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I am looking for an older style of gathering called “carriage pleats”. I am trying to gather a very thick woolen material into a skirt waistband. Carriage pleats were popular in the late 1800’s but I cannot seem to find my old book that tells me how to do them. If you know how (or even a Website, please HELP!
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Replies
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If you mean "cartridge pleating", that topic was covered
fully in a past issue of Threads magazine. See issue #79,
Oct/Nov 98, p.65.
-OR-
You could search thru the topics on this website (not the
discussion forum, but Techniques or something like that)
to see if it's online. Good luck!
*Hi Janine,I found this website on cartridge pleating.http://www.dnaco.net/~aleed/corsets/cartpleat/I also found a site on carriage pleating. I wasn't able to open it, but I found it by searching on google.com using the keywords "carriage pleating."Good luck,Janet Hill
*I'm pretty sure you mean cartridge pleating, also known as gauging. Cartridge pleating was very popular from the rennaissance through the late 1800s. And it's still used for smocking today. It allows you to gather a vast amount of fabric in a small space, much more than you could with conventional pleats.Basically, you draw three rows (at a minimum) of evenly spaced parallel dots on the fabric (use ink, it won't show) like this:. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .Then you just connect the dots with a running stitch:.--. .--. .--. .--. .--..--. .--. .--. .--. .--..--. .--. .--. .--. .--.When you're done, draw up the threads and you'll have nice, regular pleats. Pin this to your bodice and adjust the gathering to fit, then catch each pleat with one or two stitches and sew it onto the bodice. Ta da!There are a number of cheater steps for the pleating part of this (sadly, there are no shortcuts to the catch stitch part)...you can sew/fuse a strip of gingham instead of drawing dots. You can sometimes find suitably small cartridge pleating tape (for curtains) in home decorator shops and then just machine the tape in and then just draw up the cords (a friend of mine who sewed opera costumes loves this cheat). If the fabric is lightweight and the seams are very small, you could try running the fabric through a smocking pleater. Or you use buy Knots Dots--iron on dots for smockers.
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