By the time you read this, I've made not one, but 2 crinolines. One for myself, and a second one for my daughter. Considering you can buy one for around $40, I'm not sure I would ever do it again. This was a rewarding project, but also a real pain in the tush-cus.
So, why did I do it?
The short answer is I'm cheap. I hate to buy what I can make for less, and it just so happens I had an old wedding dress from a friend of a friend's first marriage, and it had tons of crinoline and lining fabric just waiting to be re-purposed. That made my total expense for both crinolines less that $20.
The short answer is I'm cheap. I hate to buy what I can make for less, and it just so happens I had an old wedding dress from a friend of a friend's first marriage, and it had tons of crinoline and lining fabric just waiting to be re-purposed. That made my total expense for both crinolines less that $20.
The construction process was not complicated, but it was time consuming and super annoying trying to wrangle so much fabric. It's also not something to attempt without a gathering foot, or a pleating attachment for your machine, or an insane amount of patience.
Sorry folks, there's no tutorial on this one. Sadly, there was too much of a time crunch. But here is a glimpse at the construction from the bottom up.
The yoke is cut along the line of the dress through the waist and hips. For my daughters dress, that means it is fitted with darts. For mine it was gathered. A wide strip of gathered and hemmed lining fabric is attached to the bottom of the yoke. For my daughter, I used organza because it gave a little more umph.
The second layer was made up of crinoline fabric harvested from the wedding dress. It was cut in strips so the width of the strips was half the distance from the yoke to the hem, plus seam allowances. These strips were sewn together, gathered with a gathering foot, and stitched along the bottom of the yoke, on top of the lining/organza seam. A second strip of gathered crinoline, was sewn to the bottom edge of the first, to create a tiered skirt. I actually sewed the tiers together first, the attached them to the lining.
The first layer of tulle was cut, gathered, and attached in the same tiered manner as the crinoline fabric. A second, final layer of tulle was sewn in a similar manner to the first, only instead of 2 tiers, it has 3 and is attached to the top edge of the yoke.
The top of the yoke, was then sewn to a 3" elastic "waistband" and a hook and eye closure harvested from a bra extender kit was sewn to the elastic. The back seam is left open for about 6-8" below the hooks and eyes.
My Petticoat was done in a similar manner to my daughters, using light green tulle instead of blue.
With everything assembled, the final step is to hang the petticoat on the mannequin and trim the bottom edge where needed so the layers are even.
Next up,
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