Seattle Cosplay - How to make Broomstick Pleat on a Sewing Machine Tutorial
Hello everyone, I am Anna He. And Today, I will show you an easy dry way to make Broomstick pleats! A little bit about myself, I had been sewing for a long time, and I love making costumes based on fantasy and historical inspirations!
My latest project is the red dress from the movie Crimson Peak, worn by the character Lucille Sharpe. While researching this dress, I learned all about Broomstick pleats, which were one of the most intense details in this costume design.
Lets review a bit about what is a Broomstick Pleat – first, It has small pleat depth, but super high density, It is usually vertically formed giving it a lot of dimension. Because of the pleat density, it is not expected to be uniformed. Traditionally it is made with a wet solution process to form the pleats, then left to dry setting the pleat edges.
For this tutorial, I will show you an alternative way to make broomstick pleats that uses our sewing machine. Things you will need are – a Ruffler foot – I used the Pfaff Creative Ruffler, Strong sewing thread – I used a 30 weight sewing thread. And size 100 needle, I used the Organ Needle. This will ensure the needle can punch through all the layers of fabric without bending or breaking and damaging your fabric mid sewing.
All rufflers have similar design, I will go over different parts of the Foot before showing you how it works.
• The Shank Screw attaches the foot to the machine
• The adjusting Lever controls stitches between each pleat, higher number less pleat
• The Adjusting Screw controls the pleat depth, Turn to the right to increase pleat depth
• Guiding slots help set up the fabric to be fed into the push blade
• And the push blade pushes the fabric under, folding it to form the pleat
Here you see my setting is:
1 stitch between every pleat, About 5/16” pleat depth, Remember to set your machine to straight stitching and reduce the presser foot pressure.
Now to set the fabric –
First, make sure fabric has a straight edge.
Guide fabric into the guiding slots as so, then gently slide fabric between to two blades.
Here is the process in action.
When you are starting, go very slow speed. The Push blade will use up a lot more fabric than regular sewing. So make sure the fabric is lined up and feed into the guiding slots evenly and straight.
Because my fabric panel is wide, I used both hands to manipulate the whole width.
Be ready to stop frequently to adjust the fabric position.
The foot makes loud mechanical sounds due to the way the needle bar raises and lowers the gear, so it take a bit to get used to.
So I have the whole panel from 7 yards pleated into about 1.5 yards length.
Once taken off the machine, this is what it looks like with both sides pleated
You might see the pleats are very even across.
If you have areas that are bunched with fabric, you can pull on either side tightly and it should carry the pleat edges from side to side
If you still have struggle with some of these all you have to do is use your finger to pleat it like so, and then hit it with a blast of steam
Right after steaming you might want to pull it straight across tightly again for a second or two and that should help set the pleat
We’ll just repeat the process the whole way
For my design, the stitch line on one side will be cut off, so It’s important to firmly press the pleats down. While this is just steamed in the middle of the panel, this side, you really want to press down on the edges to seal the pleat folds.
That's it!