Making Ruffled elastic lace

A little while ago I saw a tutorial on making a petti-romper. I priced out the elastic lace in the store, but it was quite a bit more expensive than I expected. But that's okay, because I was reunited with my old friend, elastic thread.

Have you met elastic thread? We were introduced about a year ago by a mutual friend. It was fireworks from the start.

Unfortunately, I eventually ran out of elastic thread, and couldn't find it in any stores. I checked Walmart, they were out of stock. Every. Week. There was a place on the shelf for it, they just didn't stock it. I checked Hobby Lobby. The ladies there didn't even know what I was talking about! After months of off and on searching, we were re-united in one of the larger Joann's over an hour away. I bought 2 packages, just to be safe.

There's so many fun things you can do with elastic thread. I probably don't even know half of them. But I do know that you can shirr (I've got a shirred dress on my list of tutorials to do!), ruffle fabric, ribbon, lace, ect., and make ruffled sleeves. And it's all just as easy as SEWING A STRAIGHT LINE. Yup. Alright, here we go.

To make elastic lace:

Thread your bobbin with the elastic thread. You can do this on your machine, the same way as any other bobbin.

On a spare piece of fabric, lace, or ribbon, experiment with different tensions to see which one will work the best. I turned my tension all the way up for the lace. It seemed to work best with my machine. 

Position your lace so that your needle is lined up with the straight side of the lace.

Sew a straight line. No need to back stitch.

Easy, right?

You can also do this to ruffle ribbon or fabric. 

Isn't that so much easier than the normal way to make a ruffle? And I love how stretchy it is. With a normal ruffle (done by pulling one of the threads and gather the fabric), there's a huge risk of the thread snapping if you put too much pressure on it. This is nice and flexible. I can't wait to find out how else I can use elastic thread. What have you made with it?


P.s. I love the view from my sewing machine! ;)