Maybe You Should Sit Down For This...

Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department.

~ Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

Are you ready for a shock?  I have sewn!

Yes, all it takes is an extra long weekend and I can finish all my regular chores AND get into the sewing room!  :)

Oh, and a project deadline doesn't hurt either...  ;)

I was able to make Ana's skirt.  The first step was the waistband - here it is with a 1/2 inch wide elastic around the top:  

There are 10 skirt panels.  They are sewn together along all 11 side seams (to form a circle), before the pleats are put in.  The pleats are stitched closed such that they contain the side seams:  

Here you can see one of the pleats being opened up:  

Given that there are 11 pleats, I realized that if I was off by even a small amount on each one, it could add up to a serious mis-match with the waistband.  So, I only sewed 10 of them:  

Then I lined the skirt up with the waistband and used the mis-match to figure out exactly how large to make the 11th (and last) pleat:  

It worked like a charm!  Here's the finished skirt:  

You can see that I left the elastic hanging - Ana can do the last fitting step of pulling it to the length she wants, stitching the ends together, trimming the excess and closing up the small opening in the waistband.  

I sure hope Ana likes it!  :)

It felt so good to sew again!  It looks like I'm probably going to get a long weekend every week, starting mid-July and continuing through to the end of September - thanks to the upcoming federal government furlough.  Maybe I'll have enough time to put a real dent in my queue!  :)