Ruffle Peace Jacket

I have had a plain blue hoodie jacket that I got from Target for $2 sitting in my craft closet for about a year. I just never knew what to do with it. Until last weekend that is! Here is what I came up with...








And before I explain how I did this, I made a ruffle on my sewing machine for the first time. I. am. addicted. to. ruffles. All I do now is look around the house and try to think of what I can add ruffles to! haha! And seeing as how I am the only girl in the house, there is not much that can be ruffle-ized. booo...

So, here are the very unofficial steps to make this jacket. I totally made this up as I went along and I probably would do it slightly different next time.


Supplies: jacket, scrap material, thread, sewing machine, sewing supplies

Steps:
1. I first cut my scrap material into long strips that were 2 inches wide. Why two inches? It just felt right!



2. Once cutting the strips I realized my 'just felt right' size was too large. Plus I didn't like all those raw edges hanging out ready to fray at a moment's notice. So I folded each strip wrong sides together and sewed down the open edges. I sewed with dark thread thinking it would add to the 'edgie-ness' of the jacket but I probably would have used a thread that blended better next time around.




3. I then sewed my strips into one long strip. Not sure I like how that long strip looked when I sewed the short strips together. I probably should have sewed the strips together before sewing them in half!



4. Now comes the ruffling part. WOOHOO! Setting my machine to the longest stitch length possible and making the tension super tight, I sewed down the middle of the long strip of material. This just ruffled the strip right up like magic! It was so fun! Seriously- if you make a ruffle and that doesn't cause you to want to just ruffle everything in sight, you might be abnormal. Or maybe I am abnormal?


**This picture doesn't quite show how ruffled this is. You will have to trust me that it was ruffled!**

5. Using your ruffley goodness, pin into a peace sign on your jacket. This was just took a little adjusting as I went and I used about a million pins so that way it didn't shift when I went to sew it later. I put the folded edge of the material towards the outside so that way the frayed edge-y part of the material was on the inside of the peace sign.




6. I then sewed the peace sign right down the middle line where I had previous sewn to make the ruffles. Don't forget to reset the stitch length and tension your machine!

7. Since this jacket was obviously for a girl, it needed a little something for the front. So, of course I thought 'MORE RUFFLES!'. So I made another ruffle strip and sewed it around the edges of the front, including around the hood. I am not totally in love with how the front came out, but I think it is because I don't like the color pattern I chose. I should have used more colors like I did on the peace sign.







And there you have it! A ruffle peace jacket just as sweet as can be!





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