hi i'm makyla from makylacreates.com today i'm going to be teaching you how to sew ruffles for
your sewing projects this is part of my beginner sewing series where i have been going through
all of the basics for you to be able to learn how to sew alongside me if you're new here please do
check out the beginner sewing playlist which i have shared in the description box below ruffles
are a really great way to add really pretty details to all sorts of home decor and to
your own personal sewing i absolutely love to add ruffles to pretty much any of my sewing projects
you will be able to use this lesson on how to sew ruffles to create pillows and cushion covers for
your home i have a tutorial on this already so i will add it to my beginner's sewing playlist
and you will be able to use this as a guide to get you started and then you can follow along
with that tutorial so to get started with how to sew a ruffle i would suggest just grabbing some
scrap fabric so that you can have a play around and just really practice getting this right
so to get started i have cut out a rectangle shape of scrap fabric now my rectangle is 70
centimeters by 30 centimeters and this is just for demonstration purposes um it's a really nice big
size so that you will be able to see the really pretty details that making ruffles can really show
and so i've also cut out just a random rectangle to sew my ruffle onto to show you how pretty
it can look on the bottom of hems or skirts or around the edges of pillows and cushions this uh
rectangle here i believe is 40 centimeters by 20. so to begin sewing ruffles you want to set your
sewing machine on a standard straight stitch and then for your stitch length you want it to be the
longest that it can go on my sewing machine i can go up to stitch length four and that will be a
nice long stitch length where i am able to pull my threads and it will pull my fabric in so to begin
i have got my larger rectangle here and i am just folding it in half
lengthways and then what i am going to do is pop it under my foot pedal and i'm wanting to sew
a five mil or quarter inch seam um from the edge of the folded fabric you want to sew
all the way along the edge of your ruffle and this is going to create a gather stitch
once you get to the end don't back tack so you don't want to back tack at the front or the end
of this because we're wanting to be able to pull our fabric together it up so leave quite a long
tail on your end and then we're going to go straight back to the beginning
and then we're going to pop it back onto the machine and we want to line it up with the
15 millimeter um seam allowance line or the 5 8 of an inch sew all the way down again
and then again at the end you just want to lift up your foot pedal
lift up your needle and leave a long what i like to call tail on the end of your sewing now you
can see we've got two rows of stitching which is nice and even and and what we're going to do is
grab two of what i call the tails on the same side and you just want to start to slowly pull
and you will see that the fabric will begin together up now this is how you gather now to
gather this up i just like to go to a rough midpoint and then i like to swap to the other side
of what i'm gathering up so in this case my ruffle and i grab the tails on the same side as the other
end and i just start to gather it up again towards the center so now i'm just going to grab my pins
and pin my ruffle to the longer edge of my rectangle that i cut out earlier just as you're
pinning just make sure to slowly move along any of your gathering so that it sits really nicely
and as you're pinning just slowly start to move the gathers along just to make sure they're
nice and evenly distributed
so now that i have pinned down my ruffle to my rectangle or let's say the bottom of a skirt or
on the outside edges of a cushion cover so now you need to change your sewing machine stitch length
back to a normal stitch which is between two and a half to three and we want to sew the ruffle to
the main piece of your garment or project now i'm going to sew this together with a
one centimeter seam allowance remember to backtap at the beginning and the ends of your sewing
and now just pull out any of the pins that you've popped in now you would just want
to pull out any of the gather stitches that you can see to do this you can just pull the threads
and if they do snap that's okay just kind of pull the gathering apart and grab and unpick
all your snips and just slowly start to pull out any of the visible threads from your sewing
so i hope that today's lesson helped you learn how to sew ruffles
it's definitely something that i love to sew and it's a really great beginner sewing technique to
learn if you're wanting to move on from just practicing learning how to sew ruffles into a
project i have a really great ruffle cushion tutorial which i will add to
my beginner sewing series playlist which you can find on my youtube channel there is also
a link in the description box below thank you so much for joining me here in my sewing room