Ah, petticoats. They add shape and volume to costumes, and can look absolutely gorgeous despite the fact that they won’t be seen. They are also… A complete pain in the ass to make. 😛
I’ve only made one petticoat in my life (up until this one). I bought an obscene amount of netting from JoAnn to make one for my Princess Tiana costume (which I will get back to working on ASAP because I’m seriously ready to get done with her and take her out for adventures ❤ ). It’s like three layers, and gathering all of that fabric was probably one of the most tedious things I’ve ever done. I’m a little OCD when it comes to certain things. If I make a costume and use my serger, I like to have thread that somewhat matches, even if you’re not going to see it. I like colors to match, and so in my mind, my Tiana petticoat is for Tiana, I bought netting that matches the color of the skirt for that costume. So I felt like I needed to make one for this costume. THIS petticoat is going to be an “all-purpose” petticoat. I’m using white cotton fabric, white works with anything, so this petti is meant to be worn under whatever costume I want, in the future.
First off, I am SO GLAD I chose cotton. Making petticoats is tedious regardless, but using cotton over netting just makes life easier. When I first decided to make one for this, I decided to try something other than netting. I did my calculating and was prepared to buy an obscene amount of cotton to make a two layer petticoat. But then one day, I had a flash. It hit me that we carry extra wide quilting cotton at work. And then I went a step further and realized that instead of making a two-layer skirt, I could make one skirt and add ruffles to it. So I first bought 6 yards of 108″ wide cotton.
My goal with this petticoat isn’t really to have a big poofy skirt, but to obscure my hoop skirt. I’ve just got a pet peeve about being able to see the outlines of the hoops with ballgowns. So I felt that doing a ruffled petti would be perfect. Six yards was ALMOST enough for the whole thing. I came up just a tad short for two of the ruffles, so I had to buy a little more fabric. So, I’d estimate that about 8 yards would have been enough, maybe even a tad too much, but I always prefer to have a little more than I need because you just ever know what’s going to happen, lol.
For this adventure, I used Simplicity pattern 5006, view D. I liked the idea of an elastic waistband, and will also be doing an elastic waistband for the main skirt for this costume. After adjusting the sizing for my body and getting everything cut out and run through the serger, I started working on the bottom ruffle, which called for six panels. I reasoned that I could do 6 on the bottom, 5 on the next tier, 4 for the next one, and then 3 for the final ruffle that would be sewn to the yoke. And when I mentally thought about how to attach the other ruffles, I thought I could add the other two, after putting the rest of the skirt together. But when I went to work on pinning the next ruffle to the skirt, I figured out that I had a small problem. Well, small in theory, but fixing it was going to take some work. I realized that first off, the best way to put the ruffles on, was going to be with the main skirt ungathered. I don’t know if ungathered is a word, but it is now. 😛 The other thing I realized was that my other ruffles actually needed to have the same number of panels as the very bottom, which was six. So instead of the ruffles having a count of three,four, five, six, they needed to be three, six, six, and six. The top ruffle was perfectly fine with three panels. So I had to take the yoke off, undo the gathering in the skirt, and fix all of that. I currently have one of the two ruffles done, and sewn on to the skirt, and have one more to put on before I can re-attach the top ruffle and yoke. I’ve also decided (for good measure) to go back and add an extra ruffle behind the bottom ruffle, which will be made of petticoat netting, just for good measure, and a little extra flare at the bottom.
I have to say, when choosing between making cotton pettis, and netting, cotton is my preference.
Thanks for reading, see ya next time! ❤
Seraphin 