I am sure that we have all on more than one occasion tried to gather long pieces of fabric and had the thread back as wee try to pull them up. One way to prevent this is to zig zag over a thin cord and then pull the cord up to achieve the length of gathered fabric that we want. The method I am about to share with you is a variation of that method but we do not need to use cord.
I am using black thread on white fabric so that you can easily see what I am doing.
Put your needle into the fabric at the point you want your gathering to start from and pull up your bobbin thread as you do when you begin a line of quilting.
Pull a fair amount of bobbin thread out , it has to be at least the length that you want your finished length of gathering to be.
Pull out your top thread to the same amount that you have pulled your bobbin thread out.
Using a zig zag stitch start stitching over the two threads you have pulled out. I am using a very wide zig zag so that you can see it clearly but have a bit of a practise to determine which one works best for the fabric you are using.
When you get to the end do not select the automatic thread cutter if you have on but leave a tail of both threads that you can later tie off .
Pull your two threads under the zig zag to gather up your fabric to the desired size. Adjust your gathers and ties off all threads at the end before you start to stitch the gathered fabric to another piece of fabric.
This is a good way to make puffing used in many heirloom inspired projects.
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