Planning and Design

When I bought the Magpie Christmas fabric for my husband’s Christmas Shirt, I also picked up two Christmas fabrics for myself. My thinking was I could make some shorts to wear with my sad cat Christmas T-Shirt. But it didn’t seem like quite the right fit. Then I made the Ruffle Dress Wearable Toile and I immediately could see the Candy Cane fabric going well with that pattern. Luckily I had 2m so it was just the right amount after my length adjustments!

Materials

• Pattern
  • Ruffle Dress (Puff and Pencil)
• Fabric
  • Benartex Fabrics Merry Gnomeville Candy Cane Celebration – Black (Wattle Hill Fabrics)
• Thread
  • Rasant col. 4000
• Interfacing
  • 100% Cotton Lightweight Fusible Shirting – Black

Sustainability Check

👍 Fabric is 100% cotton and biodegradable

👍 100% cotton interfacing is biodegradable

🤏 Rasant is OEKO-TEX but not biodegradable

Construction

Having made this dress pattern already, the sewing process was quite streamlined. One of the things I changed to the pattern pieces was the split along the ruffle band when the fabric is only 112cm wide. I tried to adjust it so that the majority of the band would be a single piece, with just the ends cut separately and attached. I tried too hard to maximise the length of this continuous band and included the selvedge, which I definitely will omit next time because it adds too much bulk and results in too much stiffness at the join point.

I also did make a keyhole stitching guide that worked well. I think next time I should figure out a way to make sure the ties are at the very edge of the back facing join. Maybe some guide stitching on the facing to help with alignment.

I also couldn’t use the same overlocker settings as I did for the wearable toile (for the ruffle band) because even though both fabrics are 100% cotton, I think this one is a bit weightier, so it behaved differently. So I ended up having to unpick a couple of gathering stitches which was annoying…I recently watched a Closet Core video on how to do gathers and at the time I thought ‘why would I do that when I can just use the overlocker’ but I think I will try their method next time as it will result in less unpicking.

Despite my proclamation last time that I now know how to ‘think in french seams’, I totally went on autopilot and forgot to deal with the hem the ‘right’ way. It still works, it just is a bit bulkier.

Reflections

This was a very quick and satisfying project 😊

Things I learnt:

• Don’t include selvedge in the ruffle band joining seams
• Actually, if possible, try to use a wider fabric so that the ruffle band is one nice continuous piece
• Guide stitching to help place ties
• Try the Closet Core method of gathering seams

Categories: Sewing

Tagged as: Puff and Pencil

hikaru