She Likes It! Princess Petunia Models her New "Tooth Fairy" Pettiskirt

Aw, now doesn't that make it all worthwhile?  Janice the Manice sent pictures of Princess Petunia trying on her pettiskirt with her pajamas after bath time.  My sister also sent me a video of the Princess trying to cast a spell on mommy, beating her with the pretty magic wand.  Don't mess with the Tooth Fairy!

 As you can see, my efforts hand-stitching the little ribbon flowers were pretty much a waste -- once the kid started twirling, the chiffon layers shifted and the ribbon flowers got lost in the mass of chiffon.  So next time I'd either have to sew on a LOT more flowers to make sure they are visible, or else move them up higher , maybe to the bottom of the satin waistband tier.

The waistband is a bit too big, too, so Janice cinched it with a hair clip.  If I was there in person, I could open up the waistband through that little elastic cave door and adjust it for her.  It would have been better to test fit the elastic to the princess before completing that step.

ADDED October 17, 2011:  I can't believe I never posted a picture of Princess Petunia wearing this pettiskirt for trick-or-treating last year!  I think she was the Tooth Fairy:

Princess Petunia as The Tooth Fairy, Halloween 2010

Tetelestai: It Is Finished! My Pettiskirt UFO is No Longer Unfinished! Wahoo!

If you're just now joining us, you can catch up to speed on this pettiskirt project for my niece, Princess Petunia, by clicking here. 

Last night before bed, I stitched one of the two skirt layers to the satin waistband tier.  This morning, I pinned the other layer to the satin waistband, right sides together.  I tried to err on the side of too many pins rather than too few, because the chiffon and the satin are both slippery suckers.   Here's the waistband satin rectangle with one layer stitched on to one side, and the other one pinned, ready to take to the machine:

I decided to use my walking foot to attach the chiffon layers to the satin waistband because I thought the regular presser foot might snowplow the ruffled chiffon all out of whack.  If you don't have a walking foot, you might want to stitch this step upside-down, with the chiffon ruffles next to the feed dogs and the satin layer on top.  I've got the raw edges aligned and I'm still using my pink Olfa line for my 1/2" seam allowance.

 At this point in the project, there is a LOT of chiffon fluffed up around the sewing machine.  I was glad I had pinned so thoroughly, but I still had to be careful not to let the satin layer get bunched up or twisted underneath the chiffon.

 There you can see it all nicely lined up to go through the machine.  I picked the red-headed pins because I like any color as long as it's red.  Oh, and also to make sure I could see the little buggers through the turquoise chiffon.  Sometimes they got caught in the holes in the bottom of my walking foot, and I tried to be vigilant about pulling them out as soon as the pins passed behind the presser foot so they wouldn't catch and snag in the mountain of frills behind the machine.

Here's what it looked like with both skirt layers attached, finally all one piece:

My pattern instructions told me to put the elastic casing in next, before sewing the side seam, but I decided not to do it that way because wanted the side seam allowance to be inside the two skirt layers instead of up against the princess's skin.  After all, princesses are very sensitive...  Since I have had only a few previous experiences sewing with elastic and none of them went very well, I hunted around through a couple of online tutorials to figure out how to proceed.  After watching the Martha Stewart Pettiskirt Tutorial video three times, and reading her written instructions a few more times, I finally figured out what the heck they were telling me to do.  By the way, I do not suggest that you make the whole skirt the way the Martha directions tell you to do it.  It's backwards of the way my pattern and every other tutorial say to do it, and I'm suspicious that the woman in the video (who sells pettiskirts commercially and claims to have invented them) may be intentionally obfuscating in order to sell more of her readymade skirts.  Sewing the skirt from the top down instead of from the bottom up would be a nightmare, trying to attach miles and miles of frill to the hem of a skirt that's already gathered up instead of to a flat layer!  But I digress...

You can see in the photo how I've marked with tailor's chalk the 1 1/2" space just below the fold that I am going to leave OPEN in the side seam, so I have someplace to thread the elastic through.

 Okay, side seam sewn, skirt flipped down wrong sides together, and we're ready to sew that elastic casing!

 In this photo you can see the little 1 1/2" hole in the side seam where I'm going to thread my elastic into the casing. 

Now, if you have never sewn an elastic casing before, you might think that it would be a good idea to stitch 1" down from the folded edge of fabric to sew a casing for 1" wide elastic.  You would be wrong, and you would be sorry (I did that once on a pair of pajamas for one of my sons).  This is like sewing rod pocket curtains, and you have to sew the tunnel wider than the elastic (or curtain rod) you will be driving through the tunnel or else you are going to get stuck. 

