Airship project: And back to the petticoat!

Just before Dragon*Con last year, I went back to school. Not too long after Dragon*Con, I realized that being back in school would impact my time for costuming. Turned out it was more like "completely negate any and all hours you thought you could spend working on anything other than studying for class."

*sigh*

But, bowing to peer pressure over last couple of weekends, I pulled everything out and went over to a friend's house in a vain and desperate attempt to finish at least one garment. And the chosen garment was V's petticoat. Why? Because I wanted all of those piles of netting gone.

Now Eg (one of my sewing buddies) is a minor Pinterest deity, and she'd run across a suggestion of how to make gathering long strips of netting easier - run bias tape along one edge, put the gathering stitch into that and gather from there. Like so...






And it does make the gathering a little easier, even if it adds another step in construction. It also has the side effect of stiffening the petticoat a bit. (As it would. I think there are about 12 packages of bias tape in the thing.)

Here's the petticoat with several tiers done. You can see up at the top the three tiers I did at home without the bias tape. Towards the bottom are the two tiers we put on the first Saturday. And it did take us most of the day. Why?

Gathering. When you have a long strip of anything, it takes a LONG time to gather it. And this was with Eg and I working from opposite ends.There was possibly an easier way to do this (like if I could have remembered the correct stitch length to use the gathering foot, for example :).








Anyway, so last Saturday we did the last tier. Here it is laying out on the table.


That's just the last tier. I can't remember off the top of my head exactly how long it ended up being, but it was nearly 40' (yes, feet). I had to add this tier to accomodate my height, and it turned out to be a huge pain. For some reason, the bias tape didn't want to gather at all, and I'd say we probably spent an hour, hour and a half, two hours - something like that - just in gathering. Towards the end, I started settling for random pleats. It's not pretty.

By now, I was frequently referring to this petticoat as my Public Service Announcement: "Ladies, if you can, just buy it."





But eventually it was done, so I took a couple photos to show folks who couldn't quite understand my explanation of the shape it was supposed to be.

Now this is just the netting, so I've still got to put it together with the fabric (we ran out of time). But this is the rough shape it will create. Lord, I hope it all fits alright with the fabric, or I might just cry!



I promise that when it all gets put together, I'll put the entire underwear ensemble on and take a photo. If for no other reason than to prove that I do, occasionally, get something done!

Then I'll put this entire thing away and work on the IO. :)

Happy sewing!