Jen’s Wedding Garter

This wedding garter is the perfect “something blue” for a bride to be. It’s very simple to make and comes together in a flash.

Materials

• 1/4 yard Liberty of London Tana Lawn in Betsy 2019a
• 1 spool White Elastic Thread
• 1 spool 100% cotton thread in color 7310
• A  hand sewing needle

Cutting and Preparing to Sew

Press the fabric

Cut a 5-inch strip from selvage to selvage.

Iron the strip in half lengthwise.

To prepare for sewing, wind a bobbin with the elastic thread. Do this just as you would wind any bobbin on your machine. Load the bobbin in the machine and then load the blue cotton thread as the top thread.

Sewing

You will want to do a few test runs before starting to sew on your strip. Using a piece of scrap fabric try sewing with the elastic thread in the bobbin and the cotton thread on the top. Adjust the tension of your machine until both sides of the fabric look neat and puckered.

Once you’ve settled on your tension sew along the entire pressed middle fold of the strip with the right side of the fabric facing up as pictured above.

Next sew a line parallel and 1/4-inch to the left of the first line. As you can see from the picture above the 1/4-inch mark on the foot should line up with the first sewn line as you are sewing. You will have to pull the fabric straight as it’s being sewn. This will get a bit harder as you keep going and have more elastic sewing to deal with, but it’s actually pretty fun.

Sew another line to left of the last one and then two lines to the right of the first middle line, all 1/4-inch apart from one another. You will have five centered sewn lines. The picture above is from the wrong side of the strip so you can see the elastic thread lines clearly.

Next sew 3/4-inches in from either edge of the strip. Make sure that you are always sewing with the fabric right side up.

Fold the strip in half lengthwise, right sides together, and pin it together along the raw edge.

Sew this seam together with a 1/2-inch seam allowance. Again, you should pull the fabric straight as it goes through the machine.

After you’ve sewn this seam turn the piece right side out.

Iron the piece as flat as you can as you stretch it. This will accent and tidy up the ruffles.

Finishing

Measure the circumference of the bride’s thigh and cut the pressed piece 3 inches shorter than that measurement without stretching it. For example. If the bride’s thigh is 20-inches around cut the garter to be 17-inches.

Tuck the raw edge of one side 1/2-inch inside of itself. Slide the other (un-tucked) side 1/2-inch into the tucked side.

Sew the two sides together with a slip stitch using the blue cotton thread.

All done! Now the bride can check off “something new” and “something blue” from her list!