It turns out that the distance from my needle in center position is exactly 1 1/4" from the edge of the stitch plate, so I was able to use that as my guide as I stitched the casing; no pink tape required.

I pinned along the fold line of my slippery satin fabric before attempting to stitch the casing and again, I'm glad I did, because it was slipping and sliding all over the place.  Sewers' words of wisdom: At the end of your project, you'll regret the seams you didn't pin more than the ones you did!

 I raised my machine bed up so I could use the free arm for this part, although the skirt is SO hugely puffy and bulky that it was still tricky to control.

...and there you have it!  The elastic casing has been sewn, and you can see the little cave entrance that I left open for inserting my elastic.

At about this point in the process, I couldn't help myself -- I had to "try on" the pettiskirt and take a twirling break. I knew it wasn't going to fit me once I fit the waistband to the size of a 2-year-old...





 I used 1" wide "non-rolling" elastic for my skirt, and I hooked a big safety pin to the end to help me feed it through the elastic tunnel (known as a casing to serious seamstresses). 

You probably already knew about the safety pin trick, but I think my binder clip idea might just be an original innovation.  Scratch that -- I'm sure somebody has thought of this before.  Anyway, I used a small binder clip from Staples to keep the tail end of the elastic from getting accidentally pulled into the tunnel.

I overlapped the ends by an inch and used the triple straight stitch on my Bernina to sew a square with an "X" where the elastic overlapped.  I also stitched down vertically through the waistband with my triple straight stitch at the front and back of the skirt to make sure the elastic can't get all twisted up when the skirt is worn and washed and washed and worn again.  I loathe twisted elastic!

The next and last step in my pettiskirt pattern tells me to tie a bow and then hand-tack it to the skirt, but that doesn't sound very secure to me. Instead, I cut a 36" piece of satin faced ribbon, cutting the ends on a 45 degree angle with micro-serrated shears to minimize fraying.  I made a little pleat at the center and then used my trusty triple straight stitch to secure that ribbon firmly to the waistband of the skirt.  Then I tied my bow, and tacked through the knot part to secure the bow to the skirt so it can't come untied.

Ta da!

Hee hee hee!  How cute is THAT?!  I just have a handful of hot pink ribbon carnations that I want to stitch on by hand, and I can do that this evening while my boys are at choir rehearsal.

Update: Okay, here it is with the little flowers, really and completely, totally finished:

As I finished stitching the little flowers on by hand last night, my husband made helpful comments such as "What are those pink things supposed to be?  They look like wads of gum.  No, spit balls -- they look like pink spit balls."  Well, Lover Dear, they are supposed to be my own personal touch, and I sewed them on very securely so they could not come off and become choking hazards, so they have to stay, even if they look like used-up Bubblicious to you.  If I was not running out of time (Princess Petunia might be wearing this for Halloween), I might have used some of my leftover chiffon strips to make larger fabric rosettes to combine with my little ribbon flowers.  In fact, if you have lived this project vicariously through my posts and you think making a skirt from scratch is beyond what your sanity can handle, you could always purchase a plain pettiskirt from someplace like Chasing Fireflies and then embellish it with ribbons and little flowers or sequins or whatever from MJ Trimmings to make it your own.  If you do, send me a picture -- I'd love to see it!

Update December 26, 2010: It's only the day after Christmas, but I've just had an Epiphany!  If I ever make another pettiskirt, I'm going to use the adjustable buttonhole elastic, which you can find here.  There's a tutorial here on how to adapt readymade jeans by adding the buttonhole elastic. 

No, It's Not Done Yet... But the Pettiskirt Nears Completion!

Good morning and Happy Fall, everyone!  You probably know I've been working (off and on, with way more "off" than "on") on a pettiskirt for my niece, Princess Petunia.  For a normal person, this is probably a weekend project.  I'm not normal -- I started mine in July, was determined to finish it in time for my parents to take it up to the Princess last week when they went up to New Jersey...  and it's not done yet.  If you need to catch up, you can read the earlier posts here.

I have to say, it amazes me when I check my blog stats and see that day after day, my most popular posts continue to be the ones about this pettiskirt project.  It's so cool to think that there's an army of moms, grandmas, aunts, and entrepreneurs out there, most of us working solo in our own little sewing room, but so many of us scattered all over the world, all working on the same project.  Buried in heaps of chiffon, incredulous that SO MUCH FABRIC could possibly be required for such a TINY LITTLE PRINCESS...  I received an email from a reader in Australia yesterday asking about this project, and it got me re-energized to dive back in yesterday afternoon while the hotdish was in the oven.  Thank you, Marg!

