O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

There's just something about this Marfy skirt. I have had more trouble with it, and really it seems as if it should be pretty straightforward. I realized that I had it in my mind that the longer side of the panel went to the left, where the drape is, but it's the shorter side that goes to the left. Once I "turned my head around" it went much better. I should have made myself a diagram to start with.

I finally decided to do the silk underlayer as a completely separate layer, and began on the skirt panels. Then I had to decide just how to finish the edges of the panels. I decided to hem the bottom of the tweed overlayer with a regular hem, and to narrow-hem the draped edge. The silk will have a twice turned narrow hem I believe.

I attached the tweed panels to the yoke. No problem. I pressed the hem and drape edges and hand stitched the drape edge. I decided to wait until today to begin stitching the hem edge. I laid the skirt on my cutting table and was ready to go upstairs, took one last look at it, and was immediately certain that I had the wrong side of the fabric up. (Shades of my yoke problem!) I looked at it every way I could, and it refused to be correct. I resigned myself to starting over today. Of course, the panels had met the yoke perfectly since I would now have to rip it all out.

This morning I procrastinated around before going down to look at the skirt again, as I could hardly stand to think of ripping it apart and recutting, etc. It seemed to look better, and I brought it into the sunlight, and suddenly I couldn't tell the difference between what I thought was right and wrong. This was maddening, to say the least. I thought maybe the difference was that the yoke and jacket are fused to Texture Weft, and the panels are not. This flattens the fabric slightly, and changes the way light reflects. So, I steamed the yoke and the panels and brushed gently with a lint brush to raise the nap a little on the yoke, and to ensure the panels had the same treatment as the yoke. It still looked as if they matched perfectly. I finally had Pearle look at it both in sunlight and away from the window, with artificial light. He's much better with colors than I am usually, and he thought that it was fine as is. That's the final word on whether it's right or not, and as far as I'm concerned, it's right. What a to-ing and fro-ing this has been. I can hardly wait until tonight to finish the tweed hem and then begin on the silk layer.

(The title will be familiar to Jabberwocky fans. I'm chortling in my joy.)