How to Sew Ruffles Without Pulling Thread

So here's how I was taught to make ruffles.

1) Set your sewing machine stitch length to the longest setting

2) Sew a straight line right down the strip of fabric to be ruffled.

3) Start pulling the thread that you just sewed on the strip in order to create ruffles.

That works really well, but what if you have yards and yards of ruffles to make.

Say, like a tree skirt for your Christmas Tree:

Yup, that's a lot of ruffles*. A Lot.

Anyway, how did I do it without pulling thread and in the process saved myself hours of work?

And without a ruffler foot for the sewing machine?

Well, I was watching this sewing video where this girl was talking about the trick her mum showed here. (I wish I remembered to bookmark that video because I could not find it, despite googling like crazy. In fact, I couldn't find this trick anywhere online, but I'm pretty sure it's been blogged about.)

So here's what you do:

1) Set your stitch length to longest.

2) Set your upper tension stitch to it's highest.

3) Sew right in the middle of your strip.

The strip will magically ruffle! Make sure you test this first. To reduce the number of ruffles, you just have to reduce the upper tension.

Here's a strip about of sheer fabric ruffled using the cheater's method:

The lighter your fabric is, the more ruffled it will be. As a result, I think this method won't work on really heavy fabric.

Anyway, what a great short cut for when you don't have to be very specific on how much ruffles you end up with.

* I oscillate between "Eeeeep, awesome ruffled tree skirt!!" and "Oh, that's so tacky!!". Hehehe. I am keeping this tree skirt, hardly anyone beside my family sees the tree. My daughters, they are over the moon about the ruffly goodness of the skirt. That's all that matters.