The first thing I did yesterday was to overcast the edges of the satin fabric I'm using for the top tier, because SOMEDAY when this skirt is finished it's going to get lots of wear, and I don't want it fraying all to bits.  It took me 20 minutes to figure out what stitch I had the serger set up for last time I used it, and then I settled on just a two-thread overlock (because I'm lazy and had limited time, and just wanted to get on with it).  I tried to just barely skim off the edges of the fabric; the rectangle was 7 1/2" x 54" before overcasting, and about 7 1/4" x 53 3/4" when I finished.

This top tier of the skirt is going to get folded in half lengthwise with an elastic casing in the middle, so I decided to lightly press that center fold line in even though the directions didn't tell me to.  I'm nervous about getting a warm iron near the chiffon ruffles, so this way I won't have to press anything once the chiffon tiers are attached to the satin.

So far, I had attached the frill to the hem edge of the bottom tier of the skirt, ruffled up the bottom tier and attached it to the middle tier, so all the chiffon pieces were connected in a L-O-N-G frilly piece.  My instructions from Kari Me Away directed me to find the middle of this big, long piece and cut it into two pieces next, once for the top layer of the skirt and one for the bottom layer.  Then I had to gather up each of the chiffon layers and attach it to one of the long sides of my satin rectangle.  My pattern advised against trying to gather and attach this layer in one step, since you want to gather the chiffon stuff down to fit the satin tier exactly.  The pattern gives instructions for conventional thread-pulling, serger gathering, and ruffler foot gathering.  Feeling brash and dangerous, I whipped out my handy calculator, determined that I needed to gather my chiffon to more than 5x fullness in order for it to be too small to fit, so I cranked the little screw on the ruffler foot clockwise an indeterminate amount and gathered up my first tier. 

You can see in the photo, I'm just gathering a single layer of chiffon in this step, and I tried to keep the edge of the fabric just inside my hot pink 1/2" seam allowance line.  I'm going to stitch this to the satin piece separately with a half inch seam allowance and I wanted my initial ruffling stitches to be hidden in that seam allowance.  Not that anyone will be able to tell when it's all bunched up around the Princess's little Buddha belly, but I'll know...

Surprise, surprise -- when I carefully measure test strips of fabric to determine how much fullness I'm gathering in, I screw up and have yards and yards of fabric left over.  When I throw caution to the wind, skip the test-and-adjust step and just crank the screw until the gathers look about right, I end up gathering the piece down to almost exactly the size it needs to be, with just a wee bit of slack.  I thought I was going to have to ease a considerable amount of excess fullness in as I pinned the chiffon layer to the satin, but this was a piece of cake.

HOW CUTE IS THAT?!  You're looking at one of the two skirt tiers, pinned right-sides-together to one long edge of the top satin tier.  The finished skirt is going to be twice as fluffy.  This is starting to look like something, finally!

I think I'm going to add a few more pins before I sew that on, then I'll sew the other tier to the other side of the satin piece the same way.  After that, my pattern instructions tell me to put a casing for the elastic in the center of the satin piece (hence my lightly pressed crease line), and THEN sew a seam through all the layers to make the skirt into a tube.  Doing it that way would put a seam allowance on the inside of the skirt, though, next to the Princess's tender skin.  So...  I'm planning to sew the side seam first, then fold the skirt down to make the elastic casing (so the seam allowance is hidden between the two layers of the skirt).  I think that will look neater.

But none of this will be happening today, because my cleaning service will be here any minute and I have stacks of fabric samples piled all over the living room where I was working last night...  Because the piles of paperwork all over the desk AND floor of my office prevented me from working in there...  *SIGH*

More Pettiskirt Ruffles!

If you missed the earlier posts chronicling this pettiskirt progress, click here to catch up.  Up until yesterday afternoon, the pettiskirt for Princess Petunia was still exactly the way it was when I last posted about it on July 14th.  After simultaneously ruffling and attaching the ruffle to the bottom tier of the skirt, I discovered that my ruffler setting was only giving me 2 1/2 to 3 times fullness for most of the hem ruffle, and I was discouraged by how many yards of carefully cut 2" strips of chiffon were left over.  I decided NOT to attempt to rip out stitches and redo the hem ruffle, but I've been distracted with work and the organized chaos known as Back-to-School...  Those are my excuses. 

