It all starts with underwear...

Finally today I was able to start one of the blogger projects I have been aiming to do. After much procrastination and lots of tea I decided upon the underskirt for the walkaway dress. As I wanted something that I could complete in a day. I followed Edelweiss blog instructions on how to make the underskirt which can be found here.

I was finding it hard to find crinoline so in the end I chose to go with netting in a soft baby pink colour. My dress is mauve/purple so I figured this would complement nicely.

I won't go through all the instruction techniques individually but I will show you my construction pics.

Lots and lots of netting.What I didnt realise was the netting I bought was 44" wide whereas the pattern asked for 54". However luckly this fits just right, any bigger would have been way too much.

The top layer and the main body of the skirt attached.

Gathering the netting using embrodairy floss. It pulled back out really easy.

The lower part waiting to be stiched.

Front view of the finished piece.

And whats even better about this design is, it can also be used as a full underskirt. How cool is that.

After overcasting the edges. I changed the stitch width but forgot to change the actual stitch, but that was ok because I ended up with this really decorative stitch, which I then kept throughout.

Overall I am really happy with this.
I have never sewn with netting before, It's ok, I can see more flouncy underskirts appearing in my wardrobes.
I have never done gatherring stitches before. For a while I was rather bemused but once the image of pulling up pencil pleat curtains came to mind, I was fine.

Now I can't wait to start the actual dress. I think I am far behind as most are creating bindings now. But I know I am a slow sewer. This underskirt took the best part of 6 hours. Mainly because I no longer think 'that will do' when sewing for myself (which I used to, only when sewing my bags or for others do I make sure its perfect.) The most time consuming for me was the pinning and re-pinning and re-pinning of the gathers to get them 'just so' .

Today I feel I have actually acheived something. It's a good feeling. I hope you all out there are feeling fantasic too.
Sew Vala. x