Making The Petticoat Using A Ruffler Attachment

There is a difference between a petticoat, a slip and a lining, although that interior piece of fabric can perform more than one of those functions.  A petticoat creates fullness, a slip makes sure the skirt does not tangle with the legs (hence why they are slim) and to hide that which really ought to be hidden, and a lining is mostly to make the exterior of a garment look, hang, or wear better.  This is why most of us have heard our mother or grandmother tell us to put on a slip even if a garment has an attached lining or petticoat.

I just finished a semi custom dress in which the interior piece of fabric was both a slim slip, to prevent the skirt from tangling with the girl's legs, and also it was a bit of a petticoat because I attached a 4" ruffle to the bottom to provide fullness to just the bottom of the skirt.  I could have made a separate slip and petticoat and there would have been nothing wrong with that.  That solution requires more time, fabric, and hassle, so I did not choose it.

The current dresses have another skirt made of a big rectangle of fabric.  This time I'm pleating the skirts, but, again, it seemed a good idea to make sure that these skirts hang in a nice angle, rather than straight down.  So, I decided on a tiered ruffled petticoat using a ruffler attachment to make it all go quickly. When you have only so much fabric, this isn't the best method.  Fortunately, there is plenty of the cotton and polyester broadcloth which I am using for various parts of this dress, including the petticoat, and it tears very nicely.  So, it was quick work to measure out and tear strips that were a bit over 1/3 of the length of the unhemmed skirt (7.5"x60" for a skirt who's cut length (unhemmed) is 21"). I prepared three of these and had to go back for a little more.  I'm using my serger with it's ruffler attachment, and since it doesn't take much fabric off the edges, there was no need to go calculating all kinds of seam allowances. If math is a joy for you, have at it =D

After tearing the strips, I serged them together, end to end, into one long strip.  The next step is to measure the bottom of the bodice I will be attaching to.  In this case, the bodice bottom measures 25 1/2 inches.  Since I want the fullness to start at the top of the petticoat, I measured out 30" on my strip, right side up, marking it with a pin.  Then I created a spiral by curling the strip around, matching up my pin with the end of the fabric strip. 

Next I flipped the top/end of the fabric down in order to put the right sides together.

The goal, here, is to continuously serge a ruffled seam until there are three tiers.  A thing to note is that serger rufflers can work two ways.  One way is just to ruffle a single layer of fabric and then you can attach that ruffle to another piece of fabric in a separate operation, but this attachment allows you to both ruffle and attach that fabric, which is the method I'm using here.  The point is to cut the work load!  Make things go quickly!

Once I came around to the starting point, or past, I stopped.  The next step is to turn this spiral into a simple, three tiered piece.  All there is to that is to start at the top (because this is where the measuring happened) and either draw a line following the grain or to snip and tear, snipping at each seam.  Don't try to tear through them!

I know it is hard to see, but I drew a line, following the grain line.  To the left you can see that the serged ruffle extends past the line.  Each tier needs to be done separately for the best, most usable edge, it doesn't take much time.  Once cut, the petticoat looks like the photo below and is ready to have the edges finished and then be attached to the skirt.

The next post will be about zippers.  And all will be well =D