Skirt Construction

A large part of Mrs Bennet's costume is skirt of her dress, The blue of the skirt the same material as her bodice and when the under skirt in a different off white colour.

For Mrs Bennet's skirt we cut of 2.65 metres of the fabric that we had. Then overlocked around the edges of these two large rectangles, going on to sew the skirt together at the centre back making an even larger rectangle. The over locking helps to keep the edges neater and giving a nicer finish

Then we measured a length of petersham ribbon the size of the waist of our actor plus extra for attaching fastenings.

The petersham band is what the skirt will be pleated and sewn against.

With the bum pad beneath the skirt, the fabric was pleated up, deeper pleats towards the back and the pleats shallowing out as the skirt reached around the side of the band.

The skirt was then sewn to the band.

The next step was to collect the fabric for the under skirt. The costume will be worn seated, and is already thick and heavy layers, so to helps out our actor we will make the "underskirt" so that is looks like it is underneath, but it is actually all part of the same skirt, and therefore sewn on to the same band.

So of the white fabric we cut off 1.3 metres of fabric, and like before over locked all of the  edges of the rectangle.

With that two lines of gathering stitch were sewn across top side of the fabric and it was drawn in until it was the correct size for the waist band, to fill in the front of the skirt.

Pinned and fitting in the gathered fabric was also sewn to the petersham band.

The final step was to add the hook and eyes to the skirt.

The larger hook and eye further in would take all of the pressure of the waist band, the second smaller one just to hold the skirt closed.

This fabulous skirt, with an amazing fall to the fabric will soon enough be made in to a dress and attached to the bodice of the skirt.

Added to the bottom of the skirt was a trim, made out of the same fabric as the skirt.

The large 2 metre rectangle was first over locked around all fours edges and then the top and bottom seams were sewn down.

To make the frill four cm box pleats were made at regular 10 cm intervals, this was carried on all the way along the frill.

To bring this in to the correct length for the bottom of the skirt between each box pleat two lines of gathering were sewn.

Then the skirt frill was pinned to the bottom of the skirt and sewn down.

Then we had the great task of unpicking all of the gathering stitches from the frill, this took a good amount of time, but it was well worth it for the final effect.

Although this will be an over looked part of the garment, my partner and I were both very proud that we put aside time to add this detail to the costume.