tons of tulle!

This past weekend was Memorial day weekend, and any holiday with a name means a sale at Joann Fabrics (one of two places to buy fabric in the area). So Joann had tulle for sale making it $.89 per yard. So I bought 10 yards of white tulle. After washing it (swishing it around in soapy water then clean water) I hung it outside for a while. I hung it up at night for two reasons, 1: I was up and 2: I figure the fabric is delicate and In direct sunlight it may get damaged so I didn't want it hanging at noon.
So once this was clean as well as some white fabric I picked up on sale, I decided to make a petticoat.
Since most of the skirts I would be using will be circle skirts and this shouldn't show underneath I decided to go for a gourd pattern for the skirt. I also plan on adding elastic to the waistband so I made it larger then necessary.

Since the fabric was about 44in in width I folded it in half to have about a 20in long petticoat and measured in 13 in for the waist then drew diagonally down to 17 in and repeated for 4 gourds. I then sewed these together on all but one side since it would be easier to attach the tulle while it was flat and not in a circle.  I also sewed in a loop at the top for the waistband.
I found that in order to deal with tulle especially when you want to gather it it is best to have lots of open space. I cut 140in of tulle off from my 10 yards and laid it out in my hallway so I could cut it in half width wise. This gave be two strips about 29 in wide.

Next I folded each strip in half to make the width about 14in and used my serger to gather it together.
I set the serger so the differential foot was at 2 and the stitch length was 4. I also lowered the stitch width to about 6mm. In doing this I found that these settings cause the serger to gather the materiel so we get about 1/6 of the original length. So I loosened the gathers a bit and stitched it upside-down to the right side of the skirt using my sewing machine at about 10in from the waistband.

After loosening the gathers a bit I ended up using about one and a half of the tulle I had prepared.  I then repeated the process with the tulle  using another 75in to compete the skirt. I sewed a second layer about 5in from the waistband.

I decided to thread some string through the waist to see how it looked although after another trip to the store I will get some more elastic so I can finish the petticoat.
I think the next one will be made out of fabric and I may need about 4-6 yards of 45in wide fabric to make it! (actually my initial calculations said 17 yards but that isn't happening. )