Back in january when I did my sum-up on what to make for this years HSF challenges, I decided to make a 1850s daytime dress for the HSF 14. Paisley & Plaid. My original inspiration.

Love the skirt, and the fringes.

I had this great brown/white paisley bedsheet from IKEA that I was dying to use.

So when the challenge deadline approached, I got the fabric from my stash and started working.
This outfit took me a great while to compleat and I did take lots of photos while working on it, so I decided to choop the dress up into three different posts.

Starting with the skirt:

I ripped the selveges from the sheets to be sure to get straight edges. But I emedetly regreted that idea…This is how of the grain line the sheets were made. It differs about 15 cm from one edge to the other. And on top of that I discovered the print was made to match the crocket grain line, leaving me with lots of un- centered paisley prints. Bummer.

Well, that was too late to do anything about, so I just continued working. Ripping rows of fabric to make into gattered flounces.

I decided to make the skirt in three sections, attached to one big piece of underlayer, using 4 times the width of the base for each of the ruffels. I made sure they were all wide enough to overlap each other, and stiched them togeter, hemmed and sewed a gattering thread along the top.

Then I marked the placement on the white cotton under layer. 

Using all of the apartment for this.

Then I gattered one row at a time, and pinned it in place at the markings to get them perfectly straight.

Starting on row two.

When all the rows where in place it looked like some huge ugly curtain. 

As you can see, I almost didn’t gattered the top row at all. Because it will be gattered anyway when I attach the whole thing to the waistband.

Even though the ruffels overlap each other, I decided to put some exess fabric in between the rows to make sure no white will be visible once worn.

I did the same at the bottom, using the strip of pasisley to make a nice  whide hem.

Then I stiched the whole thing togeter, gathered the wasit and stiched it to the wasiband, and attached a hook and eye for clouser.

The finished skirt (worn over a crinoline):

The HSF facts will be included in the next post (where I’ll show the bodice), but I will give you some skirt facts right now just to make myself remember.

What: A 1850s skirt.

Fabric: 1 white cotton sheet (IKEA) and 1, 5 paisley cotton bedsheet (IKEA).

Notions: Thread, hook and eye.

Time: about 8 hours.