Noel Gieleghem This is what I said during my presentation on ruff construction:

“Two points I need to make. If I get wind of anyone ripping (or attempting to rip) their linen I will personally appear, like some avenging, deranged genie and do something truly unspeakable to you. Seriously. Ripping cotton or silk is a thing. I know that. But never, ever, EVER do this with linen. You will end up with a huge mess on your hands. Trust me.

There’s a blog circulating by some poor young woman who was given really, really bad advice by her mentor on ruff making. But the part that made me shout at the computer was when she just picked up her scissors and started wacking away at her linen.

Linen sewing, and ruffs in particular, relies on impeccable attention to grain. There aren’t a lot of curved seams. Take advantage of the fact that you can easily pull a single thread and then cut along the void. I can tell you that the better quality the linen, the easier this is to do.

A tip I learned from Joy Shillaker in England is scribing your draw line with a bar of soap. It lubricates the thread you’ll be drawing and makes pulling it out much, much easier.

Also, don’t pull on the thread. Rather scoot the fabric along the thread, bunching it up. If the thread breaks (and it will), pick out the broken thread with the eye end of a needle and start over, moving the fabric along the thread, not tugging on the thread itself.”