Pleating a Plaid

Why pick a plaid if I want a pleated skirt?  I don’t think I realized what I would be in for and not having directions certainly does not help!

My not so dainty slip stitching but it
seems to be doing the job

Once I cut out the skirt, only one pattern piece cut twice, the fun horror began.  Pinning the pleats….easy, matching the plaid not so hard.  Brain strain over how to get the pleats with the matched plaids to stay in place during sewing.  Basting think I.  Wrong, did not work for me.  After the steam started streaming out of my ears from the strain I determined I would slip stitch the two pleats together.  Great, I suck at slip stitching!  Fun times.  Though about 1/2 way through the second pleat I got to wondering…why do this.  Yes, I would like the plaids to match and I certainly don’t want my friends pointing and laughing at my mismatched plaids.  But, would slightly off plaid matching stop me from buying a similar ready-to-wear skirt.  Nope!  Not unless the mismatch was glaring.  So why put myself through this exercise?  I guess simply because I am making the skirt and want to do the best job possible.  I wonder if anyone else struggles which the high expectation you place on yourself when sewing versus not as stringent rules for RTW clothes?  I then had to stop thinking and just do because I knew I would not be happy if I did not ensure my plaids matched.

One side pleated and stitched together.
Not bad.  But now I notice one pleat is off
and that I should probable do it over.

Off I went slip stitching away, ripping out the slip stitching, and trying again.  I think it turned out ok.  Lets hope it holds in place during the actual sewing.  

Match Made In Heaven

Mmmm pleats

Or just influence by the picture on the pattern.  I have had Simplicity 4547 for year having purchased it in a lot of other patterns on ebay.  I love the pleated skirt pattern and when trolling through my fabric stash I came across a relatively new purchase which screamed to me pleated skirt. Subliminal programming perhaps.

I have to admit that my subconscious may have been at work given the closeness of this fabric to the picture on the pattern. 

Yike…really close just different colors.  For me, this fabric also seemed Christmassy.  I am not a lover of a red/green Christmas palette preferring greens and blues.  Weird, I know.

Mmmm plaidy goodness

So whip out the pattern, check to see if the pieces are all there.  Yup….only one piece for this skirt.  But all the other pattern pieces were accounted for…..except wait a second…what are these 2 extra pattern pieces for?  They are for an Advance pattern …hmm….cool….but wait there is something missing.  The instruction sheet is not in there.  Oh boy, I am going to wing it on a pleated skirt in addition to matching plaids.  This should be fun!

Body Issues

Apparently I have them.

I spent hours going through my patterns to find a skirt pattern that I thought would fit.  I tossed aside many smaller patterns and a few larger. 

Last weekend, having a sewing day with friends, I made up Advance 9689.  It went together quickly if one disregards my inability to decipher pleats.  This is a known issue and I am discarding this problem.

I try on the skirt and my friends laugh….hard….rolling on the floor type of laughing.  Then came the comments that I clearly do not know what size I am on my lower half.  (I seem to have the upper half under control.)  Of course, some of this may be payback for me advising one of my friends was basing her pattern choice on a pattern that was at least 2 sizes too big.  Payback or not, it was well deserved laughing, I looked comical!

I was swimming in the skirt.  It was HUGE.  All I could say to the laughing is that I thought it would fit.  Then pleaded for help to try and make it fit.  I ended up increasing the darts and pleats which, of course, worked.

But seriously, this is the second skirt that I have had the issue that it was just too darned big!

Haven't yet removed
the hand basting from
the waistband.

Oh, I suppose you would like to see a picture of the skirt.  There is no picture of any kind of it falling off of me.   Here’s where it is now:  waistband on but no zipper and no hem.  My place has been like the surface of the sun so sewing has been out of the question.  I just cannot sew when sweat is pouring off of me.  If only I had air conditioning.

One Steampunk Skirt Done

 Even with redoing ever flat fell seam at least once  and with absolutely no instructions the skirt is finished. 

In process: dealing with evil
pleats!!

There were many hair pulling moments but I am not dissatisfied with the end result.  The pleats were another issue.  I cannot get my head around how to make pleats.  I mean I know how to do it in theory and I did it for the brown skirt.  However, it takes me a hours to get them to work correctly.  The first time I tried the pleats, I did them completely backwards.  Thank goodness I had only basted them in!

Back of skirt and
yoke.

