Since I bought my new toy, the ruffler, I haven’t had much chance to use it. So when I was at the store the other day I decided to grab a shirt to play with. I got two of these v neck ombre shirts thinking they’d be fun Here is the plain lrg t-shirt to start with. I bought a second in X-lrg to cut up for the ruffles.
I started on the second shirt by cutting off all the seams. Then I cut off the edges, the collar, bottom and bottom of the sleeves so I was left with simple fabric.
In the front I cut at a diagonal line to get the LONGEST pieces I could. From the back of the shirt I cute on the vertical line to get as MANY strips as I could.
So I had a good range from long to shorter, and a lot of them to work with. They were all about 1 1/2 inches long. I would have liked them to be more like 2 inches wide, but I knew I needed a certain amount of strips to make it work right.
Then I laid out, using pins, the shape I wanted the ruffles to end up. DON’T do what I did and start on the wrong side. I started near the collar, but after one stripe I realized that was NOT the way to go. After that I started on the left side where the sleeve meets the front over by the left seam.
So it’s sometimes hard to get all the pieces into the ruffler. So here is how I get the strip in without streching it out badely. I put a pin along the top that I want as the ruffled fabric.
With the bottom fabric, in this case the shirt, underneath. Then using the pin as a guide I slower worked my way towards the front of the ruffler. Here is an example when I was working on the bottom of the shirt.
Anyway, back to the top of the shirt. I had my settings at ruffling every stitch and in the middle of the ruffle size.
Starting on the left I ruffled each strip, and worked my way to the center of the shirt. alternating if I started on the dark or light side of the ombre pattern. Also once I started at the higher shoulder of the shirt I also started adding strip starting at the middle or bottom of the section to keep the length of the ruffles where I wanted them. I filled in ruffles until I got to the pin’s I had marked earlier.
Here is what the first ruffle section looks like. I was happy with it, but when I tried it on it seemed a bit top heavy. So I thought I’d add another smaller ruffle section to the bottom left of the shirt.
Here you can see me starting this section. I was almost out of the longer strips so I went back to my shirt and cut a few more diagonal stripes. They were shorter, but perfect for the section.
Then I thought- Heck, as long as I’m doing this the sleeves need a bit of something too. So I pinned where I wanted them to start and ran them through the ruffler too~!
It’s not much, just a small detail. I considered doing a ruffle on top of the sleeve instead of ruffling the sleeve itself, but thought it would be a bit heavy. I’m glad I went with just the sleeve. But it still needed something so I added a second ruffle just next to the first one.
So here’s the end product! I love the changes in color. If I was to do it again I wouldn’t start quite so far over by the seam. I can feel it when my arm is down. But overall I’m happy with it. The only problem now is that the shirt is so thin and the neck is so open keeping it from showing my bra is a bit of a trick~
But I love the way it looks, I like the color, and hey, what a safety pins for? If I was going to do it again I’d start with a thicker shirt, with a higher neckline. I’ll probably just wear a tank underneath actually. Problem solved!
Ashlee Marie
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