Tucks and Ruffles- An Adventure In Petticoating.

Doing my research, it became evident that the most important piece of a proper 1860s silhouette would be all in the petticoats. Drawing inspiration from Jennifer and Dee, I decided to make a ruffled petticoat, and cover it with a fancy one. To save space around the waistline I would yoke them together on the same waistband.

Learning from the best, I decided to make my petticoat out of organdy. I ordered 10 yards of it, and after prewashing, this is what came out of the dryer:

Yeah. It was also about this time that my iron died and I had to buy a new one. But never fear, it did eventually flatten out.

There are 8 ruffles on my petticoat, which really intimidated me. After I finished the ruffles on my purple dress for Hairspray a few years back, I swore I would never ruffle again. But, I did. And I think it turned out much better this time. I didn't even tear any of my hair out.

Using this formula I figured out how much fabric I needed, and cut out a lot of ruffles.

A Lot of ruffles.

To help with bulk around the sewing machine arm, I divided my cotton muslin base into three pieces: a waistband, a middle and a bottom, and attached the ruffles to each before reassembling them.

The bottom most piece had 5 ruffles on it. I hemmed each ruffle (which I think turned out really well on the organdy- it made its own stripe just from folding on itself, and saved me the hassle of thinking I had to trim each individual ruffle with ribbon or lace.) and pressed the top down before putting in the gathering stitches. I gathered the ruffles at 1.5, my new favorite ratio. the aforementioned Hairspray dress and petticoat were at 2, but I know better now.

I attached three ruffles to the middle piece, and them french seamed them together. (Not having a serger, I'm very partial to french seams as a way to prevent fraying.)

At this point I pinned my enormous mass of ruffles to my hoop skirt, just to make sure they were hanging right, and I didn't completely goof on my math. (Don't worry, those ruffles did flatten out.)

The top piece of my skirt has just a touch of lace, and then the overlay attached to it. The slits are the sides are to accommodate my pockets.

The overlay took quite a bit of time- mostly because I was lazy. I made it from my last four yards or organdy, but I wanted to keep the selvage intact at both the top and the bottom if at all possible. Therefore, I decided to shorten my once 45" fabric to about 36" using pin tucks.

It took a lot of time (and a Lot of ironing), but I was pretty pleased with the way they turned out. And aside from being decorative, they added a lot of structure to my overlay that will help it support very full skirts.