Sewing in progress !

I can has a skirt !
I figured I'd show you the end result of my hem ordeal? Sans closures for now, as I prefer to leave them until the last minute (superstitious me... or lazy me ?), and on a dress dummy without tummy padding - it hangs astonishingly well even without it !

The skirt is one layer of cotton (the yellow bit you see peeping out through the side opening), poly-cotton satin (the grey pleats), wool-silk-poly brocade, home-made toddler zooming past, poly-cotton velvet and a polyester red and purple shot something. And it's *heavy*. Ouch ! I think it's heavier than my green wool bustle skirt - probably due to the giganormous quantity of fabric I draped over the back. Not sure I'll do much dancing in this !

The reason why I'm not a superhero

If I was one, my archnemesis would be called "Hem". I don't think that's very good in terms of merchandising. Besides, I always *flee* before hems. I spent actually a ridiculous amount of time turning on my lappie, logging into blogger and typing this. Instead of hemming my bustle skirt. Which is like, the last thing to do on said skirt - almost. I still need to handsew one pleat in place. Then closueres. I guess Closures could be Hem's sidekick, actually. I've worn some petticoats more than once without a proper closure. I even think one of those petticoats still neither has a button nor a buckle, nor ties.
The hem is done now. It isn't pretty. Everything that could go wrong, did. The weird electrical itch that sometimes happens with TheSphynx (didn't last long, thankfully), the tension tightening itself, the bobbin being empty 20 inches before the end of the (huuuge) hem, the not-purposefully-gathered hem, the escaping pins,... In the end, my good old iron seemed to save the day and make the hem look acceptable. Hopefully it'll still look okay by daylight.

Did I mention wrangling half a ton of fabric over 8 square inches wasn't practical ? This is a picture I took while re-threading the machine... Yup, the fabric was crunched up like that.