Making Pleats - with a fork???

Pattern - Prisma from Love Notions
Fabric - unknown polyester knit from Fabricland
Skill - pleating with a fork

I did promise to show how to make pleats with a fork, didn't I!  When we were testing, our designer, Tami Meyer, found a video on making pleats with a fork.  It looked so ingenious, I wanted to try it out.  Of course, your fork must be the right size!  My fork was slightly less than an inch in width which was the perfect width to make the 1" pleat that the Prisma pleated skirt calls for.

When you have your skirt piece ready, reserve the first half inch for the side seam.  Set your sewing machine to a basting stitch and secure a couple of stitches in place. Start with the fork facing you and slide the fabric in between a couple of tines - as shown above.

Now turn the fork towards yourself (counter clockwise) until it's flat on the sewing machine.  This creates your pleat.

Slide the pleat towards your half-inch mark.  Subsequent pleats will slide up beside to the pleat before as shown above.  While you are sliding the pleat into place, make sure that the pleat is square and the edge of your fabric is straight across the right side.

Now continue the basting stitch along, catching the pleat with a couple of stitches.  Then stop to make the next pleat.

Continue catching the fabric with the fork, turning the fork to create the pleat and stitching to secure the pleat until you have come to the end of the fabric.

This is not the most exact way to make pleats, but it's certainly quick!  No marking - except possibly for the first half inch.  I found a number of videos on the Internet, but most of them formed pleats in the opposite direction which I discovered sometimes caught on the sewing machine's foot.  And if you find yourself sewing lots of pleats, there are even tools for this.  Using a fork is just so much more fun!