I added the yoke and added some hooks on some self fabric strings I made.  Adding the grommets to the back of the yoke was almost a fail.  The grommets I have just were not working but then I found some scrapbook grommets which did work.  Whew.

Close up of buttons and
the hooks

I found the buttons in the same store as the hooks.  I love the buttons!! My sewing machine did not love putting in the button holes!  In fact, the machine came to a halt when there were 5 buttonholes left.  Only after a significant rest was the machine able to trundle on. 

I would like to add a few more utility strings.  I have 2 more hooks and a bunch of D rings that I could add to the skirt. 

While I like the resulting skirt, I cannot recommend this pattern if you do not have a lot of sewing experience.  Not only do you need to figure out what order and how to put the outfit together, you need to determine what facings you will need and construct them.  Pattern instructions are a security blanket for me.  I feel safe knowing that if I run into problems, I can just refer to the instruction.  Here, I was flying without the net and as I put this skirt together I kept wondering if I was doing things correctly.  The seam ripper was used more in this project than any other project for a long while.  

A Skirt

More quick and easy because I am starting to panic.  My muslin of the bodice was horribly off.  So I put that aside to do a quick and easy skirt. 

Same method as the petticoat with the plans to put on a waistband.

It looks short on the dress form but the skirt nicely skims the ground when I am wearing it ‘cause I am really short!  I love that the skirt only has one seam in it.  I suppose I should have cartridge pleated the top.  I only pleated it and will have to do a bit of stack pleating in the back of the skirt.

I need to finish the
petticoat.

You can see that I have still not added the final ruffle to the petticoat.  Ouch…that hoop is noticeable on the bottom.

The only plus is that it looks like it may rain on Saturday because I am not sure that I will be able to finish a bodice that fits in time.

I think all this rushing is making me not like the outfit one bit.  If it does rain this weekend, I probably will not need this outfit until fall/winter of this year.  Plenty of time to get it done then!

Lining a Pleated Skirt

Do you know how to do this?

I did not.  Having found the elusive brown lining fabric, I  now needed to figure this out.  I know that after trying to get the pleats in the fashion fabric, there was no way I was cutting the required fabric and pleating the lining in the same way.  It would give me another headache requiring a nap besides just being too bulky for a lining.

So, I pulled out my lining reference book.  I love this book so much.  I recommend it for anyone who needs help with linings.

Alas, the instructions for creating a lining for a pleated skirt seemed very complicated to me and did not make a lot of sense.  I got out my pattern pieces and started folding parts, trying to spread other parts to follow the very limited instructions.

Then a light bulb went off.  I checked my RTW pleated skirts and the linings looked very simple.  Surely, I thought there has to be a simpler way to do this.  My OCD kicked in and I headed to the computer to do some research. 

Easy, quick lining.  Not
really pretty but functional

Sure enough, there on the Threads site was a super simple, easy to understand quick, down and dirty lining for a pleated skirt.  Righty-oh, this one is for me!  I can measure my hips add a couple of inches and divide by 2.  I added a couple of darts front and back to make the waist fit and I was done without the need for a nap this time!

Please Pleat Me

Wow, apparently I do not understand pleats.  Or maybe I just don’t understand English.  It is one of the two.  I spent hours trying to figure out the pleats on this skirt.  When I followed the directions, they way they read to me, I came out with a skirt that looked nothing even the most remotely like the pattern picture. 

I think something is missing
from these instructions

I have a degree …hell I even have an advanced degree….still the instructions made no sense!  I tried it another way…nope that wasn’t it either.  At this point, it just seemed like the pattern picture and the instructions were mocking me. I eventually had to throw away the instructions and just try to recreate the pattern picture.  After some trial and error and a couple of hours….I figured it out….miracle of miracles!

I was then exhausted and had to take a nap!

2011 – My Year of the Skirt

I have decided that I want to make one skirt for every month this year.  As I am currently unemployed, I can get a jump start on this skirt making.  I am enjoying how quickly skirts come together, even if you line them.  I have added a little counter to keep track of the number of skirts completed.

Without further ado……drumroll……the next skirt for 2011 is: McCall 8086 copyrighted in 1950.  I had traced this pattern in December so it is ready to roll.

This is going to be a first for me: a skirt with pleats.  I have made knife pleat trim for a Victorian ball gown but never a pleated skirt.

Material will be a heavy chocolate brown cotton blend.  It has a little stretch to it.  I hope it is not too heavy for the pleats!