s shaping up nicely although it’s definitely a challenge not to hurry up and finish it. A totally new direction for me — and I’m finding it rather liberating and refreshing, from a creative perspective. I already am sketching out ideas for other pieces. Don’t ask me what I’ll do with them when I’m done. I have no idea. I’m just enjoying the process for the time being.
I also have a lot of fun ideas for some photos I want to take, my passion for the hobby reignited by a little bit of news I got recently. OK, not so little for me. Big. BIG. As in … two of my photos have been selected for publication in a magazine. I have waited to say anything until I got the high-res versions of my images off to the editor. And I’m still holding back just a little bit because I’m a wee bit superstitious and am afraid of jinxing myself by saying what publication and which issue. I promise to spill more details when I get confirmation that they are definitely on the page and rolling off the press (although you’ll have to see which photos were used when the magazine hits stands).
And to spread the love around, I’m going to do another giveaway!
This cute, handsewn apron is my latest flea find. (Miss L and I went “treasure hunting” Monday.) The fabric is actually a bit more pink than it looks in this photograph. I fell in love with it as soon as I picked it up, even more so when I realized all those neat, green stitches were made by hand. It is so sweet and will be going to a new home as part of my Big News/Blog Move Giveaway! All ya gotta do is comment on this post. Easy peasey, right? So what are you waiting for? Leave a comment already! LOL! I’ll draw a name on Sunday evening.
