playing with pleats

Dictionary.com defines a pleat as "a fold of definite, even width made by doubling cloth or the like upon itself and pressing or stitching it in place."

I just have to ask, is there anything like fabric?

Throughout this lesson, I'll show you how to make the pleats, and how they drape. We'll discuss:

Cartridge pleats
Box pleats
Inverted pleats
Rolled pleats

Now, it seems to me that pleats can either stand up or lie flat.  In the standing up category we have accordion and cartridge pleats.  Accordion pleats are made with some type of fancy machinery that I don't own, that crimps the fabric into permanent folds all the way down the length of the fabric. 

Cartridge pleats are created, essentially, by a long running stitch down the edge of the fabric that's then pulled up to create tight little standing-up pleats.  These are the type of pleats used in smocking, and here are some:

You can see the gathering threads there on the left.  I did not create these cartridge pleats with a needle, thread, and long running stitch, rather, I used a smocking pleater.  It does the same thing, but it does it with many threads at once, and it does it with gears.  Anything that can be done with gears gets my vote.  And takes a fraction of the time. 

Here they are from the edge. 

These pleats don't lie flat, rather, when you're finished pleating, you bind the edge.  If you were using cartridge pleats at the top of a skirt, you'd bind them with the waistband.  These are intended to be at the neckline, so they'd be bound with bias binding to become...the neckline. 

And here's how the cartridge pleats drape. 

They take up more or less fabric depending on the bulk of the fabric itself.  It would take a lot more batiste to make the same width of finished pleating than, say, velveteen.  I do not know, nor can I seem to find out, why they're called "cartridge" pleats.  It seems like there ought to be a good reason.  If anybody can enlighten us, please feel free to do so.

In the lying-flat category, we have knife or side pleats.  These are pleats that are all laid to the side.  Like this:

These pleats need 3 times the fabric of the finished pleated area.  So, for one inch of pleated fabric, we'll need 3 inches of fabric to start with.  Because each half of the actual pleat takes up 1", and the fabric over the pleat is 1".  If we were doing half-inch pleats, we'd need 1/2" for each half of the pleat and 1/2" on the face of our pleated panel. 

Since we're doing 1" pleats, we'll start by folding the fabric and placing a pin 1" from the fold:

See how that takes up 2"  Now I'll baste down the fabric, 1" from the fold.  Then I'll press the pleat to one side, like this:

Then, to do another pleat, I'll measure 2" from the center of my first pleat. 

2", because it'll take 1" to clear the first pleat, and 1" to go down inside the next one.  The pin is where I should fold it.  Then I'll baste, and press it to the side like the first one. 

And so on, until I end up with this:

Here you can see how 1" knife pleats drape. 

The top half of this shows pressed pleats, and the bottom shows what happens when you leave them unpressed. 

The next two types of pleats are really the same thing.  Box pleats and Inverted pleats are like identical twins, only one likes to play the piano, the other the violin, one keeps a tidy room the other's an incorrigible slob, and so on.

I won't tell you which one's the slob.  In fairness to all pleats.

Here are box pleats: 

And, once I flip them over, they become inverted pleats!

The process for making these is the same, but you make the difference when you make these on the right or wrong side of your fabric. 

Again, we'll make 1" pleats. 

Fold and mark it the same as for knife pleats:

Baste it, and press the pleats, not to one side, but evenly on both sides of your basting line. 

To add another pleat, measure 2" from the center of the first pleat and put a pin.  2", because it'll take 1/2" to clear the first pleat, then 1" down into the next pleat, and you'll press that on both sides of the new basting line, taking up the remaining 1/2". 

When you press the second pleat, it should just touch the edge of the first. 

Until you get a row of pretty little boxes, like this:

Ah! C'est magnifique!

Here they are, pressed and unpressed:

And our inverted pleats:

I might point out here, that if you did an entire panel of inverted pleats, it would only be on the edges that you'd be able to tell them apart from box pleats.  See how the space between the inverted pleats made little boxes?

Long view:

Just for kicks, let's do one really wide inverted pleat.  It seems we often see inverted pleats alone.  On the back of a skirt or a coat, for instance. 

Oh, yes, I like that very much.

Another thing you can do with box or inverted pleats is stack them.  Here I've made stacked inverted pleats:

Once I had the basic inverted pleat, I just folded another pleat in on top of it:

and pressed that.  Then I basted across the top to keep it in place. 

To make another next to it, I measured out 3".  Because this pleat takes up 2" more fabric than a basic 1" box pleat, and I'm measuring half of it here.

The last type of pleats we'll discuss today is rolled pleats. 

They are, well, rolled. They take up five times the fabric of the finished pleat.  So, for a one inch rolled pleat, we'll need 5" of fabric. 

Now, these are difficult to explain, but easy to do, so stick with me here for a minute, and it'll become clear what we're doing, k?

I mark off 5" on the wrong side of my fabric.  The two pins at 1 and 5 are my ends. 

The pin at 1 shows where the finished pleat will lie.  The pin at 3 shows the first pleat fold.  You with me?

I fold it on the first pleat fold (3), and the pins at 1 and 5 come together. 

Then I fold the 3 pin to the 1 and 5 pins. You see where we're going with this?

Then I fold the roll I'm forming to the 0 pin. 

Then I open the pleat up, and pin it in place.  To one side like a knife pleat.  

What I end up with is a roll of 4" of fabric underneath 1" of fabric.  See?

Baste across the top of this bad boy to keep it down. 

Now, to add another, I'm measuring 5" out from the edge of the previous pleat.  That'll give me enough fabric to do the whole mad thing over again. 

After rolling/basting, rolling/basting, rolling/basting, I've got a little row of them.  As you can see, in anything but the thinnest fabric, this is going to make a very thick seam.

