Ruffles. So very many ruffles.
If I could go back in time, I'd choose a totally different skirt design for my Gryffindor Dragon Bustle Gown, because what in the world was I thinking when I fell in love with this fashion plate and decided to recreate it with all those ruffles.
Those ruffles would take forever to sew! Those ruffles did take forever to sew! And, they took a significant amount of pins as well.
I'm getting quite ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning with the plan, the pattern, and cutting all the ruffles.
The above fashion plate from 1874 was the plan, and I decided to use the Truly Victorian 1875 Parisian Trained Skirt Pattern as my starting point. My grandma gave me this pattern for Christmas nearly a decade ago when I started planning the Gryffindor Bustle Gown project.
With some changed to the trim pattern, adjustments to the front drapery, and the addition of lots of ruffles to the back panel it would work admirably!
I began by cutting out all of the lining or base skirt pieces from a stashed piece of red polished cotton. I basted this together as my mock-up and tried it on over my bustle and other 1870's under garments.
It fit! The silhouette was great!
It just needed lots of ruffles!
Time to cut my silk!
The first piece of silk on the chopping block was a red striped thrifted curtain. I don't recall when or where I got this curtain, but it was a magnificent heavy silk. I disassembled it with my seam ripper.
In the fashion plate, on the back of the skirt, there were five sets of ruffles. Each one consisted of one wide ruffle with a narrower ruffle attached to the bottom of it. On my skirt the wide ruffle would be red and the narrow ruffle would be gold. In the fashion plate there are definite gaps between the ruffles, and that is the space my curtain silk would fill, as I wasn't sure I'd have enough of my silk yardage to fill in there after all the ruffles were cut. Once I started calculating I realized those ruffles were going to be insane fabric hogs. . .
The bottom half was more complicated thanks to the curved hem, but I got it done.
After those curved pieces of curtain silk, I was very happy to move on to cutting straight strips of my red and gold silk for the ruffles themselves - for the first few strips at least. Then it just got tedious. So. Many. Strips. Of. Silk. So Many!
And once all the pieces were cut out, the project got shelved for two years, because children. (More details in my previous post.) This spring the box of strips of silk was pulled out and opened up. I figured out which strips were meant for which ruffles and started pinning said ruffles together. For the top half of the back of the skirt each ruffle would consist of two full widths of red silk. For the bottom half each ruffle would be four widths. And for the gold ruffles that would attach to the red ruffles, I had a different plan.
I was finally going to use the birthday gift my husband gave me the summer we got married!
Antique fluting irons!
And at 12:15 am the day before day of the ball, my ruffled back skirt panel was done! Now all I had to do was finish assembling the skirt. . .
And everything would be fantastic!
In preparation my husband and kids got the irons all cleaned up for me with a wire wheel attached to a drill.
Look at the difference between the cleaned up top iron and the still waiting bottom iron!
I meanwhile sewed together and hemmed all my strips of gold silk - by machine, because there was way too much to even consider hand hemming.
Once the miles and miles of gold silk was hemmed, it was fluting time. The Quintessential Clothes Pen's blog post about using her fluting iron was invaluable, and I used her method to great success.
I warmed the first fluting iron on the stove in my cast iron skillet. One it was hot enough to sizzle water I pulled it out to use and put the second iron in the skillet to warm.
I drenched a small section of the silk with vinegar water then slowly rocked the iron over it, and I was left with me most delightfully fluted bit of fabric! I continued until my iron got too cool then swapped out the iron I was using with the one that was warming in the skillet. On and on it went. I fluted a few feet of silk every time I had a mostly clear counter and some time to kill. Whenever I appeared to have a long enough section fluted, I would pin it to one of my red ruffles.
To keep the gold silk fluted and ruffly looking when it was sewn on to the red ruffles I had to pin in-between each and every ridge. This took a very long time, and an awful lot of pins.
Sooooo many pins in fact that I had to go to the store and buy more glass headed pins more than once, despite the fact I'd bought a couple new boxes of pins before even starting the project.
I tried out every brand of glass headed pins easily available, as I needed them in a hurry and had to get them locally. I now have very definite opinions on which glass headed pins are worth using and which aren't and could right up an entire comparison on all of them.
There were over 600 pins used in each of the big lower ruffles on the back of the skirt. I took those ruffles everywhere to pin together. Basement, living room, bed, deck, waiting rooms, in the car in school pick-up lines. Pinning the gold ruffles may have been the single most labor intensive part of this project.
Finally, once each ruffle was pinned, I would carefully sew it on with the sewing machine - making sure not to run over any of my precious pins, because I would need them all again for the next ruffle.
These were my pin cushions before pinning a singe large ruffle.
And these were my pin cushions after pinning a single large ruffle.
After all that, actually attaching the red ruffles to the skirt was a piece of cake! First I used my surger to finish the seam allowance between the gold and red ruffles - not historically accurate, but who cares? It's what I had the time and mental compacity to do after fluting and pinning all those ruffles. Then I gathered up each red ruffle and pinned it and sewed it to the curved piece of curtain silk I described at the beginning of this post. Finally I sewed the curved pieces of curtain silk to my polished cotton skirt base.
And everything would be fantastic!
