There are two different ways to make beautiful ruffles or also called frills.
You can create them either by gathering the material or by giving it a circular shape.
Circle
The straightening of the round cut out will create the beautiful ruffles you are looking for. They are really easy to create and to control, but they are time consuming!
How the ruffles will look like depends on the outer and inner diameter of the round cut out. The smaller the inner diameter of the cut out is, the more ruffles it will create and the more dense they will be.
If you choose a big inner diameter it will create a very smooth look. The ruffles are more spread apart and more wavy.
The length of the ruffle is also very important for the look you want to create. If you choose to keep it short it will give a more young perky look and would f.x. go good with a mini skirt. The longer ones are more elegant and look fantastic on dresses or pencil skirts.
If you have some latex at the hand and a little spare time test it out for and check for yourself what you like best.
How to do it:
I used a latex gauge of 0.4 mm for this tutorial, since this is mostly used for latex clothing and gives the nicest ruffles.
After you have decided the size of your ruffles, you will have to cut out a couple of them to be able to cover a whole seam.
For me it was easier to join the circles one after each other while I am gluing them on, instead of creating at first one long curly strip out of all the small circles.
How many you will need depends of course on how long the seam is. Dividing the seam length by the circumference of the inner circle will tell you how many you will need.
Gathering latex
This is also a very easy method of creating ruffles and it is even faster. But it is not suitable for all types of clothing styles. The minus here is that it is not as easy to control and to keep the even look.
Like the header already describes it, you gather the latex. It will create a more or less crinkled look, which is f.x. nice for tops or baby-dolls which are gathered right under the breast or even in some cases to create short puffy sleeves.
And its of course THE one thing to use for jogging suits or similar.
How to do it:
You glue a stretched strip of latex on to the area where you would like to have the material gathered.
The way it will look like depends here on the gauge of the latex as well on the stress you put on to the stretched strip.
If you choose latex in a thing gauge and stretch it a lot you will most likely have a lot of riffles and you will see that at the area where you applied the strip to. It will have tiny riffles which are not always nice to look at. If you choose a thicker latex gauge the riffles will be more easy to handle and you avoid those riffles on the strip.
What I prefer is latex in gauge 0.3/0.4mm and a little thicker strip of latex like 0.5/0.6mm to stretch. That will create some nice ruffles and you will most likely avoid the riffles on the strip itself.
On the picture you can see how different the latex looks depending on the thickness you use.
The easiest way to do these ruffles is with help of another person, to hold and control the latex while you apply the strip.
If you dont have anybody to help you with that, then use some clams which will do that for you.
Kitty
(If some of you wonder why there are no pleats to see in this tutorial, then let me just mention that I will cover that in another chapter.)
March 8th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
So which do you prefer–ruffles or pleated edges? The pleats seems almost unavoidable on clothes these days, don’t they?
March 8th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
I like both! But I think that you can do a bigger variety of things with pleats and they just look so cute.
March 9th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Hey, Kitty!
Can you make some inflatable latex gear for me?
Seriously.
I need some inflatable latex bunny suits.
Really.
March 9th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
@TwoRocks
Haven’t seen you in quite some time…seems like you are having big plans this easter!
Hope to see you around Europe this year.
Well do you know the inflatable specialist from PrettyPervy? They have great stuff and are so skilled, I love their costumes…some of them are so funny!!! Check them out:
http://prettypervy.com
PS:
3xL says hi and I should mention the following to you: ” he thought its good that you are called TwoRocks…since ThreeRocks would be way too freaky” *lol*
…you know his humor…
March 10th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Thank You Kitty! I just e-mailed you last week asking for a how-to on frills this is even better I found an other way to make them but from your pictures this method gives you a professional designer look. Thank you again for sharing your skills with the world.
March 10th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
@Jay
thank you Jay, I am glad you like it. I wished I had earlier time to get back to my tutorials, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
I could take now more time aside to work on the site and hope to get a lot of things done.
March 12th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Thanks to your posts and to your “latex beginner pack” promotion, I’ve made a skirt.
Since I messed up with the bottom edge, I made frills on it, but before your article :$
It was mainly “gathering” method, but when you say it is irregular, I’m surprised.
My method is to fold it regularly, the size of the elementary folding length will impact the result.
Let’s say we take a basic folding of 1cm.
The strip is glued on the border on both sides.
When ready to apply, I put 1 cm going left, then I fold and go 2cm right, then fold and 1cm left then fold and 2cm right and so on.
You can either fold always to the front (or always to the back) to have oriented frills, or you can fold once towards the front and once toward the back (the choice I made.
I planned to take pics of the skirt but some problems happened and distracted me.
I’ll try to correct that as soon as possible for the gallery.
March 12th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Thanks for the tutorial i made a twin ruffled mini skirt one 5cm long the other 10 cm long but used one big circle for each so to avoid trying to glue them together, i also put a narrow hem on the bottom of the circle before i glued it to the yoke got into trouble when i tried to glue the sides of the skirt together though but managed it. Great site kitty keep it up, too many people keep the trade secrets to themselves. Any chance of a bra cup/band tutorial????
March 13th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
@Ellendyl
*ahem*….as I wrote in the bottom of my post:
“(If some of you wonder why there are no pleats to see in this tutorial, then let me just mention that I will cover that in another chapter.) “
pleats will come later….!
March 13th, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Oops, my mistake.
Since I don’t know the technical names in english, I didn’t made the link between pleats and what I made. For me it was frills like the rest (it was the only term I knew until your article).
So thanks for opening this new term to my frenchy me
March 31st, 2010 at %I:%M %p
Great tutorial, I hope to start making some clothing soon for myself and my wife. I would love a quick tutorial on how to add extra crotch area in leggings/pants for myself. Or one on how to make socks/feet for leggings. Thanks again, your tutorials are so detailed with great photos.