And a hemming-only EASY knit ruana poncho to go with the no-sew fleece ruana poncho.
I’ve made this one many times – ruana ponchos are very easy, make excellent gifts, and are perfect in the many, many colors of fleece you can find out there. But they’re also perfect for double knits, softer ponte knits and sweatshirt fleece or sweaterknits too!
Either way, no-sew or hemming only, we’re talking a total beginner project with no fitting and easy finishing.
Let’s break it down: Here’s my instructions (pattern) for the ruana here:
No Sew Fleece Ruana:
Two yards of craft fleece in your choice of color or print. Coordinating thread. Ball point needle or stretch needle.
You’ll need a cutting mat and rotary cutter (if you have neither, careful cutting with sharp sewing scissors will do.)
Draw the shape of the ruana according to the directions in my blog post. ALWAYS DRAW ON FABRIC FIRST even if you make a pattern from the instructions above. You’ll get a much cleaner cut if you do.
Using your rotary cutter (on top of your mat), cut out the ruana, using a straight clear ruler for cutting along the straight sections and carefully rolling the cutter around the curved neckline section.
If you’ve made this from fleece, you are DONE!
Hemming the edges of your ruana
If you’ve made this from anything else, you have a little more work to do. If your fabric doesn’t ravel, press under the edges 1/4″. You can use Steam a Seam to hold this edge and stabilize it for hemming. Hem close to the raw edge of your ruana on all sides.
If your fabric ravels, you may choose to do the following:
Bind the edges with bias binding. Try contrast binding for a fun look. If you have a bias binding foot, this is a great time to learn to use it! Practice on some scraps you’ll have left after cutting.
Serge the edges before folding, pressing and stitching
Now, you might ask, why didn’t you line the knit ruana with fleece? The short answer? I did. The long answer? It did not work, here’s why:
The double knit fabric I chose was moderately heavy in weight. The fleece is light. Together they made this VERY heavy (two layers of fleece for my version here is not heavy, go ahead and do this if you want to, it’s luxurious!.)
There are a zillion colors of fleece at JoAnn Fabrics. Well, 2,399 to be exact. You can also go upscale and choose Mill Yardage for authentic Polartec (they ARE the factory!)
The doubleknit is fun, a blue/gray plaid, but it’s heavy. It deserves to stand on it’s own, so after I sewed them together, with my walking foot, I tried it on and it was super heavy. I ended up actually CUTTING off the edges (because I wanted a clean rotary cut for the fleece, and I was not worried about nicking off a quarter of an inch for size, as there is no size.)
So now I have TWO ruanas. I really don’t need two but they are so versatile, leave one at my desk, another in my car…
Styling your no-sew fleece ruana
Besides the usual “keep it at your home office desk for when you’re cold”, the fleece ruana is easy to style and wear. Wear it with one tail flung over your shoulder over a turtleneck sweater, wear it loose with joggers and a hoodie, wear it belted over jeans or wide leg pants. The fleece is ‘grippy’ so the tail flung over your shoulder will generally stay there.