Double pleats

I originally intended to pleat this skirt all the way around. I thought it would take eight sets of pleats to fill the waist band, making a very full 1950s style skirt. After the first one I began to have some doubts, and by the end of the second I had decided that two in front and two in back would be just fine. Simple accordion pleats can be sort of meditative: measure, fold, iron; measure, fold, iron. But these double inverted pleats are fussy. Making the inner pleat is easy enough, but keeping the inner pleat flat as you form the outer pleat requires just a little more attention than I wanted to give this project. Therefore: only four pleats. I think it looks fine this way.

I tried something new with the pockets – when I abandoned half my planned pleats and cut down the sides of the skirt, I cut the pockets directly into the sides of the skirt. I’m not going to start doing this regularly, since it’s a very inefficient use of fabric, but the pockets disappear nicely into the sides of the skirt.