Tutorial: Pleated Detailing + Giveaway Winner

It always amazes me how different a dress can be by adding a little design extra. One of my favourite extras to add to an outfit is pleats. I love how it can make it a simple dress look more interesting, or a give a hem more body. This tutorial will show you how to make those pleats.

The good news is they're easy to make!

What you'll need:

• More fabric! - And you were just looking for an excuse to buy more weren't you. You're welcome.
• One ruler - the measuring type, not the presiding over a kingdom type
• Scissors
• Sewing chalk - two different colours

Let's do this:

With a measuring tape, measure the width of the area that you are wanting to add pleats to. For example the width of your hem or your cap sleeve. Write this figure down.

Cut out long strips of fabric. The total length once joined together will need to be exactly 3.66 times the length of your above measurement. It's good to have a little extra to be safe so I usually times it by 4 to keep it simple.

I cut my strips with a 10cm width, but you can make your pleats as long or narrow as you like.

Note: I cut my fabric on the straight grain which makes the pleats a bit rigid. This gives it the nice kick out that I like. If you want a flatter-to-the-body pleat you can cut the fabric on the bias, so that the pleats are flexible and curve around the body.

Join your strips together so that they make one continuous strip that is 3.66 (or 4!) times the length of your original measurement.

Tip: Join your pieces using a french seam so that there are no raw edges.

Hem the length of your fabric. You might choose do do a narrow hem, or encase the hem in bias binding.

On the right side of your fabric along the long raw edge you are going to make alternating notches in intervals of 4 and 7cms.

The first notches (I've made mine red), are the lines that you will be sewing along. The alternating notches (white) are the lines you will be folding. Place your very first notch on the strip 3 cm in from the short edge of your strip.

Continue marking 4cm (white) then 7cm (red) in alternating colours along the length of your strip until you reach the end.

With WRONG sides together, fold along your first white notch (the second notch on the strip).

Sew in a straight line perpendicular from your hem, at your first notch (red).

Continue to fold along the white notches and sew in a straight line from the red notches until you reach the end of the strip. The width of each pleat should overlap the previous stitching line so that it is not visible.

The back of your pleats will be flat and should look like this.

Press your pleats in one direction

Baste along the raw edge of the strip to hold the pleats down.
Trim your loose threads.

Attach your pleats to a seam, or fold under the raw edge and sew onto your skirt.

Tip: I like to overlock the raw edge of the strip once I have basted it.

And you're done! Isn't it pretty?!!

Here are some projects that I have previously made that have pleated detailing. Click on the pictures to see the blog posts.

GIVE AWAY WINNERS!

Congratulations to the following winners who were both randomly selected and have both won a $50 e-voucher to Mood Fabrics!

Angella *originally listed the wrong web address, sorry! Angella please email me at julia[at]juliabobbin.com

and

Jess from Jessthetics

Hooray! I'll be emailing you in the next few days with your vouchers!

Happy sewing everyone and if you use the tutorial, I'd love to see your pictures! Have a lovely week xxx

A year of blogged Julia Bobbin creations

Well it's that time of the year again where sentiments are high, dollars are low and every mirror in the house is covered while I stuff myself with food.

It's Christmas and almost the end of 2012.

Reflecting on the year I feel incredibly grateful. Robin and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary in October and our first little baby is due next month in January just 15 months after getting married. I have amazing family, friends and colleagues and have made more lovely friends through this wonderful sewing community. I travelled to New York thanks to the 2011 Tessuti Awards and have bought more fabric than my budget allows (whoops).

August 2012 was my third year anniversary since I started sewing for the very first time and I am so excited about the journey that it has taken me on. Sewing has given me a creative outlet, given me clothes that I love to wear, helped me explore my style and allowed me to meet other like-minded people through the blogosphere.

This sewing community has kept me inspired, taught me new skills and given me endless encouragement. So thank you times a million!

Julia Bobbin 2012

Below are all the Julia Bobbin projects that I blogged in 2012. Click on a picture below to see the full blog post for that creation.

I can't decide which one is my favourite. Do you have one?

Thank you for reading my blog and for your super kind words and encouragement throughout the year. 

I hope that you and yours all have a wonderful and safe Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Julia xxx

Only in New York

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery.

I say 'pooh-pooh' to those people.

The highest form of flattery is ... stalking. Indeed.

Ladies and Gentleman of the sewing world, I am tucked safely away in Melbourne, Australia after a fabulous two weeks in the beautiful crazy city that is New York.

I filled my time rubbing fabric up against my face (in the creepiest possible way) in any number of fabric stores. Thanks to all your marvellous suggestions on where to buy fabric in New York, I made my self a map, put on some comfortable runners (you know sh$% is serious when I swap nice shoes for runners) and spent my life savings on fabric.

I'm not even joking when I say that it got emotional in those stores. Standing inside Mood and thinking, 'Holy H, I'm really here' was all a bit much for me and my jet-lagged, over-dramatic self.

Here's a few pieces of fabric goodness that I purchased.

My husband Robin and I went to see the Schiaparelli and Prada exhibition over at the MET which was absolutely stunning and oodles inspiring.

I did a lot of 'window' shopping down 5th avenue, and spent a not so small amount in SOHO and the fashion district.

Robin and I went a little bit nuts and saw lots of Broadway productions. Five in fact. We saw the Lion King, Mary Poppins, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked and ... Spider Man the Musical - I kid you not.

A staple part of our diet in New York was pizza and holy heck was it huge. Deliciously huge. My ass started expanding just looking at it. The M&M's didn't help much either ...

We went to our first ever Baseball game, Go Yankees! and Robin purchased his Yankee hat for the occasion. We made a lot of random friends thanks to Robin wearing that hat!

The highlight of my trip had to be meeting the fabulous Gretchen from Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing hence my stalking comment at the start of this blog.
I was lucky enough to have a two hour private lesson with his sewing Goddess and I tried so hard not to have a 'watermelon moment'. You know in the movie Dirty Dancing, where baby is carrying a watermelon to the cool kids cool party and she meets the totally hot Patrick Swayze and he's all like 'What's she doing here?' and baby, overwhelmed by his hotness says 'I carried a watermelon.' Awkward.

Gretchen was however super nice and friendly and the two hours went by like it was two minutes. I was also more than a little bit pleased to discover that we both turned up wearing yellow dresses that we made! Oh we are going to be best friends for EVER! (she doesn't know this yet).

Now I'm back in Melbourne and trying to psyche myself up for my first day back at work tomorrow morning. That's why God invented coffee.
I am also super keen to get back into my sewing adventures after being ridiculously inspired in New York.

Thanks a million to Tessuti Fabrics for this fabulous opportunity, I still can't believe that it happened to me! You can check out the dress I made for last years Tessuti Awards here

Speaking of Tessuti Awards, have you seen the competition for this year! The theme is Spots and Stripes and this year the competition is open to entrants world wide! The prize is a $5000 travel voucher to a destination of your choice! Any one thinking of entering?