Shirring, conquered at last!

I adore the look of shirring. It has all the appeal of ruffles without the overwhelm of frill.

Adorable tutorial from "girl. Inspired."

Seriously, every tutorial on shirring contains the words "so easy."  I want to believe them. I do.  I want to think I can make this in a snap.

The Boss Tee from CAbi

Or churn out one of these a day.

via Whimsy Couture

But no. All my attempts at shirring were failures. Until yesterday! Yesterday I had one thing on my to-do list:

Shirring

I pulled up every tutorial the net had on this tricky elasticizing technique and I read them. Okay, I skimmed them because I had already read most of them and a lot of them just referred to each other. But then I went back and read the comments just in case.

Then I wound my bobbin (by hand) with elastic thread, and sewed using every tension/length/width combination I had.

Failure

No shirring. Just a lot of crappy lines. 

But then. Then! I saw that Disney had an update on her tutorial:

"Some of you have had trouble with shirring, because you have a drop-in bobbin. I don't have one of those machines to play around with, but Prudent Baby recommends using your bobbin winder to wind the elastic with those machines. She says it gives her the perfect shirr, so it's worth trying! :o)"

Gasp! Squeal! I have a drop in bobbin. So I wound the elastic with my machine this time and...

 Oh my gosh that is totally shirred! I didn't even waste time with additional rows to add more scrunch.  I traded that scrap fabric for some pumpkin silk goodness post haste! And now I have two rippled rumpled shirred pieces of fabric goodness!

And oh do I have plans for these shirr beauties. But you'll have to come back to see.

While you wait why don't you click on that comment button and tell me all your shirring woes and triumphs.