Knitting Ruffles

I simply love knitted ruffles. My favorite is the bell ruffle. I learned this from Nicky Epstein's Knitting on the edge, and for my most recent ruffle modified it a bit to fit my needs. Its pretty easy to do so.

Pardon the messy pic!

The yarn shown is Bernat Mosaic in Optimistic, with size 8US needles.

The steps I took for this ruffle, were to SWATCH first. And wash the swatch. I decided how many stitches wide I wanted the bottom of the "bell" and how many stitch apart each bell should be. I decided on a 15 stitch wide st st bell with 9 rev st st between each bell. This made a pretty wide bell on the ruffle, but I wanted it to be over the top. The bell itself decreases down to 1 stitch, plus the 9 between stitches, this gives 10 stitches that lead into the actual item. Using this, and measurements and gauge, find the number of repeats needed to fit the desired size.

After finding the number of repeats, multiply that number by the bottom of bell plus between number, to get the cast on. Et voila! You are set up for starting a bell ruffle.

This particular ruffle is decreased every 3rd row, to give it a taller profile. Most are decreased every other row. For more information on how to make the bell ruffle, see Nicky Epstein's book!

What is your favorite decorative knitting technique?