Project the Third: Skirt!

What I learned this weekend:

1) Those little clips are a godsend for satin. Seriously.
2) The mantra for sewing satin is, as a former roommate of mine in Edinburgh was fond of saying, "softly, softly, catchy monkey."
3) French seams ... I loathe French seams. Whoever dreamed up a system where you sew the seams backwards?! Do. Not. Want.
4) Bustled skirts do not look good in photos if they are laid out flat. (Which is by way of an apology for the photos to come.)

OK, the design concept for the Steampunk Enchantress was a saloon girl look. So the skirt is bustled up short in the front and hangs long in the back. To carry through the fringed skirt she has in some comic book depictions, we decided to fringe both the base of the bodice and the lower hem of the front of the skirt.

[As a side note, I attended a panel once where the conversation turned to how to steampunk non-steampunk characters (like Boba Fett or Princess Leia, for example. The advice given was to determine the defining characteristics of your character (like Princess Leia's buns and white dress), make sure those were in your costume design so folks would have a visual reference, and then have fun with the rest. Best advice ever. :) ]

Alright, so back to this weekend's skirt-making adventures. Got a late start on Saturday due to the prologue of the Tour de France (yes, I'm a cycling fan!), so didn't really start sewing until the afternoon. Over the next 5 hours before I was called away to play WoW (oh! the sacrifice!), I managed to get this done:

I'm afraid I got on a roll and forgot to take "in
progress" photos. So all I've really got are
"done" photos. Sorry! I'll try to do better.


That's the apron, or front of the skirt. Entirely too much handsewing and gathering in this skirt, by the way. And, yes, I totally forgot I had a gathering foot for my machine!

Must. Remember. All. Tools.

The light green at the top is a grosgrain ribbon used for the waistband. It'll be covered by the bodice once the whole thing is sewn together. At least I hope it will, because it's really, really ugly with all the random things stitched to it. Around the back are snaps and skirt hooks and all kinds of rigging. It ended up being a lot more time-consuming than I'd thought. Ah well.

Sunday, I started again on the back of the skirt which is a series of layered, semi-bustled poofs with a straighter train at the bottom.  It was pretty straight-forward apart from the hated and loathed French seams, but those were enough to make me grumpy for most of the morning. Especially when I had to take one out right across the back of the skirt after I'd already trimmed it down. Going all Hulk Smash! on the world became a serious option for several minutes. But anyway, there's the skirt at right with the apron laying on top of the back (yes, for reasons unknown to me, Simplicity opted to make the skirt two separate pieces). The white you can see at the edges are twill tape ties that bustle up the back part of the skirt. Not sure how I'm going to hide those in wearing, but I'll figure something out, I'm sure. :) Time here: 3 1/2 - 4 hours.

And below is the back of the skirt.

Again, sorry about the fact that these just look like piles of material. Apparently one needs a dressform or a live model to make bustled skirts look good!

The plan is to try all this on in the near future, so hopefully there will be "live model" photos to post soon. Yes, I've not actually tried it all on since the initial fitting of the bodice interlining way back at the beginning (my "fitting assistant" has been on vacation :).


Yes, I'm doing a lot of praying to the sewing gods. :) 





This weekend's drink of choice is a bit different and owes something to our family's custom of "drinking the Tour". When the Tour de France is underway, the chosen beverage for the day relates to whatever part of France the Tour is currently passing through. Since they started this year in Belgium (and Belgium really doesn't make a whole lot of wine), we opted for the Belgian beer Saison Du Pont, which is a farmhouse ale and was pretty darn good (and I'm not really a beer drinker). Quite light and worked well for our highs-in-the-upper-90s temps. :)

Happy sewing!