We are in the home stretch now! I’m quite excited and already working on the next piece of Caroline’s wardrobe, but thought I’d take a moment to pause and share the finished skirt.

The skirt is a lovely silk brocade that I bought from a costuming friend a few years ago. The pattern is cranberry colored paisleys on a tan field with small golden threads shot through to frame the paisley motifs. I believe the pattern expected readers to use a lighter weight silk than this but I don’t thinks it is too much of a problem.

It is fully lined with white cotton batiste. this gives the skirt quite a firm body. I managed to get it to stand on its own.

The seams must be whipped to control the fray – either pressed open and whipped to the lining or whipped closed. On the lower hem, I chose to use bias tape as a facing to cut down on bulk. It has the added benefit of making it easier to curve the hem – it’s not straight – so it doesn’t ripple. If you used a lighter weight fabric you could easily make a standard hem. I also chose this fluted ribbon trim instead of pleats or fringe. It suits my style and Caroline likes it too.

I will share the polonaise soon. It’s coming together quickly and I will hopefully be finished with it by next week! Exciting. There may be a hat and maybe even a reticule. Fun fact: in French reticule means ridiculous.

This is another piece of Caroline’s wardrobe that came together fairly quickly. Unfortunately this is the first piece I don’t completely love.

I made this piece from lightweight linen and the three basic pieces are fast to construct. Frankly, the casings for the inside of the garment also came together easily and quickly. It’s not a difficult item to construct.

The frustration began with the overlapping of the wires at center back. This was sooo fidly. The instructions say to overlap by 1/4” and bind the two pieces together with thread. I found this to be tricky at best. Because the gauge of hat wire used, it is not very flexible and so quite difficult to manipulate into place, then get it to hold still while tying it together and not accidentally stitching the piece to the body of the garment. All this machination mangled the raw edges of the casings. Since the instructions are a bit sparse here, should you want to make this item I recommend leaving some length at the ends of the casings, shaping the wire as desired, and then sewing the casings closed. These are doll clothes and it’s not like Caroline is going to be walking around causing the wires to shift. I wish I had thought about that before I spent so much time at this juncture of the project.

The second area of frustration was the binding of the side openings. I believe this pattern is based on recreating an original and honestly, maybe this bit should have been updated. Rather than four individual pieces of binding, it might be easier to use one longer piece that would also encase the lowest point of the opening. This raw edge is left exposed by following this pattern and I would prefer it to be encased.

Final critique, no where in the instructions do they tell you to hem the garment. I recommend doing this before you add the boning. And maybe even add the lace trim at the same time. Once the boning is in, the skirt behaves very differently from an unstructured garment. Just my two cents.

I don’t super love the outcome based on these issues and I can’t seem to get the wires shaped the way I want them. Maybe I’m overthinking it.