Oh getting so close to actual construction!! If you recall my dress is going to have a placket front with ruffles on either side.

For the plackets I took out my bodice sloper, and drafted a placket piece that was the same length as the centre front and 1 inch wide.

Then I added on seam allowance to the top and bottom and one of the sides, as the other side will be placed on folded fabric. Sorry I forgot to take a photo!!

Now for the ruffles. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted the ruffle to look like, so first I played around a bit with some scraps of pattern paper…

The first is more of a standard pleat, and the second is something like a box pleat. My original sketch had something more along the idea of the first. But after looking at it a bit, I decided to go with the box pleaty one.

I decided not to make a pattern piece for this, as I quickly realised that it would just be a really really long piece of paper. So I’m just going to cut it out on the fabric. Tisk tisk!!

Anyway, I want the ruffle to be 1.5 inches wide, so I’ll use a 3 inch wide strip (plus seam allowance) that will be folded over with the raw edges enclosed in the plackets.

The length was a little trickier to figure out. I want the top of each pleat to be 1 inch, and the inside of each pleat to be 1 inch. With no gaps, so that the enclosed fold is 1/2 inch. A cross section would show the pleat looking something like this…

I left a small gap on the bottom and top for me to include the fabric in the neck seam and waist seam. I’m a bit of a panicker, so to be safe I added on a few inches!!

I’m sure this will all make a bit more sense to you once I post up pictures of the made ruffle!!

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