Ruffle

For other uses, see Ruffle (disambiguation).

Portrait of a woman wearing a heavily ruffled cap, 1789

In sewing and dressmaking, a ruffle, frill, or furbelow is a strip of fabric, lace or ribbon tightly gathered or pleated on one edge and applied to a garment, bedding, curtain or other textile as a form of trimming.Caulfield, S.F.A. and B.C. Saward, The Dictionary of Needlework, 1885, facsimile edition, Blaketon Hall, 1989, p. 428 A ruffle without gathers or pleats may also be made by cutting a curved strip of fabric and applying the inner or shorter edge to the garment.

A deep (wide) ruffle is usually called a flounce (earlier frounce or fronce).Caulfield and Saward, The Dictionary of Needlework, p. 218

Ruffles appeared at the draw-string necklines of full chemises in the 15th century, evolved into the separately-constructed ruff of the 16th century, and remained a fashionable form of trim off-and-on into modern times.For styles and construction of ruffles, frills and flounces through the centuries, see the Arnold, Baumgarten and Tozer volumes listed below

Notes

References

• Oxford English Dictionary

• Picken, Mary Brooks: The Fashion Dictionary, Funk and Wagnalls, 1957. (1973 edition ISBN 0-3081-0052-2)

• Arnold, Janet: Patterns of Fashion: the cut and construction of clothes for men and women 1560-1620, Macmillan 1985. Revised edition 1986. (ISBN 0-8967-6083-9)

• Baumgarten, Linda: What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America, Yale University Press,2002. ISBN 0-3000-9580-5

• Tozer, Jane and Sarah Levitt, Fabric of Society: A Century of People and their Clothes 1770-1870, Laura Ashley Press, ISBN 0-9508-9130-4

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