However, when I looked at my blog traffic statistics yesterday morning, I was amazed by the volume of traffic my pettiskirt posts were getting, not just from people I know personally, but from people as far away as Japan, Russia, and New Zealand.  Somehow, knowing that there are so many other folks out there working on this project has given me the jolt of motivation I needed to get back in that sewing room, rip the dust cover off my sewbaby, and dive back into that mountain of ruffled chiffon.  I hope that all of those sewers who visited my blog in search of pettiskirt tips found some useful information here, and I want to thank them all for stopping by.  Apparently September is National Sewing Month (who knew?), so what better time to finish this up?  My parents are headed up to New Jersey to visit Janice the Manice's family in a few weeks, so that gives me a deadline for my project.  I'd like to send Princess Petunia's pettiskirt up with them when they leave for New Jersey on the 24th.

One of the problems with letting so much time lapse in the middle of a project is that, when you come back to it, your head's not in the game anymore and you have to reread all the instructions, figure out where you were, and what you need to do next.  I actually had to come back downstairs (no computer in my sewing studio -- YET!) and reread my earlier posts about this project to refresh my memory.  The next step in my project was to simultaneously gather and attach the bottom tier of the skirt (the one I previously attached the hem frill to) to the second tier of the skirt.  I expected this step to go a lot faster than the previous step.  After all, since each step is gathering four-to-one, you have only a quarter of the fabric to deal with each time you move up one layer in the skirt.  However, I found that I had to run the machine at a slower speed this time in order to keep the top layer of gathered fabric from catching itself under the needle.  I had to stop three times to rip out stitches because of that, and it was NOT fun.  VERY PLEASED with the decision not to rip out and redo the entire hem frill, by the way -- that was definitely the right decision!  But I just now remembered -- too late to help with yesterday's issues -- that I had temporarily reduced the machine speed on my Artista last time I was ruffling to reduce these kinds of problems.  So, if your machine has this capability, try reducing the motor speed to between 50-75%.  And, since I'm sharing tips, let me also warn you to keep an eye on your bobbin thread!  You will go through a lot of thread for this project, and it's best to make sure you have a full bobbin before you start ruffling up each layer of the skirt.  Running out of bobbin thread will slow you down.

In this photo, you can really see how I have the two layers of chiffon fabric feeding through my ruffler foot (except that the bottom layer is actually UNDER the ruffler foot because it is not gathering at all).  Again, I'm using that pink low-tack Olfa quilting ruler tape to mark my 1/2" seam allowance (more information about that product is available in previous posts).  I'm attaching the layers right sides together, as directed by the pattern instructions from Kari Me Away.  This puts the little 1/2" ruffled seam allowance on the INSIDE of the skirt, but it would be pretty to put that on the outside of the skirt if you prefer, as it makes a little mini-frill between each tier of the skirt.

Ta-da!  That's what it looks like when you've got the hem frill attached to the bottom tier of the skirt and the bottom tier gathered and attached to the middle tier.

...and that's the whole length of it!  Next, I'm supposed to cut this whole long thing into two equal lengths because I'm making a two-layer skirt.  The top tier of the skirt is a double layer of poly satin, and I'm going to serge the raw edges of that to ensure nothing frays before I gather the bottom two tiers of the skirt onto the top tier.  The end is in sight!  Also, I should mention that even though I have dragged this project out over months and weeks, it really hasn't taken me that much time.  I spent about an hour and a half sewing yesterday, and about the same amount of time back in July when I did the hem frill.  What took longest was cutting miles and miles of chiffon strips, so I highly, highly recommend that you buy rolls of pre-cut chiffon for this project.  Hopefully, next time I post about this project I will be at the finish line!

Pettiskirt Progress: The Ruffler Cooperates and Conjures Up Some Frills

I promised to post some big, high resolution images once I figured out where to put the fabric in the ruffler foot, so here they are.  I put the 2" frill strip between the ruffler teeth and loosely into the guide suggested by the pattern instructions, but I disregarded what the pattern said about putting the 5" wide bottom tier fabric into another slot of the ruffler foot.  Instead, I put the flat tier fabric completely underneath the ruffler foot, not in any grooves or channels or guides whatsoever, which is how the Bernina video I posted last time suggested. 

In this shot, hopefully you can see how the 2" ruffle strip sits in that little elbow-shaped guide (I know it's hard to tell with the sheer fabric).  You can't really use that as a guide, though; you have to eyeball the center of your frill strip as it's stitching.  You have to keep an eye on the flat bottom layer as well in order to keep that 1/2" seam allowance with the frill edge extending 1/2" past that, and once again, a long-ago impulse-buy from the notions aisle came to my rescue.

