Much Ado skirt fabric musings

[gem]

Ok, just a reminder, here are the skirts. 

The thing you may notice about them is that they are white. Possibly the least practical color imaginable, particularly at a dusty fair on a bright, sunny day.

So I was planning to make them from the 5.3 oz linen from fabrics-store.com, hoping that it would be a little more opaque than a lighter fabric.  I've just done two practice runs with the pleats and waistbands--little 1-yard samples of fabric pleated down and stitched to a strip of fabric.  I made one from muslin, and one from some leftover 5.3 oz linen in my stash.  The linen is REALLY HEAVY (and I mean its physical mass/weight, not the thickness of the fabric) , maybe twice the weight of the muslin, even at just 1 yard by 12". Thinking about 5 yards of that is a little daunting!

I'm making up a complete muslin version, but now I'm wondering if I should go with a lighter-weight linen... but if I do that, will the skirts be more sheer (and, hence, see-through?)?

Thoughts? Suggestions? Random commentary? 

Gramercy!

[Cilean]

Okay so another test and place 3 thicknesses of muslin together, it looks like all of the ladies have more than 1 layer of skirting material.  Many have differing layers of white from pure to off white.

Go to JoAnn's and try the Cotton-Linen and see if this is more opaque yet still lightweight enough for skirting or try White Sheeting which is also in the muslin section and is for the backing of quilts.

Just a thought,
Cilean

[gem]

The layers is a good idea; I wonder if I could do a simple sort of "slip" layer inside the pleated layer, for added opacity. I don't think I want to add too much volume in terms of skirts on top of skirts, though.  Hmm....