Linen guards are so boring. Having fixated on the idea of using velvet guards I turned my house upside-down looking for the spools of black velvet ribbon I -know- I have. Sadly I couldn’t find it. After hemming and hawing about it I decided I really did want velvet.. so I went out and I bought more ribbon. Viola, instant guards.
Saturday I sewed the bodice together, added the hook/eye, and added the guards. It’s looking mighty spiff.
Now for the skirt. “The Math” says I need 53 pleats which translates to 8 blocks per pleat. Each pleat has two sides.. so my pleating stitches will be over 4 blocks each (see math below).
MATH
The bodice bottom is 46.5″ around.
I have 179″ of fabric for the skirt.
I want the tops of each cartridge pleat to be at about 2 squares on the gingam which ends up at about 3/4″(3/8″+3/8″=6/8″). When this is attached to the bottom of the bodice I’ll need to add another 1/8″ to that to account for the bulk between the tops of each pleat. This give me a total of about 7/8″ for each pleat (6/8″+1/8″).
This gives me around 53 pleats (46.5 divided by 7/8″ ) around the bottom of the bodice.
Which means that each pleat needs to be around 3.37″ each (179 divided by 53).
If I followed this exactly then each pleat would be 9 blocks of gingam. Unfortunately that would make me have to deal in half blocks. Meh, I’d rather have to cut off a few inches of the skirt fabric. So instead I’m going with 8 blocks per pleat.
Each pleat has two sides which means I’ll be stitching over 4 block in my under/over pleating stitch (4+4=8).
I should have plenty of fabric left for the french seam and the skirt opening.