Skirt

I don't know where the skirt blocks I draped off Lucy went, and the paper patterns hanging in the closet were just something I made up to standard measurements once upon a time. In between bouts of spring cleaning, I draped up some quick front and back skirt pieces. They may not have been too exact, but after transferring them to paper and using them to make up some longer pattern pieces, we'll see if it isn't functional. How much benefit is there to getting these things as tight as her muslin cover anyway? You're going to need a little ease to actually get the garment on anyway. I should probably come up with a post label that translates into "This is the first pass, so don't be surprised when I say 'close enough' and then re-do it right on next time'." Oh wait, I think this is the second post in a row where I claimed that, but only the first time when I'd actually done something so technically I'm correct.

It always looks like a mess at this point, even when it's right...

After the fact

Thinking I was going to work up some new test pattern pieces for the tiered skirt, I pulled all the tiers and the draped on "skirt" section off Lucy. The plan was to follow this draping book idea, and actually draft a skirt block, and whack it up into sections that the ruffles would be ruffled on to. I had skimmed over the book before and knowing generally how it was going to work, I just took everything of the form so new stuff could be added later. Well... after it was off, the now-obvious question came up, where were those ruffles located so the new pattern pieces could be made to match? Duh...

Naturally, the thing to in this case was to take that big chunk of fabric from the "skirt"and press it out and use it to drape out something else I saw in the book, totally unrelated to the Akari project. At least I now have some nice sections of muslin cut offs for testing ruffler adjustments and whatnot. Tomorrow I'll dig up the skirt drafts and make a few copies and start again. I theoretically have enough real materials to make the Grace Kelly twice, and that's good since I'm following my usual rule of really doing it up right, the second time.

Kilting and Minishing

"Up and down to adjust the firmly screw, you will find the different deepness of kilted." Is it poetry or philosophy? It's a ruffler.

A marks the firmly screw

Unfirmly the screw and adjust the arm up and down to deeply or undeeply kilt. On the left, there is a section of arm up kilting and on the right, arm down kilting.

In case the picture isn't clear, here's a drawing of what's what.

Arm up, Arm down

"Acording to this direction to adust, You will increase the pull of the blade, Contrarily the pull will be minished." It's been a long time since I was in iaido, but dig it.

B the minish

This must be to adjust the strength with which the blade falls, for lighter or heavier fabrics I suppose.

And some industrial strength kilting action...

The Garden of Words!

Oh snap! Yesasia has Kotonoha No Niwa / The Garden of Words up for pre-order! I placed my order before I posted this so I would be in line ahead of you. I'm sure that was totally necessary.

Practice Makes Practice

I keep saying I should practice with this scroll hemmer foot so I actually did it. After the fact I realized you can't see the finished edge that well, but there are already some pictures of that here. For this video though, you can see the magic scrolling action in action.

Back Again

I've made back pieces before, and should have them in the box o' fabric, but I tried pinning on some more. After I put them on, I went back and looked at the drawing, and noticed the back line is higher than I was thinking. Well, I can always bring it up later. Probably will bring it around more on line with that corner of the back side piece that sticks up above the tape line.

Related News Update

Update to the update, I think these videos are better.

Maybe

Okay, I adjusted the third tier so it appears shorter. Then I took the "skirt" that was on Lucy when I started pinning on these tiers and hiked it up and pinned it to the bottom of the form. This gives it a little poof and looking at it now, I'm not sure it's not going to work. From the manga photo, I think Tier 1 needs a little more length and all of them need more gathering.

The ruffler has cams for every-4-stitches or every-8 stitches and I'm pretty sure the 4 stitch is already in there. So I guess I have two options, one to shorten the stitch length so four stitches comes sooner or two, to minish the pull of the kilting. Number two is probably better, but when I tried it before, I pretty much got all or none. I bet I can crank that thing up though, so I'll try that first. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I don't think I want to use stitch length for this.

I didn't originally think of this as a short wedding dress, given that this was meant to be as much a version of the Grace Kelly as anything, but now I don't think I'm going any longer on this one.

Getting there

No flash photography please

Maybe it's the muslin, maybe it's the lack of underlaying poof, but I'm not taking a picture of this. I suppose it was educational though. Depending on the length, it's got to be one or two of the 15" (or whatever shorter length) tiers for #3 and maybe a #4. I'll guess it's going to be a 3 tier short number.

The pleats on the wider tiers don't carry down to the hem to give the same effect they do on the first tier, which I bet also gets made wider. Who knows. I need to adjust the minishment or something and think about it some more. I'm not sure the flared and puffed up tiers wasn't the right idea at the moment. But I'm not taking a picture of this even if it might make me make some sense!

By accident, I found a roll hemmer foot article in an old magazine. Next time I think I will take their advice about sewing across the leading corner and using the thread tails to help get things started. The fabric was really not wanting to get started though once it did, I was able to control the feeding much better and adjust for the not 100% straight edge. I do have a stash of rotary cutter blades from a previous Black Friday, and I was thinking about the fact that I don't have a cutting mat while I was trying to hem.

Not this weekend again

I cut some sections of 10" wide for Tier 2 and then tried to decide if I should go to 15 or 20 inches for Tier 3. I thought that two 15" sections (adding a Tier 4) might make a good overall length, but for now, I just made 20" sections, figuring I can move it up higher under Tier 2 to simulate the shorter section. Then everything got all busy and now it looks like it will be Monday before I have a chance to roll n ruffle these.

After cutting three each of the 10 and 20 inch sections, I realized that makes about 3 yards of muslin for testing just that bit. I buy the whole 25 yard bolts, but still, Coupon Commotion is this week so I thought maybe I should add to the stash. Fortunately I got busy, since I looked in the other closet and found like 5 extra bolts and realized I either have to cut a lot more samples or I'll be in danger of getting on one of those hoarder shows. But in 2025, when I start on the Grace Kelly in earnest, I'll be totally happy to have that much!

Experimental Tier

For today's trial, I used the 3/16" scroll hemmer foot to hem one side of a couple 36" wide strips of muslin to be used on the first tier. Still getting a feel for how to feed the fabric into the foot. Once you get past a certain point of rolling over to the left (and a picture would probably be good here), you can get a roll that gets rolled over and makes a sort of filled hem, that feels sort of like piping. Anyway, I got enough done to a usable point and switched back to the ruffler.

No, I didn't press it.

Especially as the tiers get larger and require multiple strips to make the circumference, I think I'll have to somehow baste the ends together. I got to the end of the first strip and then realized I didn't know how I was going to get the next piece in the slot. It can be tricky loading the first end, since the kilting blade got teeth.

The fabric was ruffled to the ribbon so that when it was turned back over the stitching, the hem is to the underside. I've been thinking about ways to use this for construction. On the actual dress, the ribbon won't be dark green. And while I didn't make a lot of effort to mold this sample to the skirt and form, I still think it will be better with the more moldable petersham than this grosgrain ribbon.

I forgot to put the arm back on at the time, but have now and this seems like a drawing appropriate length for Tier 1. I started with about 5" wide strips, but haven't measured what kind of seam allowance we're talking here since it was just for testing. I might want to add a little length since I expect to puff it up with stuff underneath and then you need the length to fall back down over that longer distance.

Also, I wonder about ruffling in different directions from the front center so that the pleats are mirrored side to side rather than just running around the body one way. I wonder if that is a stupid idea, given my current skill with the ruffler. Well these plans aren't about what I can do now anyway!