Gathering II

Well, as they say, you're never too old to learn. If you were here last week you might have seen me being all angsty about gathering. I got some good suggestions and I was excited about the dental floss idea but for some reason I decided to try Marcy's suggestion first: always pull the bobbin thread. In 40 years of sewing nobody ever told me that. I don't think my mother knew that either because she always gathered by hand. Anyway, it worked. I gathered the skirt on the little floral print dress and the thread didn't break! Thanks, Marcy.

I'm the kind of person who is very embarrassed by and reluctant to admit to my mistakes and ignorance but if this can help someone else avoid 40 years of not knowing how to gather I can bear the shame.

Gathering

Does anyone out there have difficulty with making gathers? This is one of the many ways in which, after literally four decades of sewing experience, I am still incompetent. I long ago gave up on the method recommended in all pattern instructions of a double row of long machine stitches because the thread always breaks. If it's just a short piece to be gathered, like a sleeve, I just make gathers with pins. For longer things like skirts and ruffles I do it with a running stitch by hand.

The little dress in the previous post turned out to be too short. Since I had quite a bit of the skirt fabric left over, the simple solution was to add a ruffle. The piece seems ridiculously long for a ruffle on a small child's dress so, feeling a bit lazy, I started trying to think of alternatives to hand gathering. I came up with what I thought was the brilliant idea to use hand quilting thread which is considerably stronger. So, feeling quite proud of myself I filled a bobbin and threaded the machine with quilting thread and did the stitching. I started carefully gathering but in a very little time the thread broke, as usual. It seems impossible that this happened. I was going slowly and carefully, not pulling hard at all and this seemingly very strong thread just broke! How is it that other people can do this but I cannot?