I saw some awesome pillows at a high end home dec store that had big ruffles, and a big price tag and thought ‘I could make those’. I probably should have bought them! Ha! Bought the pillow forms, some upholstery fabric and a silk taffeta window panel to make the ruffles – and that was probably about the same cost as the ones I could have purchased. I do like my new big ruffle pillows on my bed, though, and they are exactly what I wanted, not settling for what was in the store.
I measured and cut the silk taffeta into strips and pieced them together to make one long strip. I cut the strip in half and sewed the ends together to make a big loop. Then I folded it in half and pressed. I sewed using the longest stitch length around each loop twice, making sure to leave fairly long ends on my thread, and not using a back stitch at the end of my stitching so I could gather the threads to form the ruffle.
Here are the ends of my stitches. I used a figure 8 loop over a pin to hold the threads on one end of the stitches. I pulled the bottom threads to the top and secured all four threads on one side, and the bottom threads on the other side.
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Then begin pulling the threads that you have left free and make the gathers. Continue to pull the threads until the entire ruffle is gathered to fit your pillow. One thing I won’t do again is try to gather silk taffeta – it ravels and frays like crazy, and it is difficult to pull the threads. I ended up having to rip all of the gathering threads out and use the zig zag stitch over dental floss to gather instead. I don’t think it makes as nice of a gather, but it is a lot easier to pull the floss through the zig zag to make the gathers.
Pin the gathers to the base pillow piece, right sides together. Place the back piece, right side to the gathers and pin all around. Sew around, leaving an opening that is at least half of one side length, in the middle of the side. Example, you have a 20 x 20 pillow, leave at least 10″ opening in the middle of one of the sides. This is where you’ll turn the pillow case right side out and put your pillow form in you new pillow cover.
Turn the pillow case right side out. Insert pillow form and hand sew the opening closed.
I love my new big ruffle pillows!
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