September's Guild Meeting Lesson

Shantelle did a great job at our September guild meeting teaching us about the fine and beautiful art of ruching. Ruching, pronounced 'rooshing' is an ancient sewing technique found on clothing from as far back as the Middle Ages. Today it is used to make gorgeous flowers, leaves, and other fun embellishments like you see below. Shantelle made this wallhanging with a beautiful basket of flowers.



Everyone got to try their hand at ruching as Shantelle had strips of fabric already prepared for us to make a leaf and also a flower. Her handout was amazing, with great color closeup photos and instructions. She even had diagrams for us to follow as she taught us the ruching method.




The ruching strips were cut, pressed, and already marked for us at 1 inch alternating increments. Shantelle gave us step by step instructions to help us make our pretty little ruched flowers.

Here is a close up. Look closely and you can see the pen marks along the edges and the needle diagonally connected the pen marks with 4 or 5 stitches.


We gathered the fabric along the way and when we were finished with our diagonal stitches, we rolled that little strip of fabric into a flower! This is Rachel's lopsided flower pin from that evening. We will all need a little work to make pretty, nice, symmetric flowers like Shantelle!


This picture just shows another example of a ruched flower made by marking the fabric in a circular patterns rather than a straight pattern.



Thanks Shantelle for such a great lesson and for helping us learn new techniques.