Hey everyone! I made a tutorial! I figured I should show ya’ll how to sew tucks, like those I used in my recent duvet cover post. (Scroll to the bottom for more detailed instructions!)
First of all, cut your fabric. You’ll need to account for the extra width taken up by the tucks. Add 3x the width of every tuck you use. (e.g. if you want five 1/2” wide tucks, 3 * 1/2” * 5 = 7.5”, add 7.5” of fabric to your desired finished measurement.)
Mark your fabric. For 1/2” spaced tucks, mark fold lines using a washable fabric pen 2” apart. You can also, optionally, mark stitch lines, 1/2” to the left of the fold lines. You may, however, skip the stitch lines and use your machine’s stitch guide if you like.
Starting with the leftmost fold line, carefully fold the fabric and press it flat. An iron is an essential component of making tucks!
With the fabric still folded, stitch along the 1/2” guideline.
Flatten the fabric back out, and press the first tuck towards the rest of the guidelines. Voila! You have your first tuck.
To create more tucks, repeat steps 4-6. Fold and press the next marked fold line. Keep folding along the marked guidelines, and stitching 1/2” from the folds. Then press the tucks over to the right to create beautiful, uniform tucks.
Note: I used black thread so you can see what is happening, but you likely won’t want your thread to show so use thread that matches your fabric!
To create other kinds of tucks, all you have to do is vary the spacing of your fold and stitch lines. Create blind tucks by taking out the extra space between each tuck, so that each tuck overlaps the next one slightly. Create pin tucks by stitching more narrowly from each fold, 1/8-1/4”. You can also create cross tucks by tucking already tucked fabric in the other direction!
The possible variations are endless.
And that’s it! they are very simple, and very fun to make. There are tons of ways you can incorporate them into projects. Think about making a blouse or a dress with fancy tucks on the front! (By the way, a good way to do that is to do the tucks on a rectangular piece of fabric first, and then line your pattern piece over the tucked fabric. That way you don’t have to do any complicated geometry to get the right amount of fabric.)