New walking skirt pattern in the works

I am working on a new pattern is based on a tissue pattern for a walking skirt issued by Butterick in May, 1880. The writing on the original cover sheet is tiny and blurred with a smeared stamp and age marks. The instructions assume you know exactly what you are doing, and none of the pre-cut pattern pieces are labeled. This one would be an adventure!

Now, the first thing I discovered was that three pattern pieces were missing. The belt was obvious, and easily recreated. The side gore was also missing, and also re-creatable. I had the back breadth, the shirred portion, plus two other pieces I wasn’t entirely sure about. I thought I had a strange looking front gore and the back drapery, but I didn’t seem to have a tablier. The piece I thought was the back drapery could conceivably be the tablier, but when I compared the notches and perforations, it did prove to be the back drapery. So I was missing the critical tablier.

Then I took a serious look at my “front gore”. Very strange. In fact, it is impossible for it to be the front gore. It had to be the tablier! No problem, I can recreate a front gore. I now had all of the critical pieces to bring you a new pattern.

So I have finished drafting the pattern pieces, and writing the first draft of the instructions. It's time to go sew!