I know I said I was going to wait until Saturday morning to deconstruct the #139 pants, but my husband mentioned that we might go to FlowerWorld and I did not want anything to stand in the way of that! So I'm back to where I was two days ago. Actually, I'm slightly ahead of that, as I went ahead and stitched the ends of the waist elastic together and closed the opening in the casing.
Now it's time to get started on the ruffles. The ruffles are made from a 3" by 42" piece of fabric. Yes, you read that correctly. That's 42 inches of fabric to ruffle...for a pant leg! That's "quite" a lot of ruffle; I'll probably do a double row of basting stitches since the ruffle will be so dense.
But before I worry about that, I need to hem the darn things, so it's back to work with my narrow hem foot.
23:35 Pacific Time: Both ruffles are hemmed!
6 comments:
For the ruffling, have you ever tried the really high tension trick? This is how I ruffle and set sleeves too. You increase your tension to 9 (highest tension) and increase your stitch length. Then practice on scrap fabric. When you sew, the tendion gathers the fabric. Fool around with the tension and stitch length to get something very ruffled or just a little.
I've never tried it. When you're doing a long ruffle, how do you know when it's ruffling the correct amount, meaning that the ruffle will fit the designated space? I have control issues.
I always over-ruffle b/c it is easier to straighten out than to make rufflier. I feel like I'm speaking in Muppet-ese.
I'll have to practice on some scraps but for now, I'll just do it my usual way so I can get these little suckers finished!
When ruffling longer lengths I get paranoid about the thread snapping once I reach the "almost there" point. So I tend to zigzag over a strong thread. Dawn, I've never heard of that trick. I'm anxious to give it a try.
I found by accident that if I pulled down this little wand that my walking foot attaches to that it ends up working like a ruffler. It blocks and bunches up the fabric as it tries to exit the needle plate and somehow ended up ruffling it perfectly. :) :) If only all my blonde moments would end so happily.
I just tried this on my sewing machine at at the hightest tention setting, it was nowhere near ruffly enough for these pants. It's a good trick, though, so I'll definitely remember it for the future.
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