~Tuesday Tutorial~ Ruffler Foot!

So the other day I got out my ruffler foot and decided that it was time I learned how to use it. This was the results.

Lots of ruffles.

I figured it would be fun to share with you the magics of a ruffler. 

Here it is, the ruffler foot.

Looks like rather a scary contraption at first doesn't it?

First step is putting it onto the machine. Since my machine is a Bernina it is slightly different from most machines in that you have to change the whole shank. You want to make sure that the hook/horse shoe type thing is around the needle clamp.

This lever thing adjusts the amount of ruffling you want done. You can ruffle every stitch, every six stitches, every 12 stitches or no ruffling at all.

You can also adjust the size of your ruffle with the stitch length. It also has the ability to sew a ruffle onto a flat piece of fabric.

Here it is in motion without any fabric in it.

You then feed the fabric in underneath the black grabber thingamagig. (You will have to excuse my utter lack of technical terms. I really don't know what they are called.)

Here is a shot from the side. As you can see you are putting the fabric in between the black thingamagig and the silver

Or here is my poor attempt at explaining it further with a picture. I admit.... I am not a technical term geek.

Basically you are not placing the fabric to be ruffled next to the feed dogs. When you want to sew a piece of flat fabric along with a ruffle at the same time the flat fabric goes next to the feed dogs.

Here is a close up on how it works. Hope it makes sense. Like I said I am not very good at explaining thing. I  can do things, but not necessarily teach them. 

This it what the final product is going to look like.

All nice and ruffled. You can sort of see the variation in stitch length and how that effects the size of the ruffles. You can ruffle really tight or you can make the ruffles more spread out. My ruffler foot actually has a piece broken off of it so that I can only make a ruffle at every stitch or never. I need to get one that does the variations.

On of the perks of a ruffler is no more sitting an pulling threads by hand until the break or leave you with sore fingers. And then it is all predistributed and you don't have to go crazy trying to even it out.

Well, that is all for now. I really need to work on my description skills.

Toodles