Happy Birthday to me (and my twin!)

My birthday was Tuesday, but I won’t get to see my twin sister until today, so I’m extending the celebration a bit. For part of her gift, I made her an infinity scarf using the ruffled scarf tutorial by Terra at Mama Says Sew, with a few modifications. The fabric is some kind of jersey knit that I got in the remnant bin at Jo-Ann’s.

I tried and tried to create the wavy “lettuce edge” using my serger (a very old one I bought at a yard sale a while back), but no matter what I tried, it would not work. The tutorial above calls for just using a regular sewing machine. You put two long strips of fabric together and sew along the long sides using a zigzag stitch and stretching the fabric as you go to get the wavy lettuce edge. That’s how I did one edge of the scarf, but I wasn’t thrilled with how I ended with either little bits messy thread where I let the stitch veer too far off the edge, or excess fabric where I didn’t go close enough.

Like this:

For the other long edge, I tried something slightly different, and I like it a lot better. I folded the bottom fabric around the edge of the top fabric (which was easy to do without pinning because the fabric wants to curl anyway), and then zigzagged (using a very tight satin stitch) over that, so the stitch covered up the raw edge. So what I ended up with was a nice, smooth, folded edge held down by a satin stitch. It makes the edge a bit bulkier, but I like how it turned out. The only trouble I had was making sure I was pulling from the front of the fabric and back of the fabric with equal pressure… if you pull too hard from the back, you won’t get nice, satin stitches.

That’s better:

To connect the two ends of the scarf to make one big tube/ring, the tutorial calls for hand-sewing. Instead, I used the same technique I used in making the dozens and dozens of fleece neck gaiters I made last Christmas, which is much quicker.

I’m definitely going to make a ruffled scarf for myself, and maybe more for Christmas gifts. They are not quite as quick as the fleece neck gaiters because you have to sew pretty slow to keep the fabric stretched, but really, it is just two long seams.

I’m linking this post to the “Pin-Did Challenge” at The Modern Marigold. She’s challenging readers to actually make something they’ve pinned on Pinterest each week.