my geometry teacher would be appalled

I'm working on a skirt for the eternal venetian dress. In the quest for fairly level motifs on this exceedingly patterned dress (ooh, look at the walking couch), I did a teensy bit of math. Let us all hope it's better than the math that gave me a waistband that was way too big, eh?


 

I'm sure that my 9th grade geometry teacher, my committee, and my local dress engineer would all be perfectly horrified at the simplifying assumptions. Yes, I'm aware that these don't scale perfectly. Yes, I'm aware that the cosine of a small angle isn't quite 1. Yes, I'm aware that one needs to take that into account. I did. Sort of. Roughly. And yes, yes, I know, the dress isn't composed of triangles. Assume the horse is a sphere already. It's close enough. I'm not doing calculus to get the curves just so. Especially considering how badly I pleat things.

Here are a couple of comments for the Julie-types, who might be giving this thing some thought.

1. I didn't get as much width as I thought, having to cut a swath off each side to get everything match up. Whoever makes the motifs not quite overlap at the edges of the fabric is a marketing genius. And I despise them for it.

2. I've been thinking about the front closure thing. Due to the gigantic dips front and back, the total waistline is 40". That really ought to go over in one direction or the other. I tried getting into the bodice with the bottom tied together. No way, no how. It's mysterious. It's sort of like that couch that is stuck in the stairway in the Dirk Gently book.

3. Since I'm resigned to having to do something to let me get into the dress, I decided to do so boldly. I'm putting a seam straight up the middle. I think it's better to have that than to end up trying to cut and face a slit in the middle of the panel. Also, it's forcing me to be honest about my ability to sew straight (and *gasp* use pins) a lot earlier in the process. The seam doesn't look half bad, and I'm planning to close it up with a multitude of hook and eye closures. Hope this works.