For nuranar

[mala_14]

I needed a break from my ruffled petticoat panel, so I thought I'd give nuranar's polonaise trim a try on a scrap of fabric. (Nothing is measured properly, just eyeballed and sloppy.) On the left is box pleats in the middle with knife pleats on the top edge. (It ws kind of difficult to do, which is why I didn't try it on the bottom edge.) On the right is knife pleats facing one way in the middle and the other way on the edges. I think the second one might be it, or close? It makes the weird V shape while keeping the centre flat.

Comments

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting! Hmm... what would the one on the right look like, but alternating? When you look at the left side of the picture of the striped one, you can clearly see V's on each row; so not everything is going the same way.

[mala-14.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. You can't see it so well in my picture, but where the pleats reverse, there is a bit of a V shape. I think it's more pronounced if the section is puffed up a bit, as opposed to flat. The outer pleats are definitely knife pleats though, because you can see them fairly well on all the trim in the picture.

[atherleisure.livejournal.com]

The outer pleats still look like box pleats to me. I was getting more of a V shape with my offset box pleats, but I didn't take pictures before I took all the pins out. I'm still voting for three rows of box pleats.

[mala-14.livejournal.com]

If you look at the petticoat flounce, especially toward the middle and the right, you can see that all the pleats are going in one direction.

[atherleisure.livejournal.com]

I see what you mean, but I don't read it the same way you do. I see that we see one of the sides releasing, but you can't tell whether there's a back side releasing because the fullness folds back (or the pleat folds back, which is my argument). If you look at the polonaise, you see the same trim but it looks a lot more like box pleats releasing.

Also looking closely at the interruption in the stripes and the line where it's stitched down, it looks like box pleats to me. You can't see two edges on all the pleats, but I really think you can on many of them.

That being said, I like what you came up with. It's an interesting detail for a decorative pleating. It just somehow seems more Victorian than Georgian to me. It does not, however, give the same predominately left-leaning slant to the sections that the original has. The shift between bottom and middle and middle and top on the original is the same while your test piece reverses.

[mala-14.livejournal.com]

That's true. Box pleats do seem to be much more common in the 18th century.

It's so tough to say what's going on with the pleats because they're all smushed. Really interesting stuff!

[bauhausfrau.livejournal.com]

Very cool!

[mala-14.livejournal.com]

Keeping this in mind for future projects for sure!