Petticoat Function

When making the lattice print skirt, I got very sidetracked by the decision to line it—sidetracked because the fabric I thought I would use had been set aside to make a petticoat.  I knew it wouldn't take all of it to make the petticoat, but I didn't want to use it in the skirt lining first, then discover there wasn't enough left to make the petticoat.  So!  Pause the lattice skirt to make the petticoat.

 

The main ingredients for this petticoat were some ivory fabric from the craft thrift store that turned out to be more polyester than I'd realized, and a bunch of also very polyester eyelet that I suspect I may have salvaged off a thrifted bed skirt, long long ago.

The eyelet was in three pieces, the two larger of which I had ruffled at some point, so I planned to use those to determine the lengths of the fabric ruffles.  I wasn't sure what to do with the remaining smaller piece, but then I noticed that the ruffled lengths had themselves been pieced, so I sewed the rest to the shorter ruffled piece, then ruffled that part, too.  I guess they both ended up about 90" long, because I attached them to fabric that I ripped in equal parts (one set wider than the other) and sewed together before sewing on the eyelet.

 

(Yes, every seam got serged at some point.) 

Then I gathered those two layers and sewed them to a tier I made 60" wide.  I worked flat, leaving the ends free, then sewing those ends into loops and then finishing the tier stitching to sew all of those layers together in a way that left the individual ruffles free from each other at the seams.  (I normally deal with ruffles in doll clothes by sewing their ends all together into the back seam 99% of the time.)

It was going to be a bit shorter than I wanted, so I ripped of some of the top of that 60" long tier, then gathered that and sewed it to a 45" long tier.

 

I then made a simple waistband casing, sewed a line of stitching down the center, and inserted two pieces of ½" wide elastic.

It doesn't have a super high volume, but it will still work nicely when I want a little something extra going on with my fuller skirts.  I can also totally layer my other two low-volume homemade petticoats with it, right?