The Ruffler Foot - Beginning the Exploration

The ruffler foot has always been somewhat of a mystery to me.  So, I've decided to do a series of me learning a little bit about the ruffler foot.  Below is my machine with the regular foot and ankle attached:

Here's the foot, ankle, and screw removed from my machine:

Here's the ruffler foot attachment from the front of my machine. Note that the projection is in the 1 position on the adjusting lever:

Here is the ruffler attachment from the side.  Note that the adjusting screw is tighten all the down.  Sorry the picture is so dark.

Here's I've started playing with the ruffler.  I'm using 12" length x about 3" width of Symphony broadcloth.  See below each picture for the particulars.

With the first item in the above picture, I used the default machine stitch length of 2.5mm with the adjusting lever set at 1 for 1 stitch per pleat.  This results is very tight.  For the second item, the stitch length is 3.0mm.  It is still very tight.   However, I can see a use for this.  I will explore this more later.

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For this set of examples, the stitch length is set at 3.0mm.  The first item pictured has the adjusting lever set at 1 for 1 stitch per pleat.  Very tight.  The second item pictured has the adjusting lever set at 6 which is a pleat every 6th stitch.  This is a very nice pleat.  The pleat is about 1/4".  The third item pictured has the adjusting lever set at the 12 for a pleat every 12th stitch.

Here I started playing the the adjusting screw.  I didn't know about this screw until recently.  I let it out about 3/4 of the length of the screw, I think.  I like this.  If I can figure percentages here, I think this would be the fastest way to a gather.  The setting are as follows:  stitch length 2.5mm with the adjusting lever in the 1 position.

Today, I learned how to adjust the depth of the pleat on the ruffler foot.  I never knew that you could gather this way.  I want to explore the gathering with this foot a little more.  I can see a lot of uses for using the gathering portion of this foot but I want to be able to do it consistently because every time you want to make a change to the depth of the pleat, the foot has to come off the machine.

That's it for now.  Next time, will be all about gathering.

Happy Stitching!