Hoop Skirt Tutorial

I recently finished my new costume for this year's Dickens festival. My dress is sort of similar to this dress, modified from this pattern. I'll post some pictures soon.
1840's styles, though, aren't complete without some serious volume under the skirt. Technically, the date would call for layers and layers of petticoats, but since I plan to hop, slip, swing and otherwise dance in this getup, I insist on skipping ahead a few years and going for a hoop skirt.
I'm a cheap sewer, though, and I can't figure spending $30-$50 dollars on underpinnings for a dress that cost me $10, nor do I have days to spend on the making of it. I've figured out a way to make a non-period, but very sturdy and wearable hoop skirt for about $6. This was my third, and I finally remembered to take pictures as I went, so here's the tutorial:

Materials:
>Fabric, 45-60" wide, by 120-145" long (length should be about 1 1/2" longer than the circumference of the finished hoop) Anything that isn't too heavy and won't be distracting if it shows will work fine. Mine is a black taffeta-like material that I found on the remnant table at Sir's for 50 cents a yard.
>Something to use as a drawstring: ribbon, cord, or twill tape work fine. Make it long. I like at least two yards so there's little chance of losing an end when you take it off.
> 30' of 3/8" water tubing from Lowe's - you need the milky white type
> thread to match your fabric.
>roll of electrical tape
>optional: 18" of 1/2" tubing

First, a quick rundown of hoop skirt history: After a quick tour through graceful empire styles in the late 1700's to 1820 or so, skirts started getting wider. At first, this was achieved through petticoats, starched, horsehair edged, corded, petticoats. By the late 1830's seven petticoats might be worn at one time, plus decorative flounces on the skirt, to get a fashionably full shape. The overall look was sort of bee hive shaped, and was, as you can imagine, really heavy. Finally, in the late 1840's/1850 some bright soul got the idea of putting together a cage-like contraption of spring steel and twill tape- the hoop skirt. Suddenly, 10 pounds of petticoats vanished, since one or two to smooth out the lines of the hoop skirt was all that was needed now. Over the next decade, skirts continued to grow and become more smoothly conical. By the 1860's skirt were hitting 180"! For most of the period, though, 120" would be a typical everyday circumference, with 130"-145" for evening wear.

OK, on to construction. hang a tape measure from your waist to the length you want, about 3-4 inches off the ground seems pretty good for dancing. Add 6 3/4" to this. Measure this distance from one selvage of your fabric, cut a notch there and rip the remaining width off of your fabric ( you are tearing a strip off along the length of the fabric). ( I like ripping when I'm working with rectangles. It's faster and neater than cutting.) If the ends of your piece are crooked, trim them straight.


Now, break out the iron. Lay your fabric down wrong side up. On the selvage edge, fold down one inch all along the length of the fabric and iron that down. On the other edge, fold down 1/4", iron that, and then fold over another 1" and iron.

You should now have a sort of casing folded down along both edges of your piece of fabric.

Now we're going to make some guidelines for the hoops. 9" from the folded edge of the casing you just turned down, fold the fabric right sides together lengthwise and iron the fold. (check: you should now have a crease running the length of you fabric with the point of the fold on the wrong side).

10" from that fold, do the same thing again.
11" from that fold, do the same thing one more time. As you make these folds, try to get the spacing as exact as possible, especially at the ends of the fabric. (these spacings aren't magic, they just look good to me. Change them if you like) You should now have a long strip of cloth with a folded casing on each edge and three parallel creases. Got it? Ok, lets start sewing.
First, line up the ends of your fabric right sides together and up the end until you are about 7" from the double folded casing, hereafter called the top. You now have a huge loop. Fold under the seam allowances above the place where you stopped sewing and stitch them down. This is your placket.
Fold down the casings on both ends again and sew them close to the edge, except when you sew the one with the selvage, leave a gap of about 6" somewhere.

Fold the fabric at the first crease and sew 3/4" from the crease, leaving a 6" gap.
Do the same thing for the other two creases.
You now have a ring of fabric with a casing on each edge and three pleats on the wrong side of the fabric, and you are finished with the sewing machine.Now, the fun part, putting in the hoops.
Get out your tubing and cut a piece the length of your bottom casing, the circumference of your finished hoops. Cut a little piece about 3 " long from either the small piece of 1/2" tubing, or the 3/8" stuff. If you use 3/8", take a sharp knife and slit this little piece so you can peel it open. Test fit your hoop by putting both ends of the long piece into ends of the short piece. They should slide in neatly if you use 1/2", but if you are using 3/8" this will take a little wiggling. It should look like this.You should now be holding something that looks like a skinny hula hoop with a bump at the joint. If all is well, it's a neat flat circle. If not, check to see if it's twisted. If that still doesn't get it flat, try this method: heat a large pot of water on the stove, coil up your stubborn hoop and stuff in in there. Wait a minute or two and the pull out your now floppy hoop, throw it on the kitchen floor and arrange it in a neat circle.
When it will lie flat on the floor, you're ready to put it in. pull out one end and start feeding it into the bottom casing, the one made from the folded over selvage. When it's all the way around, trim it if needed and pop it back into the joint, like this:

Now, wrap that joint tightly in electrical tape to hold it together. I used packing tape on my first hoop, and it can work, but electrical tape is the best for this job.
Repeat the same process for the other three hoops. Each one will be a little smaller than the one before. The exact sizes, though, will vary depending on what shape you are after. Pull the drawstring through the top casing and put it on, then feed in the tubing until it looks right in the mirror and cut it there. As you go up, the fabric will be more tightly gathered over each hoop. When all the hoops are adjusted to your liking, tape the joints and sew the gaps in the casings closed. You should now have a really odd looking set of circles on the inside of your hoop skirt, and the whole thing should look kind of like this.

