Adding Ruffles to a Girl's Shirt

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you!  We enjoyed a lovely Christmas in our new cabin.  One of our sons and his family were able to join us.  Having a little one around makes Christmas really special!

This year I bought some really cute knit leggings for our almost-two-year-old granddaughter.  They have a butterfly on the butt!  I had to have a cute top to go with them and show them off.  I purchased a plain shirt and decided to add ruffles to the bottom.

                                   

I was going to start pulling fabrics from the stash when I noticed that the fabrics left over from a recent baby quilt would be perfect!  I had stitched a patchwork backing, and had long strips of it left over from trimming.  That, along with the border fabric from the quilt, were perfect.

I decided to add some rickrack in variegated pastel colors to each row of ruffles.  

I positioned the rickrack so that it was halfway over the edge of the ruffle.

 I made two layers of ruffles, one of patchwork and one of the wild border fabric, and pinned them together to treat them as one.

Then I sewed two rows of basting stitches at about a quarter inch and a half inch from the plain edge.

After that, you draw up the stitches to produce the ruffles.  I started out by pulling the thread ends, but also had to pull up some of the stitches with a needle or a skewer.

Keep arranging the fullness of the ruffles until they are evenly arranged.

Then you sew them onto the shirt.  Use a lot of pins to keep the ruffles in place.

This shirt had a nice clean-finished edge, so I just pinned the ruffles underneath the hem and sewed them down, adding another layer of rick-rack as I went.

That little ruffle in the back is playing peek-a-boo with the butterfly on the leggings!

I was very pleased with this quick sewing project.  I think Charlotte was, too!