Today, I tackled the hardest part of the whole process...Tapering. Because I am the mother of small children, I'm supposed to have the patience of a saint. I do not. I swore a lot. There was more blood sacrifice. But, it worked out well.

First, I had to bar tack the bottom of the fell again (recall that I jumped the gun on this and had to remove it all once already?).

So, I ironed the pleats again (because the whole project had been rolled up in the closet for several days and had gone all catty whompus on me), and pinned along the fell.



Here, I'm checking to be sure it is wide enough for my (more substantial than I thought) behind. Sure enough, just over 42 inches. Note the added pleat to the right-it's not quite as wide as the others, but oh well.



Then I slid it up onto the machine and bar tacked the bottom of the fell.



Here, I'm at the first pleat, next to the apron. I'm not sewing the edge of the apron down, just the edge of the pleat.



Then, I sat down with many pins and started to taper. Precise calculations were not helpful, because each pleat had to be tapered differently depending on how the tartan was arranged. For example, I could not taper the pleats that had the yellow stripe centered hardly at all, otherwise I would lose the grey stripes. Therefore, most of the tapering was taken out of every other pleat (as w2f had noted would be necessary a long time ago).

This picture was taken during first attempts. Perhaps you can see why I swore a lot? It's hard to get it to look right. Also, with the addition of one pleat it messed up my symmetry (I do so LOVE symmetry).



I did finally get them to look right, and better yet, the waist was the right size ! It looked good when I held it around my waist (you'll have to take my word for that, as Panache was not available to take a picture).



Now, I have to actually sew down all these pinned pleats from fell to waist, put on the waistband (figuring out how to add a fringed edge to the upper apron) and find myself some blue and white pom poms!

Be well,