Quote Originally Posted by Barb T.
The real disadvantage in basting a bunch of pleats first is that you have to bunch up the fabric to stitch the pleats and you've lost the very real advantage of being able to run your left hand along the pleat as you stitch. Plus, it's tougher to put smooth and even tension on the pleat, and a pleat has to be basted at absolutely the perfect size, or errors compound.

I've found that lots of pins on each pleat solves the problem when people are having trouble and lets you do one pleat at a time. Good pinning is actually more accurate than basting and holds just as well _provided_ that you pin perpendicular to the pleat, not parallel to it. If you're pleating to the stripe, measure as you put each pin in to make sure that the stripe is, in fact, centered.

At any rate, if you're going to baste the pleats, at least baste only one at a time so that you can stitch through only what you need to stitch through and so that other pleats aren't in the way when you're trying to stitch.

Barb
I did discover that pinning perpendicular to the pleat edge was a lot more accurate than pinning parallel to the edge. Yup, yup.

You know, I notice that this wool material is not as dimensionally stable as the stuff from Fraser and Kirkbright. I wonder if that's contributing to the problem.

Barb, i just basted the pleat down to one layer of fabric underneath, not all the way through to the next pleat. I'lllet you know how it goes.