shades of scarlett...

I am most of the way through a corded petticoat. I say most of the way because I think I may add another 20 yards of cording or so. I still haven't taken any pictures. I decided to ignore evidence suggesting that the petticoat should be gored and just corded the heck out of my standard big-butt-enhancing super-gathered tube type skirt. I thought it would be a fun experiment, and I'm happy. Since the cording doesn't hold out the skirt in the same way that something stiffer would, I didn't get the southern bell look, just the cone I was aiming for. The petticoat falls in big swooping curves, but when I tried an existing dress over it, the dress just bridges those. It's nice and swishy and it holds my skirts out far enough that it's pretty drafty underneath. It makes my old dress way too short, which is pretty funny-looking.

A bit more on construction of the skirt... I used some kind of 5/16 cording from the drapery-making section whose intended purpose eludes me. This got pre-washed, pre-dried, and then pre-untangled. Tip: throwing 30 yards of cord into the laundry without skeining it is stupid. I folded several rows into the hem at the bottom. Then I just used a wide zigzag stitch to attach the cord directly to the skirt in a big spiral. I figured that while the zigzag is ugly, it's not that much worse than a bunch of bias tape, which was my original plan. Since I neglected to ever purchase said bias tape, this worked out. I actually ended up going back and getting more, which I ran right alongside the first spiral. This added a lot of stiffness, so I'm going to do one more pass. And then I'll try to remember to get a picture.