I switched back to my regular clear presser foot and used a square see-through quilting ruler to line up with the needle and the markings on the stitch plate, then used hot pink Olfa Glo-Line Tape to mark exactly where the edge of the bottom layer of fabric needed to be in order to attach the ruffle 1/2" from the raw edge of the bottom tier.  This narrow, low-tack tape is sold in a package with several different colors, and is meant to be used for temporarily marking lines on quilting rulers.  I hated the tape for its intended purpose, but I'm glad I didn't throw it away because the pink line was very easy to see through the blue chiffon and it made it much easier to feed the two fabric layers in more or less accurately.  It doesn't leave any sticky residue on your sewbaby, either.

Now, remember in my last pettipost I told you that I measured a 24" strip of fabric and made sure it measured 6" after ruffling so I knew I had the ruffler foot adjusted to 4x fullness?  Well, now is the part where you get to learn from my mistakes so your pettiskirt will turn out better than mine.  Look at how many ruffle strips were leftover after I ran out of bottom tier to stitch it to!  I was so busy keeping my frill strip feeding through so it stitched down the middle and keeping my flat layer feeding through next to my hot pink line, that I didn't notice that the flat layer was gathering slightly along with the frill strip and I wasn't getting the fulness I was supposed to get in the ruffle.  So next time, I'm going to do my test ruffling the exact same way I'll be stitching my project -- I should have measured a 24" strip of ruffle and made sure it gathered down to 6" when I was simultaneously stitching to a flat fabric layer, instead of just sewing the ruffle alone for the test.

I didn't realize anything was amiss until I was at least halfway through ruffling the frill onto the bottom skirt tier.  At that point I was able to compensate by putting a bit of resistance or drag on the flat bottom layer as I fed it through, which kept it flat and allowed the top frill to gather up a LOT tighter.  Since I'm making a double layer skirt, I'll just put the less-frilly layer underneath.  Here's what the not-frilly-enough wimpy portion looks like:

...and here's what the whole thing was supposed to look like, with the frill gathered to 4x fullness:

MUCH better, right?  I am tempted to pull out all of the wimpy ruffles and redo them, using up the rest of my frill strips, but it's about 20 yards' worth and I'm worried that I'll rip the chiffon and end up with an even bigger mess.  I don't have enough chiffon to cut a new bottom layer strip and start over from scratch.

When the whole thing is piled up on the table, you can't tell some frills are frillier than others.

That's just the bottom tier of a 3-tier skirt, mind you, and it's going on a little 2-year-old.  Hmmm...  Am I being neurotic about this?

Well, I have to take a breather from this project for a few days anyway because I have a ton of work to do on clients' projects, my house is a disaster, and I'm trying to find time to learn new interior design software, new embroidery software, and my new iPhone.  When I come back to the pettiskirt this weekend, I think I will unpick the stitches on my test sample and see whether I can remove the ruffle without ripping holes in the fabric.  Once I see how that goes, I'll decide whether I rip and redo or continue sewing and make the best of what I've got.

The Ruffled Riot? Ruffler's Revenge? Or Ruffler Redeemed? The Jury is Still Out

Okay, so last night after the kids were asleep I did get into my studio and get my Bernina Artista 200E/730E sewbaby set up with Ruffler Foot #86.  I cut a test strip of chiffon 24" long, and it ruffled up to 6" on the very first try without any further adjustments, so I'm all set for the 4x fullness that my pettiskirt calls for.  I ended up using a size 70 quilting needle, stitch length 2.5, and regular construction weight Metrosene polyester thread, all of which seem to be working fine, and I switched to my straight stitch throat plate and set the machine to run at half speed.  Here's my little sample ruffle strip, slightly wonky but not bad for a first try:

However, my pattern instructions want me to stitch down the CENTER of my 2" hem frill strips while simultaneously attaching them 1/2" from the edge of the bottom skirt tier, which will save lots of time and thread.  So my next trial run involved ruffling down the center of the top frill layer while simultaneously stitching it to the flat layer, but I'm having trouble feeding the two fabric strips evenly so that the stitching stays right down the center of the frill, but just 1/2" from the edge of the flat piece, and I have a feeling it's because I'm not using the guide slots on the ruffler foot properly. 

