Pleating

I didn't get a picture of the finished skirt after sewing but pre-pleating-effort - but it's really boring!  It's just two full fabric width rectangles, sewn together at selvedges (no french seams or anything, trying to reduce bulk that might interfere with pleating), hemmed with a narrow stitched double-rolled hem, and with a 1.5" casing at the top for elastic.  I made two large buttonholes in front to insert the elastic - I'll have a buckle there that should be arriving on Friday with my coat fabric from Mood.  Elastic will have to be removed for pleating anytime I wash this garment.

For pleating, I purchased an 8" pvc pipe, 5' long.  The long width is nice since there is room for me to place the entire width of the skirt without folding, and the big diameter means that there are only about 4 rolls (i.e., 8 layers of fabric) in any one spot.

Pre-squishing, but post-wrapping with thread:

 I just used some yellow serger thread since I had a big spool and it was easy.  I've heard of people using dental floss and nylon fishing twine.  Tying the thread tightly at either end was a challenge - I also used some cello tape (easy to remove) at the ends to keep things in place.  I think I wrapped on average every 1/2 in or so.  Top edge - showing the selvedges that are in the side seams.  I'd wrapped the silk a bit loosely since I was afraid of things getting too tight for the later "squishing" step - but that meant that the string wrapping caused some puckers.

Squished!  This took a while - I'm glad I didn't get it wet first!  I squished downwards, moving a little at a time and then distributing that fullness down to lower levels once it got too hard to move.  At the end, I wrapped more string and added a bit of tape to squish the edges as tightly as I could.  I've seen round pipe clamps sold for this purpose and now see why that would be useful.  But this worked too, I think.

Then I poured boiling water over it, and squished the pleats as much as I could in one direction to make them as sharp as possible.  Actually, I'm not sure that the hot water really would matter.  I also spritzed a little hair spray on the whole mess.  Why not?  Silk is like hair, and we're looking for retaining the crispness of the pleats as much as we can.

It's now standing in the basement behind our dehumidifier, having warm, dry air blown on it all day.  I'm planning to take a hot hair dryer to it at the end, and am going to look into whether I can run an iron or hot air gun (embossing tool) to heat set the pleats as much as I can.

Next stop - cutting out the top!