How to Make a Gathered Frill

Decide on the depth of frill you want to make. As a general guide, we recommend a frill depth of 8cm for the bottom frill of a pelmet, or 10cm for a frill placed on the leading edges of stationary curtains.

Cut your strips of fabric following the grain of the material. Look closely at your fabric and you will see if the grain runs straight across or straight down.

The cut length of fabric for your frill should be 2.5 times the length of your pelmet or curtain panel that your are edging.

The cut width of fabric for your frill should be double the finished width (as the fabric will be doubled over) plus 3cm to allow for raw edges.

You will probably need to join strips of fabric together to get the correct length. Do this with a straight machine stitch, with fabric pieces right sides together, sewing 1.5cm in from the raw edge. Press the seam open. Repeat until all the fabric strips are joined together.

If your fabric has a pattern, do not worry about pattern matching your fabric strips when joining them together. It will not notice when you see the final frill.

Fold the fabric in half, length ways, wrong sides together, matching the raw seams.

Turn in 1cm of fabric at one end of the strip to hide the raw edge on the side of the frill strip. Slipstitch this side of the fabric strip together.

Alining raw edges, machine stitch along the length of the fabric 1cm in from the raw edge. Press.

Now machine another line of stitches, parallel to the first, about 0.5cm inside the first. This time, use your fingers to bunch the fabric together into small gathers as it feeds under the sewing foot. This forms tight, random gathers. This is the bit that you will need to practise a little first with some spare scraps of fabric.

Check the finished length of your frill against your pelmet or curtain edge. If necessary trim to size, trimming from the unfinished side seam, allowing an extra 1cm to turn in at the side and slipstitch together to finish this side seam.

Your frill is now ready to attach to your main fabric panel. Do not press the finished frill.

With right sides together, place your frill against the edge of your main fabric, alining edges. Pin and tack.

Lay your lining fabric over the top of your main fabric, right sides together, to encase the frill between the two layers. Pin and tack in place.

Remove pins, than machine stitch all layers together 1.5cm in from the raw edge. Press the seams open. When you turn your fabric right side out, then your frill will successfully be joined to your main fabric.

sponsors and ads