See?  I started out sewing down the center of the frill, but then I began to veer off towards the sides as I started paying attention to the bottom fabric layer.  The pattern talks about "insert the hem frill in slot G1, and insert the skirt tier in slot G2."  The pictures aren't large enough and the resolution isn't good enough to be able to see exactly where the pattern author is threading which fabric over which guide, and the transparency of the fabric doesn't add to the photo's clarity, either.  I threaded the bottom fabric layer through the little fork-prong-thingys, but that just made the edge of that fabric layer curl under like a rolled hem, which you can see in this photo of the wrong side:

The so-called instructions that came with the ruffler foot are a waste of tree pulp, and the Bernina Feetures books, which have been a godsend with most of my Bernina footsies, don't shed light on this dilemma either.  Why does it matter?  Well, it would be relatively easy to feed the two fabrics through with cut edges aligned, but when the top layer has to be offset by 1/2" and there's no "barrier" guide for either fabric, they just want to slip and slide all over the place -- and this is with my machine set at half speed, or about 450 stitches per minute (my drapery workroom friends will laugh at me because their speed racer commercial machines make domestic machines seem like slowpokes to begin with). 

So I went to the Bernina web site in hopes of finding a better photo, or video, showing how the fabrics should be inserted into the guides for different applications, and came up empty handed.  However, I did find a helpful little video clip there showing how the ruffler foot works and how to adjust the fullness of the pleats or gathers.  This would have been helpful the first time I took the ruffler foot out of the box, and if you are new to your ruffler foot I think this video shows how it works better than any of the written instructions.  In this video, they seem to be putting the flat layer of fabric completely underneath the ruffler attachment, not in any guides at all, so maybe I will try that next.  Maybe I just need a little more practice with it, too.  So far, I have spent about 10 minutes actually sewing, and an hour and a half researching and blogging about it. 

If/when I finally figure this out, I'm going to post a very LARGE, high-resolution photo showing EXACTLY where you should stick your fabric...  Oh wait; that doesn't sound good...

Pre-cut Rolls of ANIMAL PRINT Nylon Chiffon for Pettiskirt Projects!

I've just died and gone to fabric heaven (again)!  My friend Tammi's comment to my previous post about leopard print chiffon inspired me to do a quick google search, and I was delighted to discover that AFC Express has recently added pre-cut rolls of animal print nylon chiffon to their product offerings.  This is the site I purchased my turquoise nylon chiffon yardage from, and they definitely didn't have this stuff at that time.  They are selling each of these prints in 30 yard rolls in various widths from 2" to 10", perfect for pettiskirt projects of all sizes.  Can't you just see a zebra print pettiskirt with a red ribbon sash, or a cheetah print skirt with hot pink?  I'm sure I have grown as a person and learned valuable lessons from yesterday's folding and cutting ordeal, but I have a feeling I'm going to be making an animal print skirt the easy way with these pre-cut rolls next time.  Maybe I'll make the leopard print skirt in a women's size 6...  How embarrassed would Lars be if I wore a twirly princess skirt next time I took him to the grocery store?

Man, I can think of all sorts of uses for these precut rolls of chiffon...  They could be used as frill "stripes" going down a sheer drapery panel or bed drape for a funky 'tween girl's bedroom, for instance...

Princess Petunia's Pettiskirt: Making a Start at Last!

A week ago, I was all fired up about starting this girly-girl pettiskirt project, and then I got an emailed video clip from Janice the Manice that featured Princess Petunia, twirling around and dancing in the pink tutu and rhinestone tiara that Janice's mother-in-law bought for her.  *SIGH!*  I know, a tutu in hand is worth two pettiskirts in the bushes, and a grandmother on a shopping mission cannot be stopped.  Still I felt discouraged and had to sulk for a few days, wondering whether my pettiskirt efforts would be in vain, despairing over whether the pettiskirt of my not-yet-started-labors would be redundant.  Yes, my pettiskirt will be nicer than this little pink costume tutu, but what are the odds that my two-year-old neice will have developed a sufficiently discriminating eye for fashion to make that distinction?

Janice the Manice (my little sister) says that the pink tutu is a costume that lives in the toybox and is not permitted to be worn outside the house.  She says that the tutu is scratchy, and does not make a satisfying swooshy noise when twirled.  She says that the turquoise pettiskirt can be worn all day long with a cute little tee shirt, and leggings in the fall.  In a nutshell, Janice the Manice says that SHE can tell the difference between the tutu and the Pettiskirt of Dreams, and she still wants me to make the pettiskirt.  I feel so much better now!

