Ruffling My Brain
Ya~hoo! Fola here ｰ(☆∀☆)/”
Today I come to share with you the wonder of sewing machines! w(@。@;)w
As you know I've been sewing a prototype of one of the skirts recently, put I had to put my sewing on hold after finishing the main body as the school term started up. I'm a university student so I have exams in about 3 weeks and of course, studying has to come first __φ(．．;)
However, when I did find some free time I managed to get back to work with sewing the prototype, all of which was left were the 4 rows of ruffles.
Now, being my naive self and after watching various tutorials on how to make ruffles by hand, I assumed I'd be an absolute pro at this, but after spending a good 3 hours just hemming the silk satin fabric I was using, some how my confidence changed a little bit... (｡ŏ﹏ŏ)
Things only got worse when it got to the point of actually ruffling the material. Ruffles are actually quite easy to make, in fact I'd done so already on the main and under skirts, but I find the gathering method time consuming and tedious so I tried a few other methods instead.
First I tried gathering free hand as I sew, which looked very easy in all the tutorials I'd watched but seemingly only worked on more heavy weight materials. Then, I had the innovative idea of sewing elastic down them hem as this would gather the material automatically and sure enough it worked, but it didn't gather nearly as much as I needed to 彡(-_-;)彡
Having had wasted an entire hour, I admitted defeat and went back to the old faithful method of gathering. Because I'd tried so many different techniques, I'd eaten up quite a significant amount of my hem allowance and now my ruffles way a good inch or so shorter than they were supposed to be - thank goodness this was just the prototype!
( Surprisingly the finished result didn't look half back tho!)
After a good 6+ hours and having only hemmed and sown two rows of the satin silk ruffles, I came to the conclusion that I was wasting my time: there had to be an easier way to do this... and there was! (๑ ⁍̥̥̥᷅ ᴈ⁍̥̥̥᷅)人(⁌̥̥̥᷄ε ⁌̥̥̥᷄ ๑)ｰ
You see, sewing machines are wonderful, glorious, magical machines, and they even have two different kinds of feet that not only make ruffles for you, but even simultaneously attach them to another, flat piece of fabric <3 Not only that, there's also a foot designed especially for automatically hemming your materials for you ヽ(；▽；)ノ
Yes, on the one hand, I had just wasted 6 hours doing something I can probably now achieve in less than 2, but on the other hand I'd also learned another valuable sewing technique that would make my life easier for future designs too.
I think it's fairly understandable why I then spent the rest of the night watching YouTube tutorials on the various other types of sewing machine feet.. you know.. just in case there was anything else that could significantly change my life...
Honestly, technology and science never fail to amaze me; if you have a sewing machine, I'm sure you know exactly what I mean. Let's ruffle away!
God Bless,
Love Fola ヾ(*’Ｏ’*)ｲ
