
This is the third post on pleating, smocking and sewing with knit fabrics. You can find the previous posts here: Sewing with Knits: Just the Essentials, Smocking Knits: Testing the Fabric. Today I will walk you through pleating knit jersey fabric - cotton or rayon. In the previous posts, I discussed the different types of knit fabrics and tested pleating a few different types of knits. Knit jersey fabrics from Pink Hollybush pleated beautifully. However, one of the characteristics of jersey knits is that the cut edges roll to the right side of the fabric. So after cutting the piece of fabric to be pleated, the first step is to iron the fabric, using an iron on a knit or synthetic setting (the spandex doesn't like a hot iron!). Iron the fabric on the wrong side, making sure to flatten the cut edge. Using a spray bottle of water and lightly spraying before ironing the fabric helps. Once the edge is flattened, I use a blue wash-away marker and mark a line parallel to, and 2 inches away from the cut edge.




The puckers will straighten right out and you will have beautiful pleated fabric.


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