Ruffle
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, or other textile as a form of trimming.[1] 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).[2]
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.[3]
Notes
- ^ Caulfield, S.F.A. and B.C. Saward, The Dictionary of Needlework, 1885, facsimile edition, Blaketon Hall, 1989, p. 428
- ^ Caulfield and Saward, The Dictionary of Needlework, p. 218
- ^ For styles and construction of ruffles, frills and flounces through the centuries, see the Arnold, Baumgarten and Tozer volumes listed below
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