Ruff details

Just a few more thoughts and pictures of a couple of ruffs we are working on.
As I mentioned, these ruffs are simpler than the circular kind, but there are a few things we think makes a difference in the finished item.

The edge! It help to have an extra bit of something on the outside edge. The ruff starts as a layer of fabric with a layer of marquisette laid on top and stitched down the centre.  Karen then inserted a heavy fishing line in the folded edge of the fabric. Once this step is complete, the inner edge needs to be stitched
together. Both of these ruffs were stitched once with a straight stitch to hold the layers then zigged closely and trimmed.

Silvia's ruff has an edge finished with a close serge in black using woolly nylon thread. As well, we finally found a use for those decorative stitches that seem to be included on many domestic sewing machines! A nice floral stitch pattern added along the edge of the fabric gives the impression of the ever popular blackwork look.

You can see the ruff being gathered up here, mark the spacing you want, then stitch by hand through the dots and gather up the resulting pleats. You need to allow for the turn of cloth when calculating the spacing. For instance, these are pleated up at 1 1/2 inches to be stitched to a 1 1/4 inch band.

Both top and bottom of the pleats are stitched to the band. The outside edge of the ruff also needs to be stitched together by hand. These are stitched about 1/4 of the way up from the folded edge to hold the figure eight shape.

The last picture is the ruff almost complete. We are not sure of the exact size required yet, as it will be attached to a doublet collar, which is still under construction. We have allowed some extra fabric to pleat and extra neck band length, so it can be adjusted to fit, then finished.