Year of Foundations Challenge #1- Corded Petticoat

The Corded Petticoat is Done!!!

Did you hear the angels sing today?  They were singing: “All the cords are sewn!  All the cords are sewn!”  Woot!  And I just want to say:

I will never sew another one of these again. 
Never. 
Seriously. No.

Several times I had to stop and try very hard not to cry because man, oh, man did this take forever.  Just forever. I tried to break it down NaNo style and do an hour a day - but the endless stitching, round and round and round didn’t exactly inspire me to jump out of my bed an hour earlier than usual during the weekdays.  I ended up doing long bunches of time at the machine instead.  And, when I had to switch machines, my output switched so instead of 4 rows per hour, I ended up dropping down to 1-2 rows per hour.  I’m not saying it was a totally horrible experience.  No… just a serious time commitment.  I think I estimated that it would take about two weeks of steady work.  Not so much.  I think it’s been a month now.  So… I definitely take my hat off to anyone who wants to make one of these, and if they do this by hand, with tight rows, even more power to them.  I have seen some lovely examples. 

On to the details.

Section of Challenge:  Section #3 - Skirt Supports and Section #4 - Petticoats, rolled into one, really.
Time period: 1830s Corded Petticoat
To be worn with:  an 1832 Ballgown at Costume Con (fingers crossed!)
Number of Cords: 81 in the front and 80 in the back.  The yarn ran out half way around.  But I’m cool with that.
Number of hours: Something like 50.  I stopped counting this week because I was determined to get it done and just pushed, pushed, pushed on it.
Materials: Bleached cotton muslin, 90” wide, Sugar n’ Cream, cream colored yarn, thread.

I’m calling it done, although technically it’s not.  Because it injured my main machine (poor machine is in the shop!), I had to finish sewing it with my Featherweight.  Which does not do a zig zag stitch - which means I couldn’t put in a buttonhole on the waistband.  And I was not doing that by hand.  But it has a waistband, is cartridge pleated (well, small pleats, so gauged), and could be worn.  So, I think it counts.

Yay!!  On to the pics (which are of an un-starched petticoat.  I’m itching to get starching and take a pic of it standing up on its own):