Creating a Frilled Edge

It may seem old-fashioned, but you should never underestimate the impact of a frilled edge to give your finished curtain or pelment a professional look. Frilled edges look complex and time-consuming to make, but they really are not. The secret is to spend a few minutes practising on scraps of fabric, to get the feeling of how to successfully create a frill using your sewing machine. Hand stitching is completely unnecessary.

The problem with handstitching a frill, is that the frill length is inevitably long - you need about 2.5 times the length of the fabric edge to be frilled - and when you pull the threads up to form the frill gathers, the thread will break at some point. Machine stitching frills is a technique you can teach yourself - easily and painlessly.

The two most popular frills to create are gathered and pleated. Both frills are machine stitched. The gathered frill is a more casual style, and the pleated frill gives a crisper, more formal edge to curtains and pelmets.

The bottom edge of pelmets or the leading edges (that is the inside edges) of a pair of curtains that are permanently tied back, look wonderful when finished with a frill. Do be sure to use the same type of fabric as for your main curtain or pelmet. The same or a contrasting fabric is entirely up to your taste and the look you want to achieve. We do recommend that curtains or pelmets that will be edged with a frill, should always be lined. This way, light coming into the window is less likely to show off the join of the seams between the frill and the main fabric.

The following pages will give you complete instructions for making both the gathered and the pleated frill.