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!

A Quilting Legacy?

The grandkids came to visit last weekend.  Caden and Lily immediately asked for my basket of fabric scraps again!  They have so much fun making up games with them, from making credit cards and play money to wrapping us in foot warmers and bracelets.  They even made the baby into Rambette!

On Saturday the boys went to the Dixie Deer Classic and the new Bass Pro Shop in Cary.  Lily and I spent the afternoon sewing together!  We started with the popular scrap basket and just sewed strips together on the sewing machine.  My Janome has a push-button start/stop switch, which made it easier for a seven-year old than the foot pedal.  She enjoyed it so much that she kept going until she had a piece big enough for a pillow top.  Then she chose a colorful backing fabric from my stash and sewed the top to the back.

A proud and happy girl!  And happy grandmother!