A View To A Frill

How to ruffle it up on a no-frills budget.

Posted by Charley H.

About

Blue skies, bright sunshine, sea and sand… sadly things you can’t always bank on for this time of year. However, it always was a safer bet that bright sartorial shades would be out this season to blow away the cobwebs of the winter gloom, and so it was, this year, with many an equally radiant frill on frocks and shirts.

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You Will Need (11 things)

  • Peplum Or One Shoulder Dress
  • Matching Fabric Of The Same Colour
  • Scissors , Needle And Thread
  • Pattern Paper
  • Strip Of Card
  • Drawing Pin
  • Scalple And Cutting Ma
  • Felt Tip Pen
  • Sewing Machine
  • Fabric Scissors
  • Sewing Pins

Steps (6 steps, 1200 minutes)

  1. 1

    The cascading frills on these flouncy frocks need to be cut in a spiral on your fabric. Simply start by making a spiral pattern on paper. Rather than guess, I’d recommend using a compass to be exact.

  2. 2

    Chances are, you won’t have one wide enough to make big statement frills, so you can make you own using, card, a ruler, a pencil and a scalpel or scissors. Simply draw around your ruler and cut out your new rectangle of card.

    Mark out points at 5-15cm intervals, depending on how big you want your frills to be, remember the bigger the interval, the wider the frill will come out as. Pierce in the centre of the card at each of these intervals and make a hole large enough for the tip of a pencil to draw through. Your new compass should look something like this…

  3. 3

    Place your compass on paper and hold it in place as close to the edge as possible with a drawing pin (make sure you’re doing this on a surface you don’t mind being dented. This is where I’d mostly recommend using a cutting mat. Holding your compass down with the pin, use your pencil to trace a set of 3-5 circles through the holes where you marked the measurements on your compass.

  4. 4

    After you’ve drawn your circles, it’s time to link them. Draw about three quarters of the way around them and then draw an arc linking each circle to the next one, try to keep your lines as parallel as possible and linking the circles smoothly.

  5. 5

    Cut your pattern out, then pin it to your fabric. You might want to fold your fabric if you wish to make more than one frill.

    Mark out 0.5cm around the outside edges of your fabric spiral – you can do this by stitching that distance from the edge with your machine, in which case, set it onto a long, loose stitch so it is easy to unpick – fold it over and fix it in place. You may wish to iron it or pin it.

    Using a normal stitch, sew a line 1mm from the edge of the fold. Trim away the excess fabric. Fold it over again by 1mm, so that the raw edge is no longer visible, and sew another line as close to the edge as possible.

  6. 6

    Pin your frills to your fabric, hand-stitch it in place. Take your pins out and machine sew it 0.5cm from the edge. Trim away the excess fabric, fold your frill over so that you’re sewing on the other side of the frill. Top-stitch 1mm from the edge where the frill’s attached to the fabric. Your frills are now fully affixed.