Ruffled Onesie - Tutorial

My fellow crafty bloggers have been sewing ruffles on everything for quite some time now. I decided to give it a try and quickly found out ruffles (especially in knit) are very easy to sew. Now, I'm addicted.

So, I made this cutie pie! This is a picture of the back of the onesie.



I wanted to add three rows of red ruffles on the bottom of a plain white onesie/bodysuit. The bodysuit measured roughly 9 inches across.


I cut my red knit fabric 1 inch tall and 22.5 inches across(which is 9 in. x 2.5). The ruffle fabric should be about 2 1/2 times the width of the onesie.


Since knit fabric doesn't fray, there was no need to sew the edges of my ruffle fabric.

I set machine to the longest straight stitch possible (basting stitch) and sewed right down the middle of my ruffle fabric the entire length. I did not backstitch at either end so I could do the next step. (I only used black thread for this tutorial so it would show up better in the pictures.)




I pulled only ONE thread while bunching the fabric up into ruffles.


I eyeballed where I thought the ruffle looked even and pinned it onto the onesie. I sewed it onto the onesie sewing right down the middle of the ruffle. I backstitched at the beginning and end this time.


I made two more ruffles and sewed them onto the onesie as well, bunching them together so they overlapped just a bit.


On the front of the onesie I sewed on a little ruffle flower and added a button to the center. To make the ruffle for the flower, I sewed my basting stitch on the side of my ruffle fabric instead of down the center. When I pulled one thread, the sewn side ruffled while the other side fanned out creating the flower. I stitched it in a circle onto the onsie and sewed the button on by hand.


Since I have twins, I did this whole project twice. It was very simple and took about an hour to create both onesies. I was flying by the seat of my (ruffled) pants and enjoying the learning-as-I-go process.

Now I want to chop up all my old t-shirts and put ruffles on everything!