1915 Picnic Dress, Part III: Skirt

As you recall from my sketch, the skirt has several layers to it– an overskirt, an underskirt, and an apron-ish panel in front. When I decided to make this outfit into a dress, I originally planned on stitching all of the layers to a single waistband to ensure that they’d all stay properly aligned. However, after getting most of the way through the process I decided that the weight of the underskirt was pulling everything down too much, so I ended up making it separate from the overdress. The whole process was a serious pain…

For the underskirt I first just cut a single rectangle about 2 yards long and ran two horizontal decorative tucks at the hem. I made them deeper than my sleeve tucks– about 1″. I’d originally planned on doing three tucks to mimic the sleeves, but I had some issues with placement and ended up with only two. I used a folded sheet of paper as a guide to keep the width consistent.

I stitched up the back seam after sewing the tucks, and used the selvedges for the top and bottom of the skirt, hemming the skirt to the correct above-the-ankle length. Happily, my mistake with the spacing of my tucks turned out all right, because turning up my hem twice made it just about the depth of the tucks, which looked intentional.

Upcycled Birthday Princess Dress, Part III: Revising the Design

So, now that I’ve bought the bridesmaid dress to use for my purple fabric I’ve had to adjust my previous design sketches a bit. Partly because the fabric is so pretty that I can’t bear the thought of this being a one-use dress, so I’ll have to make the size adjustable– that’ll require some structural changes. The other reason is that the embroidery on the bodice just cries out to be displayed properly, which I wouldn’t have been able to do with my original design even if it had been adjustable to begin with. So I’m scrapping the bodice part of it, at least, and starting over.