UmbrellaGirl: Bata de Cola

For the past few weeks, I've been working on a BIG project.
I was invited to join a group of Flamenco dancers from Flamencura, at the Austin School of Fashion Design to design my own Bata de Cola skirt. The basics of the skirt are similar to wedding dress design.

How could I say no to that???

With the help of the instructor, I found these lovely fabrics at JoAnn's. The pink daisy fabric also comes in white with yellow or navy, so I think I'll be making another. We used the pattern ordered online at flamencodressmaking.com. to sew up the basic skirt, but changed many aspects of the actual instructions as you'll see if you follow along. This project was time consuming and gave me a real eye opener to the amount of time that goes into an actual wedding gown. (I know hundreds of hours sometimes.) I think I spent about 45 hours or more on this. Of course the second time around will probably go faster.

Here's the basic skirt sewn up with zipper attached...

Next come ruffles....

Starting to look more formal...

You can't tell very well from the above picture, but I did chalk the lines for ruffle placement.

But wait... I don't think that's quite enough ruffles you say???

How about now?
This looks pretty good, but there's still the under ruffles to contend with to give the Bata that lift and heaviness for movement while throwing the skirt around with your feet....so MORE RUFFLES!!!

Using the seam from the underside of the skirt I tacked these stiff ruffles in between the lines. You can also see where I surged the lining to each of the upper parts of the skirt... you don't line the whole skirt, because that makes it too slippery against the body... specifically the legs. You need to be able to move the skirt with your legs and feet.