Okay, I've cut all my 5"x10" pieces, so now it's time to stitch them together end to end!
The pattern doesn't state the seam allowance, so I just went with 1/4". The walking foot was still on the machine from the last project, and since cotton lawn is so thin and might shift easily, I went ahead and used the walking foot to chain stitch the pieces.
 |
| Oodles and oodles of chain-stitched fabric! |
Now for the fun part - ruffling! To create the ruffles, Palak's pattern uses the tension method, but since I have a gathering foot for my sewing machine, I used that instead. Since I hadn't worked with cotton lawn before, I did a test run.
Check out this cartoon of Bugs Bunny:
See how he's giggling (starting at 1:00) as Witch Hazel shoos him away from the pot? That's how giddy I was when I finished ruffling one side of the swatch. The ruffles were gorgeous! Tee hee, hee hee hee!
Now I had to flip the swatch over and ruffle the other side. The pattern didn't specify, and I'm not that experienced with sewing ruffles, so I didn't know if I had to straighten out the fabric before I ran it through the machine. Just in case, I tried both ways.
They both turned out fine, but the ruffles looked more uniform when I straightened out the fabric before passing it through the foot. Either way, I was so happy with how the ruffles came out that I couldn't help but giggle again. Tee hee hee hee hee!
I was getting so excited with all the ruffling that I tried to sew up the four strips as fast I could. For some reason, even though the swatches turned out okay, when I ran the long strips through the machine, the machine would jam up almost every two feet. I thought maybe the needle was too dull, so I changed it for a new one, but that didn't work. I thought maybe the tension was creating a problem, so I played around with that, but that didn't seem to change anything either. I did notice that if I didn't run the machine at full speed, it wouldn't jam, so I just reduced my speed, and that seemed to work.
Now I had to flip the swatch over and ruffle the other side. The pattern didn't specify, and I'm not that experienced with sewing ruffles, so I didn't know if I had to straighten out the fabric before I ran it through the machine. Just in case, I tried both ways.
 |
| Left swatch: Didn't straighten fabric before sewing Right swatch: Straightened fabric before sewing |
They both turned out fine, but the ruffles looked more uniform when I straightened out the fabric before passing it through the foot. Either way, I was so happy with how the ruffles came out that I couldn't help but giggle again. Tee hee hee hee hee!
I was getting so excited with all the ruffling that I tried to sew up the four strips as fast I could. For some reason, even though the swatches turned out okay, when I ran the long strips through the machine, the machine would jam up almost every two feet. I thought maybe the needle was too dull, so I changed it for a new one, but that didn't work. I thought maybe the tension was creating a problem, so I played around with that, but that didn't seem to change anything either. I did notice that if I didn't run the machine at full speed, it wouldn't jam, so I just reduced my speed, and that seemed to work.
I don't know if it's by design or what, but I noticed that when I was sewing at a slower pace, not only did it not jam, it seemed to create more ruffles. I experimented with the speeds, and found that going just a touch below medium speed made the most ruffles. I thought it was just my imagination, but I compared one of the first strips I ruffled, one that I went as fast I could and kept jamming, to the last one, when I was sewing slower, and the ruffles were tighter with the last one.
 |
| Tighter ruffles on the top strip, looser ruffles on the bottom |
The "crinkles" are looking great, and little Darcy likes them already. Tee hee, hee hee hee!
No comments:
Post a Comment