In case you missed my previous posts about this project, I'm using the pattern instructions from Kari Me Away.  So today I accomplished Step One: Cutting the Fabric.  This sounds so deceptively simple, but it turns out that nylon chiffon is a slippery, uncooperative beast when you are trying to fold a 16-yard piece up to about 36" wide so it fits on your cutting mat, all the while keeping the selvages and cut edges lined up neatly and wrinkle-free.  The idea is to cut all the strips lengthwise instead of across the grain, because there are a LOT of strips to cut.  Fourteen 2" x 576" strips and four 5" x 576" strips, to be exact.  After an initial failed attempt at folding and packaging the nylon chiffon on my own, I called in reinforcements in the form of my mother, and we battled the fabric together.  What finally ended up working best was folding the fabric in midair like a sheet, using mini binder clips to hold the slippery edges together between folds.  Then we'd have it hanging smoothly in the air, but everything would shift out of whack when we laid the fabric down on the cutting table, until I remembered my handy dandy tag gun.

I bought this nifty contraption from Rowley Company.  It works just like the tag guns that retail stores use to attach price tags to garments, except that I have 1/4" and 1/2" tags instead of the long ones for price tags.  I bought it for my drapery installation tool box that I keep in my car, as it comes in handy for things like training jabots and cascades to hang properly.  Whereas pinning can cause an unnatural-looking pucker in a drapery treatment, that little bit of slack left by the tag gun holds the folds in place the way I want them but with a much more natural effect.  Anyway, while my mother held the folded fabric up in midair, I used the tag gun to secure the fabric down both 54" long sides as well as across the bottom.  Then, when we moved it to the table, we had far less shifting and were able to get the fabric completely smooth and wrinkle free for cutting. 

You can see the little tags better in the closeup picture.  I used a small scissors to clip and remove the tags as I came to them while I was cutting. 

 

The rotary cutter and cutting mat were a godsend for this, although part of me felt that I should be cutting into fabric for a new quilt instead of this evil slippery chiffon, but all in due time.  I have a feeling that folding and cutting the fabric will turn out to have been the most difficult part of this project.  It's a lot like sewing drapery panels, actually -- you read the directions and it's all straight cuts from selvage to selvage, blind hems...  Easy sewing, anyone can do this, right?  Until you are rolling out expensive silk drapery fabric on the hardwood floor in your foyer because that's the largest flat surface in your home, crawling around on your hands and knees as you try to cut fourteen perfectly square panels to exactly 148" each, with the pattern motif in exactly the same spot on each panel...  Been there, done that, not going there again any time soon.  A skilled drapery workroom (with gigantic worktables designed especially for handling these huge lengths of fabric) is worth every penny and then some.  My sewbabies would rather make quilts than drapery panels anyway!
 
By the way, Kari Me Away sells rolls of precut chiffon, as well as complete pettiskirt kits on her web site so you can start sewing right away.  If you'd like to make a pettiskirt for the little princess in your life but the thought of cutting all those chiffon strips makes you ill, the kits or chiffon rolls would be a huge timesaver.  I was tempted to go that route myself, but I wasn't excited by the color choices. 
 
Here you see the fruits of today's labors, a gazillion yards of nylon chiffon draped all over my treadmill (which I have actually been using lately, so I'm not going to leave the fabric draped there for very long!):
 
 

Next up: First thing in the morning, I have to drop off a client's fabric and work orders to my drapery workroom, and make a few business-related calls, but then I am headed back into my studio.  I am going to use my little vacuum gizmos to suck every last speck of lint out of my sewbaby, give it a couple drops of oil, and put on the ruffler foot, the correct needle (whichever one that turns out to be), and the perfect shade of turquoise thread.  I'll need to do some test ruffling on scraps of chiffon to get the ruffling adjusted to four times fullness, but then I should be able to gather the ruffles and attach them to the tiers all in one step, which will get me that much closer to the finish line (and that much closer to the next quilt!).

Wish me luck!

Hesitation, Procrastination, & a Handful of Excuses: I'm FIXING to Start That Pettiskirt Project!

WELL... As you can see, the Princess Pettiskirt pattern has arrived from Kari Me Away, and I have also received the turquoise nylon chiffon from AFC Express, the 1 1/2" single face satin ribbon in Shocking Pink and the 32 mm carnation ribbon rosettes in Shocking Pink, both from M&J Trimming, and the turquoise polyester crepe back satin and 1" non-roll elastic have both come in from Fabric.com.  I have plenty of thread in this color (at least I'm pretty sure I have enough) because this was the color of the bridesmaids' dresses for Janice the Manice's wedding.  So I have everything I need for this project, and it has all been neatly stacked in my sewing room for about a week and a half now -- what's my excuse?

