Death by Fabric

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with one thing that you feel like you are about to bust out into a panic attack and pass out? Yeah, I haven't until recently this week. This week I started making long skirts for my upcoming adventure to the holy land. With the help of my wonderful former YW's President, Sister Papenfuss, and multiple of other women who can sew, I am able to make this happen.

So there I was, walking through the isles of Joann's, looking for fabrics and patterns, and I come upon this one pattern that is absolutely perfect for Jerusalem. Its a nice long skirt that goes about mid-calf and it has some nice ruffles on it. Well, you may think that ruffles are nice and pretty on the finish product, but have you ever thought how those ruffles came about? I know I sure didn't, but boy was I in for a treat...

There I was, sewing the different parts of this beautiful skirt together and I look up at Sister Papenfuss and she tells me that I'm ready to start gathering. I'm like, "what the gather? I don't know what you are talking about." She then tells me that I need to gather in order to make the nice ruffles on the skirt. I'm thinking, " well shoot, this shouldn't be hard." HA! Well buddy, I sure do appreciate skirts with ruffles. Let me tell you about this process...

1) increase the stitch to the biggest it can be...check

2) sew two rows of stitching across the top of your fabric...check

3) proceed to pull the ends of the thread to bunch up or ruffle the fabric...check

4) ruffle and unruffle until it lies perfect with the connecting fabric... 4 hours later...check

5) sew the two pieces together...check

Ok, so it may not seem that bad, but when you have 7 panels of fabric and you have to connect it to only 5 you are like, " WOAH, WOAH, WOAH!"

I swear, I thought the fabric was about to come alive and eat me whole...sooo much fabriccccc.

However, I believe it is well worth the torture of sitting there, and having my back scream at me in pain to try and fight the fabric monster. I mean come on, look at that skirt!

Lesson that I have learned this week: Ruffles on a skirt look good...until you have to put them on yourself, so in the long run if you see a ruffled skirt on the rack for $20, it's probably cheaper and less labor intensive to buy it rather than make it...just sayin'

In this picture though I wasn't totally finished. I'll be putting more pictures up in the next 2 weeks when I'm done with the 4 skirts I'm making (with A LOT of assistance) for Jerusalem.