Friday, January 4, 2008

Ruffles


This, my friends, is a ruffler. It’s suppose to make ruffling easy…and it does. It does, that is, if the sewing machine would cooperate :)

Back….way, way, back…..when I took Home Ec., ruffles were made by making three rows of long stitches down the fabric. Then, very carefully, the threads were pulled at each end and the fabric was pulled towards the center to form a ruffle. This was a little time consuming and worked just fine as long as the thread didn’t break.

I finished the embroidery for Halle’s pillow, now I just need to ruffle some fabric and sew everything together. I’ve put it off because of the “three rows of thread and pulling of fabric”. I kept thinking there’s got to be an easier way.

Now if I keep putting this off Halle is never going to get her pillow. So I pulled out my sewing machine and what do I find? A Ruffler! I knew there had to be a simpler way!

So off comes the pressure foot and on goes the ruffler. I pull out some sample fabric and start to ruffle. Problem is, my sewing machine decided to knot the thread. Bummer. So I fiddle for a few hours and finally get it to working again.

I make my sample ruffles to get the correct sizing (don‘t want to run short on the fabric). Now everything is just perfect. I just need to change the thread from black (which was already in the machine) to white.

So off comes the black thread and on with the white. I get the upper thread run through all it’s loops and ups and downs and turn to the bobbin.

The bobbin refuses to go into the machine. So I fiddle with this for an hour or so until it finally goes in.

Being the careful person that I am I get my sample material out first and start sewing. Problem is, the thread knots something terrible. So I spend some more hours fiddling with the stupid thing til it finally works.

Now that everything is working properly and I’ve sewn sample after sample with the white thread to get everything working the way it should the bobbin is out of thread.

So now I am again back to stage one. I know when I take the bobbin out and refill it it’s going to refuse to go in (see above). Then it’s going to knot all up again (see above). And by the time I get everything working like it should that bobbin is going to be out of thread, again, and I will be right back HERE!

My sewing machine needs to chill out and take change in stride and stop rebelling! It’s a machine, after all!

Wish me luck, I need it :)

3 comments:

Mema said...

I think you need to do what I did. Take it to the shop for an overhaul. It sure works better now. I had a Ruffler on my long ago machine, but not this New Home that I have now.

Kay-The Rustic Cottage said...

Honey - I can so relate to this. I hate to make ruffles although I love looking at them. I bought a ruffler for my sewing machine and hardly use it. I can do them faster by hand by the time I get the machine all set up.

Hope you got things straightened out!

Love from WA,
Kay

Anelnjuw said...

I think you need to do what I did. Take it to the shop for an overhaul. It sure works better now. I had a Ruffler on my long ago machine, but not this New Home that I have now.