TV 216 #2

So I am pleased to say that this skirt is now in a completed and wearable state. Very exciting. There are still a few more things that I would like to do, but nothing else that must be done in order to wear it in public.

As you can imagine, any skirt that is supposed to come out looking like this:

is going to get to a point where there are almost unmanageable amounts of fabric. There were a few casualties of this process:

gathering the top piece of the bustle got a few "bubble" I decided they were not serious enough to unstitch the whole thing. 

After carefully pleating, pinning, and stitching the lower train to the upper train, I still managed to miss several layers of pleats. This did have to be redone. 

 After I attached the back pieces to the side pieces, the bottom apron was still drooping pretty low, so I rigged some ribbons underneath the apron to help hold the bottom hem at an appropriate height.

droopy apron

Ribbon rigging

There was a long hassle getting the skirt hemmed, but that was just tedium. Here's the finished version: bustled & hemmed.

Possible Changes / Additions

1) Undo the bustling

As cool as this is, I may undo the bustling once I make the jacket to go with this skirt. It may be better to have a smoother back. Here are some shots of the skirt before I bustled the flounces. 

2) remove the vertical trim

It looked really cool when I didn't use the same trim on the back bustle, but now I feel it's kind of distracting. 

3) add more trim made of the black and purple silk. 

I plan to incorporate these fabrics into the jacket, so I may have to wait until the jacket is completed to know if I really have enough to add more to the skirt. 

4) Add a removable dust ruffle. 

This is the piece that will get done first, if I have more time. I bought some snap tape and I plan to attach the tape either to the skirt or to the bustle/hoop. The dust ruffle should extend beyond the edge of the train and protect the skirt from dragging directly on the ground. Also, people are no longer trained to avoid stepping on women's skirts. It's my hope that if the ruffles extend 2 - 3" beyond the train, then they will be the most likely thing to get stepped on. Since they will be attached with snap tape, they should just break away, rather than ripping the train off or throwing me dangerously off balance. 

A final thought

It should be noted that I have yet to try this get up on. I hope that I can maneuver and sit down in it. Yes, that would be nice.