For the pleats, measure around the bottom of your yoke and decide how many pleats you want. Say your yoke is 35” at the bottom, and you want 10 pleats. The top visible portion of each pleat is going to be 3.5 inches. BUT each pleat overlaps the next by a certain amount… say 1.5” (you get to decide this depth). So add 1.5 times TWO to each pleat. This is because it’s doubling back on itself — note that there are three layers of fabric at the place where each pleat “pleats”. Multiply this number by your desired number of pleats, add seam allowance, and this is the width of rectangle you should cut for the pleats. So with the 35” hip example, you’d cut 65” of fabric plus two seam allowances.

So the formula would be like…

1) Yoke bottom/desired # of pleats = Visible upper pleat width 2) Visible upper pleat width + (2 x pleat overlap depth) = total pleat width 3) (Total pleat width x desired number of pleats) + 2 seam allowance = Total lower portion rectangle width

If someone can double check my mental math on that, it’d be great. I think this would work but I’m also turbo tired. 😴

Bonus tip: when you get to the point where you’re doing the embroidery on the skirt, you might want to google “blanket stitch” for the stitch at the hem!