craftgrrl | Ruffles, pleats, gathers, pintucks and such pretties

What are you favourite embellishments for garments and bags and the like?

I love ruffles and want to start fancying up regular patterns with some pretty extras, but I'm not really sure where to start. Gathers seem bulky and tricky to distribute evenly, and I think I figured that a ruffle is a curved piece, right?

I found this tutorial on how to do pintucks, and also learned the afterwards-obvious trick of making the pintucks before laying your pattern down - so simple and so did not occur to me :\

Any tips?!