Poof is great, as long as you don't have to make it yourself...

J briefly mentioned the behemoth of a project we finished recently (bah, not so recently, but the memory is still burned into my brain).

Crinoline is an amazing invention. Gives shape and volume to skirts and dresses. I've always admired them, but not their price. They are super expensive and when J decided she wanted to make one, I thought it would be super easy, but boy, was I wrong.



Tulle is very cruel as a fabric. Like strip you naked, leave you in a field cruel. I've never really appreciated just how horrible of a fabric tulle is until we decided to spend an afternoon cutting and stitching together over 10 yards of tulle (and I'm pretty sure that was just one crinoline skirt, and we made 2... almost 2).

The pattern J got seemed easy enough. You simply get 10 yards of fabric, and cut out 8" wide strips of tulle, then use a serger to piece them all together. Sounds easy, right? Not so much.

After cutting out all of the pieces, which took both of us and lots of rulers and time getting angry, you have to serge the edges of them together and baste stitch all along 1 side of the 10+ yards so you can gather it all when you go to stitch it together.

By the last stitch (which also used the most amount of the tulle), I was ready to scream. J forced me to serge the stitch, even though this project was my first on a serger. Halfway through, after much frustration, I gave up. I gave up so much that I was done with the crinoline. I didn't care what happened to it. I was mad, so mad at that stupid tulle and everything involving it. Mad enough to walk away with the tulle still stuck in the serger. J was surprised, and amused by this prospect. She still hadn't done this stitch on her skirt, mind you.

So, in order to calm me down, she agreed to finish the stitch, since it was her serger we were using. And by the end of the stitch, she was just as mad at tulle as I was. And that's why her wonderful crinoline is sitting in a box, waiting to be finished.



Although it was much stress, and anger, my crinoline came out beautiful. I have yet to wear it, but it hangs on a nice hanger at my place, on display as my hardest project to be completed as of yet.