X-Marks "Cheerleader" Skirt

[Alan H]

<i>claps hands, excitedly

[cloves]

Uhmm, unless I'm mistaken the under pleats are the non-wool part right ?
Whichever it is, I know the sett part (I wish Jenn would give me back my kiltmaking book so I could look it up ..) on the outside came out awesome and I too am looking forward to seeing it all wrapped up and done.
Ya done good, I bow in thine general direction


CT - cool, one hour til beer time !

i'm so confused......but still really impressed!

[The F-H.C.A.G.]

Don't worry, all will become clear. Now, after I had joined all the pieces, I had to hem the bottom-not possible to do a nice even selvedge with all of the strips, besides which the tartan I had was a strip from the middle, so no selvedge there.

I just folded up once (because, if I had folded under twice for a more finished edge it would have made the hem too thick to hold a good pleat), pressed it and pinned it.


And sewed it down. I have chosen to do pretty much all of the stitching on this one with the machine, and I actually chose black thread for a mild contrast.



Then I began to press in the pleats below the fell (actually, I'll be honest here, I screwed up and pressed them all the way to the waist band, so will have to fight that when tapering the fell). You can sort of see the black thread on the hem at the top of the picture here, although the picture is a bit blurry Panache!



There cloves, can you see now how the black is the inner pleats and the sett of the tartan is displayed on the outside?



I pinned both the inner and outer pleats to hold until I could get back to it. I also bar tacked along the fell line, but did not get any pictures of that process, because it was done while Panache had the camera elsewhere, sorry guys!

Today, I am going to sew the inner pleat edges (the black material) and the outer pleat edges as well. I could probably get away with not sewing the outer pleat edges, but this is where the seams are and an extra line of stitching will fold the raw edge inside and prevent unraveling. Also, the top stitching in contrasting black thread looks really good!

But, as it is Mother's Day, I'm going to go have a nice leisurely picnic in the park with my family before proceeding. Be back soon!

Be well,

[Arlen]

This looks like it is going to be another fantastic kilt. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished result.

[cloves]

aha! it's all becoming clearer now.

[Warhoover]

This is neat watching how your project is progressing. Great method and detail. I am sure it will be wonderful when you finish it!

[The F-H.C.A.G.]

So, my day was less productive than I thought it would be. I forgot to mention that I had gone on a 7 mile hike before I posted at mid day. Then we had our picnic and I proceeded to work on the skirt some more. The mistakes began to come out today .

First, the bar tacking I did at the fell line was a bit premature. I had to remove it in order to be able to sew the pleat edges.



Then I sewed up the inner pleat edges.



And the outer pleat edges (again, I probably could have skipped this part, but it stabilizes the raw edges of the seams between the black and tartan fabric).



Here's how it looks, all laid out with the pleats arranged (I flipped over a little on the bottom to show the inner pleat).



I also had to sew on the strip with the velcro. Here's where it needs to be, but as you can see, it needs to be sewn over the wide pleat under the apron, and under the edge of the left hand hem.



It was tricky, but I was able to do both, with the machine, without stitching showing on the over apron (except on the very top, where the waistband will be)



Next...how I discover I have a big a**

Be well,

[The F-H.C.A.G.]

So, I now am down to the hardest part. I need to figure and pin in the taper. I did the figuring last night, in the shower, but the actual application is much more difficult. Remember (if you read the work sheet in my first post) I measured the widest part of my butt as 40" and my waist (actually, a little lower, because I want this to ride a little low) as 35", so my taper is not too extreme (only 5"). I have 11 pleats, but won't taper the first, last and middle one, which leaves 8 pleats (5/8" each, or 4 at 1/2" and 4 at 3/4"). Turns out, it really is easier to just sit down and start pinning and see what looks good.

So I pinned,



and, pinned... OWWW!



Then, I thought, maybe I should pin down the bottom of the fell, and just hold this up against myself to be sure it fits well there, before
I keep hurting myself. Sure enough, it did not fit!!!!!

Apparently, my butt is closer to 42" than 40"! Maybe I should do more hiking .

I have very little material left, but I do have one slightly irregular strip that can be made into another pleat-I'll need to rip out the hem, one pleat edge and one join and put the extra pleat in (right next to the underapron, to preserve the sett). Here's a preview, but I'm too discouraged to do any more today (and it's too late). I will continue on my next day off (Thursday, I think).

The new pleat is to the right (not yet inserted, of course). Some may recognize this as the scrap of fabric I used to test the properties of my two fabrics together.



WAAAAAHHH!!!!!!

Be well,

[Mr. MacDougall]

Fortunate you had another scrap that fit into the sett.

[brandycr]

Wow thats really starting to look nice .