The ruffles are done, the hooks and thread loops have been sewn, and the gathering threads for the cartridge pleats have been stitched. There are seventy-seven pleats. Which means there are exactly seventy-seven stitches between me and a finished dress.
I don’t love it, as expected. But it will be done and I’ll be able to move on to the next, much better, dress.
Meanwhile, I thought I’d share how I manage to get my pleats evenly spaced around the lower edge of the bodice. It starts with counting – from the inside, where the stitches will actually be taken – how many pleats I have. Seventy-seven pleats means seventy-six spaces between them. And when I measure the lower edge of my bodice, it’s exactly eight inches. So all I have to do is divide those eight inches into seventy-six even spaces.
It’s not as bad as it sounds.
If I divide seventy-six by four it works out to nineteen. That means each quadrant of the bodice gets nineteen spaces. Each quadrant is about two inches wide. And two inches has sixteen 1/8″ segments. So if I space my pleats just a bit less than 1/8″ apart, I should be able to fit nineteen of them fairly evenly into each two-inch quadrant.
No, it’s not perfect. But it’s better than guessing. And all but one of the other residents at Miss Persnickity’s agrees this is good enough.
There’s always one oddball in any group. . .
Here is what that looks like once I get them all marked out:
I started at the center and marked nineteen spaces to each side. This took up slightly more than the four inches of bodice that it should have, but that’s okay because I kind of like a bit more fullness in the back as compared to the front. And now, as you can see, it will be easy to stitch one pleat to each mark.
Seventy-seven stitches total.
One at a time.
And then I’ll be done.