Professional Documents
Culture Documents
We are going to make the first ruffle – Ruffle “A” larger than the second ruffle, Ruffle “B”. The pink dress
I used for measurements has equal ruffles. Well, the green dress hasn’t heard of the Civil Rights
Movement, so it doesn’t have to be fair. Shame on you green dress. Women can vote now too, I guess
you are against that as well, huh?
We will just guestimate on the lengths for those. I’ll come back to that. Soon.
So (18) /( 2) = 9 (9) X (2) = 18 + .5 for SA= 18.5 RUFFLE A’s WIDTH = 18.5 inches
If you have more than these two layers, you need to have each descending layer WIDER than the first.
Other wise, there will not be any gathering affect? You could have 18 layers if you wanted, just start the
first layer out with a number like 18.5 , and get larger (in width) as you go. Then next could be 23 , after
that 28, after that 33 , after that 38 …. You don’t’ really need to use formulas at all! As long as the layers
get BIGGER as they go down. This is exactly what I decided to do to determine Ruffle “B” . I just added 5
to the width of Ruffle A, and then rounded down because if I don’t have to use decimals, I don’t like
to ; )
Another VERY important note on ruffle width. The ruffle needs to be wider than the piece you are
attaching it to. I made this mistake making the dress in the example pictures, and ending up getting out
my scissors at 11:30 PM. Never a good idea. So far into the dress, I just COULDN’T re cut ruffle pieces
and gather and ruffle four times, again. I just hacked the poor back bodice piece to death, poor back
bodice piece! So my dress won’t be as “ruffle-ly” as the green dress because I failed to use my noggin!
Make sure to use yours!!
Back Bodice – Be sure that the “height” of the back bodice is EQUAL to the height of the Front bodice –
under the ARM J HOLE part. You shall see in a minute. You should have taken that measurement above
as well. Don’t forget to add the seam allowance to the measurement. My measurement was 1 ¾ inch.
So, I add ½ inch for my SA (seam allowance) and that gives me a total of 2 ¼ inch for the Under Arm Hole
J measurement , AND for the back bodice piece height. Because eventually, you are going to sew them
together, and you want the front and back pieces to match up, right!! Yah!
This is the “under Arm J Hole “ part I mean. It eventually meets up with the Back bodice right there
under the armpit!
And when I wrote “cut 1” I actually meant to write cut 2. Whoops! I love rectangles. These are the
parts you are going to gather and attach to the dress to make ruffles. Ruffle “A” will be attached to the
bodice, and Ruffle “B” will be attached to Ruffle “A” – Ruffle B is the very bottom of the dress.
MEASURE your baby for the straps now, if you can get her to hold still. Kinda like so:
And you can mark that measurement on your back bodice piece! That’s why my Back Bodice piece has
this weird looking line to the left of the words “Back Bodice”
Measure up 2 ¼ inches from the bottom (or whatever number you got in this step above)
Do both sides.
Fold in half and mark the very center on the TOP part of your bodice.
Ignore my squiggly line. Mark 2 ¾ inches over from the center line (on both sides of the center line.)
You get this number by taking your VERY FIRST measurement pictures (the Top Bodice measurement)
plus SA (In my case 5 + ½ = 5 ½ inches) and dividing by 2 to see how much should be on either side of the
line.
See? Now mark other side too!
Now take a CD, a compass, a medium bowl, or eyeball it, and draw a curve / J in between those two
lines. Just mark ONE side. You are then going to use your scissors to cut away the arm hole. Then fold
in half and cut the other arm hole out, using your previous lines and markings to line up the paper. This
way makes it more symmetrical I feel, rather than drawing the sides separately.
So, now you have all of your pieces!! Yay!