One such item which elicited the above reaction in me were jeans with a ruffled hem. Since the princess' legs are outgrowing her pants faster than her waist, I decided a ruffled hem would be a great way to extend the length of her jeans. I could also do it cheaply, as I found a couple of cute fat quarters at Wal-Mart for $1 each. Here are the finished jeans:
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
You'll find, as I did, that these ruffled jeans are super easy and very fast to make. They also take a so-so pair of pants to Fab! Here's how I did it:
1. Cut off the very bottom hem of your pants. If the pants are not too small, then you'll cut off extra so they don't end up being way too long after you add the ruffle.
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
2. Cut two strips of fabric for your ruffle. I needed to make my pants about 2 1/2 inches longer. Since I am folding my fabric in half for a double thickness, I needed to double this to 5 inches, plus a seam allowance of about 1/2, so I cute strips 5 1/2 inches wide. For the length, I needed to determine how ruffly I wanted my ruffle. Generally, ruffles are about 2 1/2 times longer than the width of the item you are adding it too, but that is very ruffly...I decided to drop it to 2 times longer. The pants have a 12 inch circumference, so that means I need the strips to be 24 inches wide plus 1/2 inch seam allowance.
Wait...oops. If you recall, these are fat quarters. So, they are 18x22 inches! Well, I think 22 inches is close enough to 24 1/2, so I just went with it. I could have serged two 12 inch strips together, which would have been perfectly acceptable, but decided not to make extra steps for myself. I already had to take the time to straighten my fat quarters, which were cut disgustingly crooked (Thank you, Wal-Mart).
Here are my fabric strips:
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
3. Fold each strip in half legthwise and press.
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
4. Unfold. Then fold in half, widthwise with right sides together and serge, or sew, to create a tube.
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
5. Press seam, then turn right-side out and fold back in half lengthwise so your pre-pressed seam is down. You should have 1 raw edge at the top and a folded edge on the bottom. (See?! That's how we avoided "hemming" our hem.) Now, place the raw edge of the ruffle on the raw edge of the jeans, right sides of fabric facing. I lined the seam of my ruffle up with the inseam of the jeans. Then I used 4 pins and evenly spaced the ruffle fabric around the jeans fabric.
Note: Many of you may make a ruffle differently. A common way to do this is to sew a long basting stitch on the edge and then pull the loose ends to create the ruffle before pinning it to the main body of fabric. That's all well and good, but I don't like to do it and it never seems to work for me anyway. My ruffle technique is one of my sewing idiosyncracies that works well for me.
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
6. Serge (or sew) the ruffle to the jeans.
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
7. Press the seam, turn the ruffle down, press again, and enjoy the cuteness!
|
| From Ruffle Pants |
Here's another pair I made with my sweetie's corduroys. She's going to flip when she sees them!
 |
| From Ruffle Pants |
Have you been inspired? I would love to see your ruffled pants! Post them in the Pineapple Damask Group's Flickr Photo Pool!
