Tier 1

Following the guideline of using 1.5x the width of each successive measurement, I'll give these sizes a try first. Taking a waistish measurement of 28" to start, Tier 1 will be 42", then #2 will be 63" and #3 will be 94.5". Grainline is to run with the warp so assuming 44" material at most, Tier 1 might make it in one piece but the others will have to be two or more. I don't like the thought of those seams, but since these are ruffled tiers over some sort of underlying skirt, I will try attaching them with the ends finished and overlapping. Hopefully this will be less obvious than a bunch of seams in the silk that will be used on the actual dress. I'll have to read the ruffler instructions to calculate the settings to get 42" to equal 28" and on down.

Ruffler

I'm not sure if I should go with ruffled tiers or flared tiers, with something underneath to puff them up, but I have this industrial ruffler attachment to try at some point so I guess Ima go with that first. The instructions don't seem to say why there is a piece of fabric stuck in it, but maybe it will make sense when trying to install it on the machine. When I took it out of the plastic bag, it didn't smell like burlap like I expected.

The Leaning Tower

In trying to come up with a height, I just tried a few things until I thought she would be not quite as tall as me. A good height seemed to come with the muslin just touching the floor, or 44" from the top of the waist line. It seems like that might be handy somehow, but most of my muslin stash is 36" so I'm probably just making that up. 44 inches seemed high to me but I can lean on her shoulder like, hey bud, how are you set for insurance?

There's no room in here for a bookcase, but they're not in the way like you'd think.

To figure the width of the tiers, I noticed in the picture that the second tier comes down to just below the wrist. Lucy has arms so I put one on and decided the measurement would be 9 inches. Lucy and Akari have some differences in where their elbows are and whatnot, but this ain't science so Tier 1 is 3" and Tier 2 is 6" until I try it and it looks bad. That makes the bottom section a little less than 35" since the whole thing starts below the waistline, but the 36" muslin should work fine for the first pass.

The Akari Project

It's been so long since I made any progress on the Grace Kelly (or any other) project, that more vouchers have come and gone. (Two posts in 2012? I'm sure I did more than that...) Given the level of work that will go into that one, I put the left over money into some materials to make an intermediate project first. This one should be similar from a construction standpoint, but just not as much. No resewn lace bodice or any of that, but utilizing the underbodice pattern and tiered petticoats.

The design is taken from Akari's wedding dress from the manga version of 5 Centimeters Per Second.

To make the bodice, I just make the front underbodice piece from the other dress double-wide and make it close in the back instead of the front. I assume the visible part at the center back will be cosmetic with some sort of actual closure underneath. To make it carry over to the Grace Kelly, it will probably be some sort of zippered arrangement that continues into the skirt so a person could theoretically step into it.

For the tiered skirt section, I still need to decide on a height for Lucy so I can calculate the length of each section. Up til now, I've been getting by just draping on stuff and letting it fall wherever while I focused on the waist area. The picture doesn't show how many tiers this has, or the relative lengths of the unseen portion(s), so once I pick an overall length, I can make at least 3 levels, look at them and decide what looks best.