Dress Diary: When in doubt, add another petticoat (part 2 - engineering)

And here we get to the engineering of a petticoat. 

To review, I'm making the first of about 3 walking length petticoats, based on an exemplar from The Delineator magazine from 1896. They will be made of premium bleached muslin, with faux silk absinthe green ruching. 

The first petticoat body is cut of seven gores, as my skirts are seven gores. It will have 2 tiers of applied ruffles, and an adjustable waistband. The petticoat is designed to be convertible to a ballgown length, by applying buttonholes to attach a ruffled and ruched train. 

Before I found the exemplar that I liked the best, I had already cut out the seven gore body of the petticoat. As a matter of fact, I'd flat felled the seams and hemmed the body. I'd cut it somewhat shorter than the skirt of course, since being a New Woman, I didn't want my petticoat in the dust and mud. 

I wasn't planning on two tiers of ruffles. 

But here we are, and so I didn't feel too bad about cutting off that hem. 

I'd also hemmed 6+ yards of 8" ruffle, but again, two tiers, so I'll have to re-engineer. 

The ruffle tiers

Ruffles are long, tedious, but basically mindless. Tear the longset strips of yardage that you can, flat-fell seams between lengths, make sure that you have a full bobbin, and hemhemhemhem... 

I made a new length of ruffles with about 7 yards of 5" muslin which will yield a 4" tier after finishing. My petticoat body hem conveniently measures at 4 yards, which typically requires about 6 yards of ruffles. I'll be honest - I didn't feel like cutting off a yard of length, and so I went with it. The ruffle length was hemmed with a narrow rolled hem on one side, and with a gathering stitch on the other. 

The ruffle was then gathered to the hemline, and placed about 3/8" from the edge, right sides together. (I might have placed a piece of lace between the body and the ruffle for extra, but I didn't on the first one. Maybe the next one.) Turns out that 1:1.5 doesn't seem like an adequate hem to ruffle ratio for this application, so the extra yard was a good thing. 

The ruffle is stitched to the body hemline and then the extra length is folded over and stitched down to finish the inside seam.

The bottom tier is 9.5" wide and 14 yards long, which is 2x of the top tier. Changed my mind to use green organza ribbon for the ruches, at 28 yards long gathered 2x to the ruffle. Each length of ruching ribbon was pinned at 1 yard intervals, and then gathered within those intervals to keep the fullness consistent across the entire ruffle tier. The top row of ribbon ruching is placed at 4" from the hem of the tier, and the bottom row is at 2" from the hem. Finally, the ruches are stitched to the ruffle tier. 

The ruffle volume increases dramatically with all the ruches attached. 

The bottom tier is then stitched together in an enormous circle, and the back seam is aligned with the back seam of the petticoat. To gather the bottom ruffle tier, I pinned the bottom tier - finished top edge to the right side of the top tier - at 12" intervals to 6" intervals on the top tier, pulled the gathering threads and then pinned the gathers evenly in the 6" spaces. The bottom tier is then stitched onto the top tier. 

This manual method of gathering is super labor-intensive, and depends on doubling the tiers each layer to get a good amount of support for the skirt. I have no idea how many hours I've spent on this one petticoat, but it's been at least a few full days of work. I will be using a ruffler attachment on my machine for the next petticoat, and hoping that I can get adequate volume. 

The waist

There is actually no "band" on the model from The Delineator; it's a bias-cut facing. A 3" wide bias band is stitched to the right side of the waistline with a 5/8" seam allowance, the ends finished in a narrow rolled hem. The waist tapes were stitched below this seam to the inside of the vertical seams between the second and third gores - but one of them pulled out on the first wearing! So I pulled out the other, and ran a new twill tape through the entire waist facing - which was turned and pressed to the inside, and then stitched down. 

The REST of the Story

The Neverending petticoat persists. 

After finishing it, I decided that it was a tripping hazard and needed to be taken up 2". 

Did I do the easy thing, and take off the ruffles to shorten the body? Oh, no! I reasoned that while I'm currently wearing flats, I might be able to manage heels one day and so didn't want to actually shorten the petticoat. I took a one inch tuck just above the top tier and then folded in the bottom hem for another inch. The length is perfect, and I'll be using that length for petticoat #2. 

In addition, the twill tape on hand at JoAnn's is too wide and too stiff for the waist tie. I've ordered a more suitable length from Amazon and will be replacing the replacement. 

In short, this was really a wearable mockup, and I've learned a lot for the next 5 petticoats that I need. Make it shorter, how to finish the interior seams, and I need to learn to use a ruffler attachement for my machine. I love the bias-faced waistband, and will continue to use that. The adjustability is perfect for my changing size. And the floof really does make the 1890's skirt silhouette.