Pirate Petticoat

A
Jan 1, 2022
5 min read

Updated: Feb 5, 2022

I purchased this fabric all the way back in Spring of 2010 with the intention of making a flannel petticoat. At the time I couldn't decide between the 2 different colorways, so I planned to make the skirt reversible and quilted with the pink colorway on one side, and the blue colorway on the other. I even purchased a quantity of natural batting to go with it. Time passed, and the urgency faded. On particularly chilly mornings I would bemoan the lack of my quilted, flannel petticoat, but then the weather would warm up again, and in the sweltering heat and humidity of summer I couldn't bear the thought of working with the flannel. And so the fabric languished in my stash for years, toted along on several moves, until one fateful Autumn week when the temperatures started to dip, and I realized that I was going camping that weekend, and I didn't want to freeze. I figured that it was finally time that I pulled this flannel project out of the stash and into the light.

Upon retrieving the project I discovered a few things. #1 Apparently I ordered twice as much fabric as I had remembered - 2 yards of each colorway instead of just 1 yard. Excellent news. #2 Apparently I had also started on this project at some point in the last decade because the pink fabric was already cut into 2 rectangles plus a waistband. Not only that, but there were notches cut, so I was following a specific pattern. I have an inkling that it might have been Simplicity 3723, but I'm not certain. #3 I was left with two rectangles and a drawstring waist, if I'd stuck with my original plan to line that with more flannel and put a layer of batting in between those two layers the waist would have been absurdly bulky. #4 The blue was still one continuous piece - I must have been very distractible.

I decided to proceed with a simple, if time-consuming tiered single-layer petticoat instead. Since the blue wasn't cut yet, that would go on the bottom - requiring the fewest seams. Initially I wanted to alternate colors and have the rows be pink, blue, pink, blue. However, to keep the tiers growing at an almost proportional rate, I had to use all of the blue to make the bottom tier, and make the other 3 with the pink. To balance out the color difference and make the blue feel less like an afterthought I also made the waistband blue.

First step was to cut 10inch widths of fabric to make my tiers. The fabric was about 44inches wide, and I planned a 1/2inch seam allowance, so 4 9inch tiers would make for a 36 inch long skirt. Boy did that rotary cutter and mat come in handy! I think it might be time for a new blade though...I've been using the same one for a few years now and it's getting a bit dull.

Lots and lots of cutting.

Then I started assembling the tiers. Since the pink fabric had already been cut in half it made for some awkward lengths that had to be pieced together. Oh well. With all the gathering I wasn't too worried about pattern matching this loud and absurd print. I just wanted to make sure that I had even side-seams running down the sides of the skirt. After piecing a tier together I pinked the seams and ironed them open and flat. Then the first tier was done except for the waistband, which I ended up doing last, but could have been done at the start.

Tier 2: Piece, Pink, Iron, Baste around the top edge for gathering, Gather, Pin to tier 1, Baste to tier 1, Fix any mistakes (with this much yardage there are bound to be minor fabric fold-overs into your stitching, but if you baste first, it's a lot easier to pull the stitches and fix them than pull out regular sized stitches), Stitch to tier, Zig-Zag edges to finish.

Tier 3: Piece, Pink, Iron, Baste, Gather, Pin, Baste, Fix, Stitch, Zig-Zag.

Gather until the end of time, use *ALL* the pins to hold the gathers while you sew, and give the edges a clean finish.

Three tiers done!

Tier 4: Piece, Pink, Iron, Hem (hem the bottom edge first to save yourself a mountain of effort later - especially since this skirt is all rectangles anyway), Baste, Gather, Pin, Baste, Fix, Stitch, Zig-Zag.

I had a few interesting discoveries on the blue fabric. For one thing there was a mysterious hole. Fortunately the hole was small and located near the edge of the fabric, so it fit in my seam allowance. I also cut one of my lengths about 1/2inch narrower than all of the others, I must have mis-measured. I got around this by aligning the short edge with the hem, zig-zag stitching along that edge, and folding that hem up once instead of twice on that piece so that the tier would all be hemmed to the same overall length.

Double-fold hem and mystery hole. Maybe I nipped the fabric while I was cutting? I don't know.

And of course more ruffles...

That had to be sewn to the rest of the skirt.

Like I said, this skirt was VERY repetitive - It's basically just lot's of gathered rectangles.

Finally I got around to the waistband. I used some of the left-over blue fabric, and cut 2 lengths to match tier 1, and pieced them on one side, before I stitched it to the top of tier 1 (Right side to right side), and then folded it in half long ways (Wrong side to wrong side), and hand-stitched the back of the waistband in place making sure that the stiches didn't show through to the front of the garment. (Normally I would have folded the edge over by half an inch first, but I was using the selvedge on the inside, so it didn't really matter.) I fed the elastic through the casing/waistband, and held the skirt up on myself to make sure that it was the right tightness and fell in the right place, and used a pin to mark where I wanted the elastic to go. Then I took the skirt off, and stitched the elastic to itself (my thimble went from useful above to indispensable here).

Voila! My absurdly over-the-top petticoat was done, which of course meant that the camping event was crazy warm and I didn't need it, but now I have my flannel petticoat at the ready for whenever the temperatures do drop again.