rrrrrruffflllllesssss

thanks to Pinterest, I have been sewing ruffles on lots of things... tops that needed a little "updo", old overcoats that were just "blah", and a recent project- flower girl dresses for a friend's wedding.  I decided to actually document this, just in case I wanted to every figure out how it did it years from now when all our children decide to get married.  I was given some plain white flower girl dresses & had to add some ruffles to match the wedding colors & lengthen them a tad as well.  I also made sashes but did not include this in the tutorial as it seems pretty basic to me.  If you have questions about that part, I can add it on later.

I start with my trusty Gingher scissors, measuring tape & tomato needle cushion- I also usually keep a seam ripper on hand & a smaller pair of gingher scissors & of course, my sewing machine.  The material I used was a shiny, polyester kind that is sort of shimmery & made for perfect ruffles.

My first step was to cut into strips about 6 inches in width & 2 yards in length.  I used 2 of these strips for each dress because you need to so it will be super "ruffly".  Use less, if you don't want something so ruffly.  Also, these were pretty wide b/c I wanted them to add length to the dresses, not just embellishment.  

Then, I folded them in half lengthwise and ironed them....

Ironing them makes the ruffles stay in place & it just looks better, guaranteed. I then sewed each end together to make one long loop. Now it's ready to pin to the dress.

Dress:

Kinda plain, ya?

let's jazz it up a tad...

Using the bottom of the dress as my measuring stick, I laid it out on my bed (sorry- no worktable here, it's my bed or the kitchen table folks!) and stretched it out to full length.  Taking the long loop of pre-ruffled material, I also stretched it to full length just underneath the dress.  This was hard to get a picture of b/c I would have had to be on my ceiling, so I'll just try to explain.  I laid the strip of fabric down horizontally so the dress bottom was centered just above it & then pinned the middle of the strip to the middle bottom of the dress.

this is my attempt at eyeballing the middle of the strip.  It doesn't have to be exact but it does help to do some measuring ahead of time so you don't end up with way too much fabric on one side & not enough on the other.  I have done this before & it's a pain to rip out especially with certain types of material.

After pinning the middle, I pinned the edges, leaving the other side for after this side is all pinned.  Then I just basically divided everything into halves.  I pinned halfway between the middle pin & edge pin on both sides & divided those in half, pinning the middle of those 2 halves until I got down to basically a ruffle-size pin.

You can see the other side of the ruffle here that is for the other side of the dress, it just sat there until I flipped the dress over & did the same thing to the other side.

Then I pinned all the ruffles.  Like I said, it's not an exact science, but just try to keep the ruffles "roughly" (har,har) the same distance apart.

Do same thing to other side and it's ready for the sewing machine.  So I ended up with about 3 inches of ruffle hanging down from each dress.  Whatever length you want your ruffle to be, just make sure it is twice the width you need. 

I didn't document the actual sewing part, but I just put the pinned edge under the needle & took pins out as I sewed along.  I think they turned out pretty cute!

Ruffle...

simple sash...

finished dress!

P.S. note on the sashes- I believe i used the same width of material for the sashes but only one yard in length instead of two.  Simply fold in half (inside-out) and sew along cut edge, turn right side out, finish edged with a French seam & iron flat!