Ruffles have Pleats, not Gathers

I hate gathering.  The thread always breaks halfway through the gathering process.  It is so frustrating and I hate it.

I made a dust ruffle for the crib this weekend and it called for gathers.  I debated opening my new serger box and trying out the gathering stitch, but I am so limited with time these days that I figured it would be faster to just use the method I know rather than learning a new method.  I even used a contrasting thread when I put in the gathering stitches.  

And what did that fancy purple thread decide to do?

It decided to break halfway through the gathering of the long edge of the dust ruffle.  Argh.  Did I mention that I hate gathering?

I decided to go another route...pleats.  Of course, this meant endless seam ripping, because I had been stupid enough to put the gathering stitches in ALL of the pieces instead of just one piece at a time.

To make even pleats, I took the ruffle pieces and marked out inch-long increments with a long-short-long-short method.  Very official.  And then I just folded them up...matching long notches. 

 It seemed to work.  I'm not quite sure how or why.

I used Simplicity pattern 2279.  It wasn't a perfect fit on the crib...it was a little too long.  You can kind of see it in the above photo, but it is really apparent in this next one:

Oh well.  It's still good.  I love the color against the white of the crib.  The orange fabric is from my mom.  A yard sale find -- maybe five yards for 50 cents.  And this used a lot of fabric.  

Don't mind all the stuff in the crib.  I'm using it for storage for a while...mostly to keep the cats out of it.

One box is filled with all clothes larger than six months and the other has a small selection of cloth diapers.  And then there's the tub of stuffed toys.  That could easily go on the floor, but the dog has decided that her primary goal in life is to eat that Goodnight Moon bunny.  She's also obsessed with a squeaky Sophie giraffe.  Grrrr.  Why are dog and baby toys so similar?