Petticote finished.

[liadethornegge]

A piece of garb in one day. Hurray for me! The remaining few details took me 3 and a half hours. They were such things as:

• Cut down waistline to proper length (removed 10 cm from the top)
  
• Turn a hem up (approximate width = my thumbnail), press with lots of steam and stitch it down with neat hem stitches.
  
• Cut out waistline in lovely golden silk, leaving it a bit long to overlap on one side.
• Carefully pin waistband to skirt, pleating the back half to fit the desired length.
• Backstitch all around 1 cm from the edge, right sides together of waistband and skirt.
• Turn waistband out, over and fold in raw edges. Apply a little heat with iron to make a crease of the seam allowance on the inside.
• Invisibly stitch waistband down at the lower edge of the silk showing on the right side of the fabric.
• Catch down the lower edge of the waistband on the inside, it being twice as wide as on the outside.
• Press gently with iron on low setting.
• Try it on. Do a little dance, call it finished.

OK, not entirely 100% finished, still have to stitch on the hook and eye at the waistband, but that's the work of five minutes, tops, and I've added that time to the overall time spent on this project.

So, in total, one hand sewn petticote of wool cloth, waistline in silk, sewn with silk sewing thread in black and gold finished in five hours and thirty minutes. From folded cloth to finished item.

To be honest, most time was spent fiddling around with the pleats at the back, getting them placed right, stitching them in right, making sure I didn't fold anything over itself and making sure my hemstitches wouldn't show on the other side of the wool cloth.

By the way, you wouldn't believe the trouble I had remembering to time myself. I often go back and forth between many different things and would forget to check the time when I sat back down with the skirt. This is why it is well nigh impossible for me to tell you how long any of my projects take. This was done all in one day, and without taking too many breaks - six in total. On longer or bigger projects I just put things down and pick them up again too often to have any concept of how long I spend on them.

ETA: Photos online, see what I mean about the fabric eating the light? Im-bloody-possible to get a good shot. I'll prolly do a quick write-up for the homepage at some point.

Comments

[hharris.livejournal.com]

Nice. I experimented with tracking my time on a project once, just for kicks (I agree, it is difficult to track!). I was being really meticulous with the record-keeping too. But I got to a point where I decided to start the project over. I normally wouldn't have given a second thought to scrapping it, but when I saw that I was 25 hours in, it was just a total bummer. I'd still love to know how much time goes into each project, but I don't know that I'll do that again :)

[liadethornegge.livejournal.com]

Heh, ouch. Yeah, I know what you mean. I have started on an effigy corset, doing it all by hand, stitching boning channels by hand, and filling them with hemp cord. But once I got eyelets on it and could try it on --- well, I'm not happy. I don't know, have no concept of, how long I have been working on it up until this point, but it'd be a lot. It is currently languishing in a project bag on my wire hamper rack where bad projects go to die.

About the only real world factor I've been able to keep track of for my outfits has been the cost, and sometimes that even makes me balk a little.

[bippimalin.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful petticoat. I know one person who'll enjoy being in garb this winter. :)

[liadethornegge.livejournal.com]

Ayup! :) I might even, possibly, go without modern long-johns on underneath. If it works. Possibly. Maybe. My thighs get really cold really fast and it's no-good-very-bad, you see.

But the skirt works fine :)