Many articles of clothing that you sew call for ruffles. There might be ruffles on the sleeves, on a men's dress shirt, or, most commonly, on a long tiered skirt. In order to stitch fabric so that it creates ruffles, it's necessary to gather the edge to create ruffles and have it ease evenly and smoothly into any area of the garment that calls for ruffles. This is not as easy as it sounds, because gathering them evenly can many times be difficult and time consuming. But with this guide, you'll be able to make perfect ruffles to liven up any garment!

To make it easier to spread the ruffles out evenly, before gathering find the center of the ruffle by folding the piece in half end to end and place a dot in the middle of the piece inside the seam allowance where it won't show in the finished piece; then fold the half sections in half again and place another dot at the fold. You can do this as many times as you want. When the piece is gathered you can tell by the distance between the dots if you have the ruffles evenly spaced. When pinning the gathered piece to the fabric, place a pin at the side seams, then one at the middle dot, then pins at the dots marking the middle of the smaller sections, etc. until you have the piece securely pinned in place. When sewing the ruffle to the garment, flatten out the areas that will be in the side seams so the fabric will lie flat there and part of the ruffle doesn't get caught in the seam.

To keep the ruffles evenly spaced during sewing, use a basting stitch to hold them in place. This can be done by hand or with the sewing machine using a long stitch and decreasing the pressure on the feed dogs of the machine to let the fabric and pins slide more smoothly through the stitching area. If the pressure is too tight the ruffled fabric can slide together making the gathering lumpy. After basting you can set the foot pressure back to normal and remove the pins because the basting stitch will hold the ruffles in place. This line of basting stitches sometimes comes out a little crooked depending on how small the part of the garment being worked on may be, such as sewing a sleeve into an armhole. After basting, look at the piece from the right side and see if the gathers are evenly space. If not, you can cut the basting stitch on the smooth side of the seam (not the gathered side because the stitches will probably be hidden by the gathers) and repin and resew the section you want to fix. If basting stitches show on the outside of the piece after the final sewing is done, they are easy to remove because they are a long stitch that a seam ripper or small scissor can slide under to cut the thread without cutting the fabric.