As stated in the title, this post is about ruffles, but not the chips. Although, may it be known that Ruffles cheddar & sour cream chips are the most delicious potato chips on the face of the planet.
This past weekend I got serious about ruffles. I made some ruffled curtains for my dining room. And they look perfect, adding so much yummy texture to the room.
Here’s what the curtains were before being attacked by yards and yards of ruffles. They look like a boring nerdy guy in shorty pants.
My curtain panels are 48 inches by 77 inches. I wanted 8 inch strips of fabric spaced 6 and a half inches apart so, after Curtis did the fabric math for me, I purchased 15 yards of white muslin from JoAnn’s and with a 50% off coupon it was a dollar per yard. Can’t beat that!
I tore the muslin into 8 inch strips.
Then I “ruffled” the fabric by sewing pleats in the strips of muslin. My pleating wasn’t evenly spaced, I wanted it to be random.
Once I had my fabric all ruffled I set out marking the curtain panels. As I already mentioned, I spaced the ruffles 6 and a half inches apart. It’s best to start measuring and marking at the top then work your way down. Each panel has 12 rows of ruffles.
This is the absolute best pen for marking fabric. Heat completely removes the ink from fabric. Brilliant. Just plug in the iron and voila, no more lines.
After the measuring (which I hate with a passion) and marking, I started sewing on the ruffles. I lined up the top edge of the ruffle with the line on the curtain panel and sewed right along with the pleated stitch already there. Pleating the fabric strips first makes this part so much easier than if you were trying to pleat and sew onto the panel all at once. With all the ruffles and the fabric from the curtain panels I felt like I did a lot of ruffle wrestling. But it was worth it.
Just look at how fabulous these ruffled curtains turned out! And for less than twenty dollars!
Take that Anthropologie!
Until next time….