I did at least open the pattern envelope and glance through the instructions.  They include what seem to be pretty detailed information about gathering with ruffler feet, which is a good thing.  Here's a picture of my Bernina Ruffler Foot #86, in case you're not familiar with these contraptions. Intimidating, isn't it? Although I've owned a ruffler footsie for my sewbaby for several years (ever since I tried it out in mastery classes), the only project I've used it on so far was the ruffled ribbon inserted in the edge of Princess Petunia's baby quilt, and I seem to recall that there was some struggle and swearing involved in the process.  I'm sure that, as with all sewing techniques, there's a learning curve associated with the ruffler foot, so hopefully some of these tips and tricks will make the ruffling go more smoothly for me this time.  Because there is A LOT of ruffling to be done on this pettiskirt...

Well, I've been busy working on several design projects for clients, and then I was sick, and then there was Father's Day (which included a water gun war that ended with a head laceration requiring a trip to Urgent Care and two staples), and then there was that day that I realized the house was filthy and went on a crazed cleaning spree, so those are my excuses.  Today I've got some paperwork to attack here in my office, laundry, grocery shopping, and a doctor appointment later this afternoon for the little Walking Wounded One, so I don't forsee lots of free time for sewing.  However, the great thing about having a dedicated sewing room is that I don't have to waste any time putting projects away or taking them out again, and even 10 minutes a day adds up to eventually completing a project.

Sometimes I think the hardest part of any project is just getting started, so my plan for today is to bring the pattern instructions with me to read while I wait in the carpool line this afternoon to pick up the boys from Camp Invention.  Then tonight, after the kids are asleep and the lunches are packed for tomorrow, I hope to at least get started cutting the chiffon into all those long strips.  Maybe tomorrow afternoon after my hair appointment I can find some time to get my sewbaby set up with the right needle and thread and do some practice to get comfortable with my ruffler foot before tackling the actual project.  I have a meeting with a client on Thursday morning and then Bernie and I are headed to Charleston and/or Pawley's Island on Friday for a quick weekend getaway without the kids (thank you, Grammy and Grampa, for your babysitting hospitality).  Then I have a client's drapery installation scheduled for midweek once we get back, but other than that my schedule is still pretty open next week so I'm hoping to find some good blocks of time to work on the pettiskirt.  One day at a time!

Next Up: A Swirly, Twirly, Princess Pettiskirt for Princess Petunia!

So, my sister Janice the Manice mentioned recently that she wants to get my 2-year-old niece, Princess Petunia, something called a "pettiskirt" for twirling around in circles, but she hasn't yet because they are so expensive.  Having only boys at our house, I didn't know what she was talking about until the Chasing Fireflies catalog came in yesterday's mail.  For those of you who are as ignorant of pettiskirts as I was, a pettiskirt looks like a tutu from a ballet costume, only a little longer, with satin at the top and some kind of bow.  I dug around a bit and discovered that Martha Stewart had a segment on pettiskirts on one of her television shows, there are a whole slew of tutorials on how to make them on the internet, and the high end children's boutiques and catalogs charge $80 for them.  This is apparently a very hot item for girly-girls.

Where were pettiskirts when we were little girls, dressed in drab maroon velour and plaid back in the '70s?  Not only have I decided that yes, Princess Petunia does need a pettiskirt to fulfil her inner twirler, but I probably need one, too.  I googled "pettiskirt pattern" and found this one by Kari Me Away. 

This site also sells kits with pre-cut rolls of polyester chiffon and everything you need to make one skirt, but they only had a couple of colors to choose from so I just ordered the pattern.  Like I said, I found several sites offering free instructions for this skirt, but they all seemed to have been written by sewers with more garment making experience than I have, and the directions didn't seem clear enough to me.  Also, whereas the Kari Me Away pattern calls for 16 yards of 54" wide chiffon to make one size 3T skirt, the free pettiskirt instructions only called for 4-6 yards per skirt.  I want this pettiskirt to be just as full and floofy and over-the-top as the boutique skirts, so I'm going with the double layer, 3-tiered, 16 yard version from Kari Me Away, like the purple one shown in this photo.  However, one tip I picked up from reading the online tutorials was to look for nylon chiffon rather than polyester chiffon, because the nylon chiffon doesn't fray.  I found a pretty azure blue shade of 100% nylon non-fray chiffon for just $1.59 per yard here.  Now I just need to get a little piece of satin for the top of the skirt and brush up on the ins and outs of my ruffler foot!