Sunday was for pleats (not all day.. but a good chunk of it).
I’m totally cheating.. and I’m ok with that. For pleating the skirt I’m going to use a cheater strip of gingam. I’m relatively certain -they- wouldn’t have done this.. but I’m fundamentally ok with the cheat.
I found a nice woven-in gingham with (mostly) even blocks. Each block is ~3/8 inch square. (1)
I cut off a ~4″ wide strip as long as my skirt fabric. Folded it in half. Ironed it and then attached this to the top of the skirt. (2)
Then I did “the math” and figure out how many pleats for the dress. 52 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).
Then I flipped the cheater srtip so that I had a nice “finished edge” at the top of my skirt fabric (probably not necessary) and ran the gather threads. (3)
I pulled the gather strings tight to get my pleats. (4)
On my Cranach dress I attached the pleats directly to the dress. This meant that when I had to fiddle with the bodice I had to completely remove the pleats from the dress and then re-pleat the skirt and resew it. So to avoid that pain I’m gong to connect the pleats to a band of wool (the same as used in the outer fabric of the dress and then attach the band to the dress. The band is a 3″ wide strip of the wool with the edges folded inwards (5) and then sewn closed.
{NOTE: AFTER I took the pictures I realized that I had skipped 8 blocks on each of the gather stitches.. which ended up giving me ~25 pleats instead of 52 pleat. I have now unpleated that and repleated it skipping 4 block for each stitch. It just wouldn’t be a sewing project if I didn’t repeat at least one step in the process.}
Next to-do:
Attach skirt to band
Attach band to bodice
Trim skirt to length
Add guards. I want two guards. (2″ to hem, 5″ guard, 2″, 3″ guard).
Sleeves
MATH
The bottom of the bodice is about 45.5″ around.
I have 158.5″ of 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 52 pleats (45.5 divided by 7/8″ ) around the bottom of the bodice.
Which means that each pleat needs to be around 3.04″ each (158.5 divided by 52).
Rounding this, I’ll be using 8 blocks in the gingam as my guide for each pleat. (each block is around 3/8. 3/8 x 8 = 3 which is as close as I can come in whole blocks to 3.04). Each pleat has two sides which means I’ll be stitching over 4 block in my under/over pleating stitch (4+4=8).
It should leave me with ~2.5 inches left over. This will work for the french seam and for overlapping the skirt opening.