When I was working on the over-the-top top hat project last Halloween, I played with some Lutradur^® to see if I could make some embellishments. I had heard about the material before, but never had the chance to “play” with any.

I checked out Lesley Riley’s book Fabulous Fabric Art with Lutradur and was amazed at what she created using the flexible material. Wow—it really was easy to cut, and even more fun to melt! I had a vision of something three-dimensional and was able to create a ruffle with just a little preparation. Here is how I did it….

1. First, cut a 3” strip of Lutradur.
2. Then sew a gathering stitch down the middle of the strip (I used blue here just so you could see the stitching).
3. Tie the threads in a knot on one end of the Lutradur to hold the soon-to-be gathers in place.
4. From the other end of the strip, start gathering up the material.
5. To hold the gathers in place on this end, I placed a pin and wrapped the thread around it in a figure 8 pattern. Now for the fun part…..
6. Using a heat or embossing tool, start heating the gathered Lutradur. BE patient….It takes a few minutes for the material to start melting. For better control over the results, move the heat tool back and forth, stopping and starting the tool till you have the result you want.

If you want a longer ruffle, overlap the ends of your sheets of Lutradur by 1/2″ – 1″ as you are sewing your gathering stitch.

Since I was just creating a sample of how to create a ruffle for this blog post, the sewing machine gathering stitch worked just fine. If I was going to create a very long ruffle, I would probably create my gathering stitches by stitching a long zig-zag stitch over a very strong cord so it would not break as I was manipulating the Lutradur into the ruffle I wanted.

Now that you have finished your ruffle, you can paint the piece or add other embellishments, beads or pearls for a little extra wow!

Now that Ultra-Light Lutradur is available, I’d love to see it used for this technique. Lacy ruffles sound sublime!