Now put it back on and check the look. There may be some odd bulges if the fabric isn't evenly gathered. Adjust it till everything is smooth. Throw on your dress and off you go!
Some wearing tips: wear something underneath. These things don't work in small living rooms, and sometimes you only option is to stand the hoops up on edge and slide through.:) Avoid wearing them in small cars period. You can lose the shift lever entirely under there! Depending on your dress, you may also need another petticoat to keep the lines of the hoops from showing. I've found that a full broomstick skirt works for this over a smaller hoop.

Despite the drawbacks, though, they are great for storage. You can wear a whole fanny pack slung low around your hips, and no one will be the wiser. Just be sure that the placket in the hoop skirt lines up with the placket in your dress so you can get to it!

Marriage isn't in Trouble! (but we are)

Despite all the hyperbole on the airwaves these days, marriage isn't in the slightest danger. You see, marriage is an institution created by God, and like the church and the state, the other two institutions, it's definition and proper sphere of authority is defined by Him and can't be altered by anyone else.
A marriage requires only three ingredients: one, a man and a woman who are qualified to get married (i.e. not closely related or already married), two, a commitment before God to live as husband and wife, and three, living together as husband and wife. Since a marriage is important to the community a marriage generally includes people to witness the commitment and encourage the couple. The blessing of the church and the recognition of the state, the other two God given institutions, are generally also sought. However, all these can do is supervise and recognize the marriage- they don't make it, and their refusal to do so wouldn't change a couple's marital status before God in the least. At times, states have ignored, outlawed, or tried alter the church to it's whims, but the church has existed just the same. Marriage and the family will also always exist, regardless of the state's actions. It's simply outside of government jurisdiction.

What the government can do, though is change it's recognition of marriage. They can decide to treat a mostly monogamous version of habitual sexual perversion as equal with the natural and holy sexual outlet and lifestyle of marriage. One creates and protects children, the other produces none and is linked with the abuse of them. One is beneficial for health and emotional well being of the partners, the other is accompanied by disease and physiological problems. One has been considered a good thing in every society in history, the other has always been considered evil or at least abnormal. One could hardly find two more obviously different relationships, but the state can, if it wishes, thumb its nose at the mandate of God and pretend they are equal. Despite the masquerade, marriage will still be what it has always been.

What will be affected, however, is us. Our society will respond to the confusion in the same way as we have witnessed in the other countries which have taken this path. Marriage is cheapend by the state's slanderous relabeling, in much the same way college degrees would be if 4th grade teachers began handing them out to their students. "When everybody is special, no one is" as the Incredibles put it. When a marriage certificate means less, fewer couples will bother getting one, and live-in relationships, single parents and out of wedlock births will multiply, and along with them, all their attendant host of problems. Communities are weakened by the lack of healthy families, the educational system is taxed by the lack of involved parents, and the ripples keep spreading. With the united front of church and state broken, the church will soon take the full brunt of the force of the gay rights lobby wielding their captured state power to force the church into complicity with the scheme. Legislative gag orders, compulsory gay weddings, and other chaos and damage are sure to follow.

And the gay couples that all this was done to accommodate? Evidence suggests that only a small percentage of this already small group will marry, and of those, five years later, only a very small percentage indeed will still be together. What do you really expect when you try to play marriage with something that isn't remotely close to one?

Through history, the acceptance of homosexuality a trademark of civilizations that were past their zenith, just before they began to collapse. Even those never attempted to give it the status of marriage. No, I'm not fearful for marriage, but I'm very, very, afraid for the future of western civilization.

Patterns! Patterns! Patterns!

I am the queen of fabric store bargin tables. I love grabbing a bunch of yards of damaged fabric for $1 or $.50 a yard, taking it home and crafting something lovely for next to nothing.
The sticking point in the plan, though, is the pattern. It's so hard to spend $3 on all the materials, and then $15 for a pattern! Sometimes I can find cheaper ones, but all too often I spend more on that flimsy piece of tissue than on all the rest of the garment. Since all the sewing stores closed down in my town it's only gotten worse. Now even getting a pattern requires a 45 minute drive each way.

But last week I found a lovely little solution on the internet I'd like to share- Burda style. Welcome to open source sewing! This website has scores of sewing patterns, many from Burda, many from individuals. Some charge $4-$7 to download, most are free. Once you've registered, you can download pdf files of the patterns and instructions, print them out, tape them together, and start sewing. I'm finishing up my first attempt, a skirt, and though the design came out a little odd for me (quite stylish, just not the best cut for me) the pattern went together nicely and came out true to size.