Now, why would you go to all that trouble?  Because rolled pleats take up a ton of fabric, they drape beautifully:

I'm not sure they're the type of pleats you'd press, so much.  

Now that we've discussed how to make all these fun pleats, I'm sure you're dying to get busy fiddling with some yourselves.  I won't keep you any longer.  Go pleat!

~Erin~

sewing puffed sleeves

Puffed sleeves are, without question, my very favorite kind of sleeve. They're so adorable, right for so very many outfits, and not all that hard to sew. I'll show you.

This is a short puffed sleeve bound at the bottom with bias French binding.

Loosen your sewing machine tension to nearly 0. Stitch two rows along the top of the sleeve. One goes just inside the seamline, the other halfway between the first one and the raw edge. Begin and end these rows just above the curve shown by the arrow. These are your gathering threads.

Sew two more gathering threads along the bottom of the sleeve, again, just inside the seamline and halfway between this and the raw edge. Begin and end about 1" from each end.

Now, everything I've read about French binding says to cut a bias strip that's six times as wide as your final finished binding. So if you want a 1/4" binding, you need a strip that's 1 1/2" wide. This is supposed to work if your seam allowances are the same width as the finished binding. So for our 1/4" binding, we use a 1/4" seam allowance. Fair enough. I've always found that adding an extra 1/8" to 1/4" makes things work easier for me. I think that in folding the fabric around and back and forth, you lose some of your width to the logistics of folding.

So, I cut a binding that's a scant seven times my finished width. I wanted a 1/4" binding, so I cut it on the shy side of 1 3/4".  Cut it 1 1/2" longer than the measurement around the child's arm.  Fold it wrong sides together and press it like this.

Now, pin the raw edges of the folded binding to the raw lower edge of the sleeve. The binding should be on the wrong side of the sleeve. Match the short ends of the binding to the underarm seam, and match the center of the sleeve to the center of the binding. Put a pin at each end of the gathering threads. Pull the bobbin threads to gather the lower edge of the sleeve until it fits the binding. Wrap the threads, figure-8-style, around the pin.

Adjust the gathers until they look nice. Here you can either distribute the gathers evenly across the whole sleeve edge, or pack most of them in the center. The center-packing thing just gives it a puffier look you may like.

(Return your sewing machine tension to normal and) sew along the upper gathering thread.

Press the seam flat, the same way you sewed it, and then fold the binding and seam allowance away from the sleeve and press them. Fold the folded edge around to the front, making sure it covers your previous stitching and pin it. Here's where you'll appreciate that little extra width.

Here's a closer look.

Now stitch very close to the folded edge, carefully making sure you're still covering that stitching.

Press the binding again.

Place the underarm seam right sides together and stitch it. Finish the seam however you finish seams.

Press the seam allowance to one side, making sure that it doesn't show below the lower edge of the binding. A few stitches right there where you see the pink zig-zaggy lines helps keep the seam allowance in place.

Do it all over again for the other sleeve, and you have a pair of cute puffed sleeves, just waiting for the right pair of armholes to come along.

sewing a continuous bound placket

Do you know how to sew a continuous bound placket? (I say, as though I'm the final authority on the thing.)

I'll show you how I do mine.

First, what is a continuous bound placket? It's a way to finish a cut in fabric with a binding, basically, and it looks like this:

When it's folded closed it's all but invisible.

It's used at the top back of attached skirts, especially when the yoke seam is high, to provide enough of an opening to get dressed. It can also be used at the edge of long sleeves. I'm sure there are other places to use this placket, but since I use them so very much in the back of dresses, that's what I'll show you.

First, draw a straight line, perpendicular to the waist seam, the length of the placket. Sew a "V", starting 1/4" from the left side of the line, pivoting at the end of the line, and coming back up to end 1/4" away from the line on the other side. (If you actually draw these lines also, you might end up with straighter lines than mine.)

Now, cut a piece of fabric from the lengthwise grain (lengthwise grain is the most stable) that's twice as long as your intended finished placket, and 1 1/2" wide (1/2" each for the front and back, 1/4" each for seam allowances).

Press it in half, lengthwise, wrong sides together. Unfold it and press the long edges in to the center fold. You'll end up with this:

Now, cut the along the pencil line on the skirt down to the bottom of the "V", but don't cut through the stitching. Open the placket strip and lay it flat on the table, right side up. Spread the cut in the skirt wide open and lay the stitching along the fold of the placket strip like this:

(Right side of the placket to the wrong side of the skirt)

You'll notice that the seam allowance on the skirt starts out being 1/4", tapers down to nothing, then tapers back up to 1/4". That's the plan, don't worry.

Now, sew all along the first stitching, and just a hair to the left. In the picture below, the first stitching is dark blue, the second pink. When you get to the very middle point there, where there's no seam allowance, carefully adjust the fabric so that you don't sew in a fold at the bottom of the placket. Holding your tongue between your teeth just so helps a lot.

When you've done that, press the placket away from the skirt. Fold the raw edge of the placket to the center, fold the fold around to the front:

And pin it, making sure that the fold covers the stitching you just did. Pin it like mad.

Now topstitch very very close to that folded edge, making sure all the while that the placket fold covers that stitching.

See where the arrow's pointing? That's what you're trying to avoid. I only did it so I could show you. (Yes, that's it.)

Press the placket now. This pressing makes the whole thing look sharp and pretty.

Fold the placket together like this:

And sew a little diagonal line across the bottom, to keep the placket in its place. Turn the skirt to the right side, and sew the right side of the placket at the top. The skirt/bodice seam will keep this in place eventually, but I find that if I don't go ahead and sew it down now, I forget that it's supposed to go down at all, and make a mess of things later.

So do this, and gently press the whole thing again, pat yourself on the back, and get on with the rest of your dress!