Death By Ruffles

Or a Back-to-School adventure.

This year, I actually had a break in my schedule long enough to sew a Back-to-School outfit for my daughter! She'd picked up a lovely Moda Simply Colorful Red print at our Local Quilt Shop over the summer and was aching to have a top made out of it. I had a Moda Smitten Red Plaid in my quilting stash that paired perfectly, and together we settled on the VFT Ruthie as a pattern, since I'd been so pleased with the one I made for her cousin.

There was only one complication; I thought I was offering Ruthie, the simple version. My daughter, however, ordered me to scroll down on the website and informed me that she much preferred her Ruthie to be the ruffled version. Oops. Since it was her back-to-school outfit I didn't want to smash her budding fashion sense: But Ruthie the ruffled version 1) is a lot more work thanks to all the gathering and 2) only has cutting charts for a dress.

Cue some serious Math-ing. I took a notebook to my son's Tae Kwon Do lessons, and worked out what pieces I would need to convert Ruthie into a size 6 top with two ruffles in the middle and (per my daughter's instruction) a third ruffle on bottom. It turned out that was a LOT of fabric - so much so that another trip back to my favorite LQS was in order. That's when I discovered the same print in white. I bought more of the plaid AND some of the other coordinate, "just in case" (which I was grateful for later).

The VFT Ruthie is cute and easy to assemble, but messing with all those ruffles was TRULY a labor of love. There's no way I would ever have done that voluntarily for myself. Sewing through all those layers was kind of an adventure, too, but this time I took another sewist's advice (can you tell I like the VFT Fan Group?) and hammered the thicker seams before I sewed them. It was strangely satisfying to pound on the fabric, and it worked out well!

The best part is, my daughter was thrilled with the final result. The sizing ended up bigger than expected: we had to cross the straps in back to make them work with the shoulder flounce, and I'll definitely size down a little if I make her another. But, it's still twirly and fun.

She wore it to school her first day, and let everyone know it was mom-made. Sounds like a win to me!

UPDATE: I also posted the in-progress pic to the Facebook Fan group for VFT, and was surprised at the requests I got for describing my ruffling technique. I hardly consider myself an expert, but for the record these ruffles were made by initiating the gathers with my Serger, ironing them before attaching, and then attaching them carefully using my even-feed foot. I mathed this dress out for a 2:1 ratio on my ruffles, and the ruffle fabric is single-folded and gathered at the top.