Dec Roses Scarf Tutorial

Winter means a lot of accessories, and among all those...scarves is my favorite. They can perk up any plain outfit, come in bazzillion styles and colors and are so easy to make. And if something is easy to make, I have to make it. So I did. This super soft bunch of ruffles. I love it and I thought you would like it too so I'm sharing with you how to make one.


Supplies:

Knit Jersey Fabric : 15 inches ( length) x 60 inches ( width)
Elastic thread
Matching thread


Construction:

1. Cut two strips from the fabric of 7.5 inches X 60 inches. If your fabric is not 60 inches wide than just cut multiple strips to make that length. Don't worry about cutting the strips evenly, since it will all get ruffled eventually a little variation in width won't be noticeable and most probably look good.

2.

Now take one strip and shir it in the center. To do this you need to fill your bobbin with elastic thread and use the regular matching thread on top. I did two rows but since all the fabrics shir differently you will need to vary the number of rows based on when you get a decent ruffle in the fabric. If you don't have any experience with shirring here's an excellent shirring tutorial to jumpstart you.

If you cut two smaller strips instead of a 60 inch wide single you need to join them before you shir. The good news is that you don't need to do anything special for that. Just overlap the two strips 1 inch and continue shirring like it was a continuous piece. Because the final piece would be very ruffled, the join would be invisible. Since the knits don't fray, it would be okay in the wash too.

3.

Repeat the above step for both the strips.

4.

Now place one strip over the other ( Wrong sides together). The wrong side is where the white elastic thread is showing. Our goal is to hide this thread, so it doesn't show up whatever way you wear your scarf.

5.

Sew a seam of half inch at the starting point ( shown by the arrow), go back and forth 2-3 times. Trim the extra thread.

6.

Sew a half inch seam every 5 inches. Go back and forth like you did in step 5. Trim any excess thread. What these small 'tacks' do is hold the two layers together so the elastic thread won't show. But sewing these only at the intervals would maintain the stretch in the scarf that was given to it by shirring.
7.

Sometimes, due to unpredictable nature of shirring, your strips may turn out to be different lengths. If that happens, just turn the extra part from the longer strip over the smaller ( As I did in the image above - look right above the arrow) and sew a tack at this point.

8.

The scarf is ready! wear it, gift it, show it off!

Variations:

You could do a number of things with this basic idea. Here're a couple that I could think of.

1. Use strips of different widths

2. Cut fringes after shirring

3. Use different colors for both the strips

4. Use 4 strips instead of 2 and shir 2 layers together.

5. Join different colored small strips instead of making a single long one


I may try some of these ideas myself at some point...but for now, ball is in your court. Go wild!