Back home and back to work

In order to cut out my skirts without making a separate set for the plaid skirt I basted in the tucks and hem before I cut it my pieces. This move allowed me to simply place my pattern pieces on the fabric, cut as usual, and when I removed the basting stitches my seam lines already had all the fancy angles I will need to get my tucks to lay flat on angled seams.

To make my lace emerge from underneath the bottom edge of the tuck I attached it by zig-zagging the upper edge of my lace to the fabric which will lie just behind that edge when the whole thing is finished.

The striped fabric which you can just see through the lace (above) is going to be the face fabric when the tuck is complete (see below).

I stitched the tuck so that the black lace will fall above the black stripe on my skirts. This first row of lace/black is also the hemline for my skirts. (I should mention that I reversed the direction of the back piece from the pattern. I want a straight hemline with a black stripe so I put the extra fabric which accommodates the bustle at the top of my skirt instead of the bottom. I put in some extra in order to accommodate my larger bustle too. Yet another experiment!)

I like a deep hem so I included an entire pattern repeat when I cut the fabric. This stitched up into the top of the fabric behind the tuck. It's completely invisible from the right side. Nice!

And now, back to the ironing board!