Okay ... here are some of the basics...
This is a "pattern" of the skirt as ZamIAm made it. Please note that the length of the skirt squares are
WRONG They should be 2 1/4" at least. If your wife is more than say 5'7" tall - you'll need to adjust the length of the skirt accordingly - so it fits from the waist to the back of the knee (each square has about a 1/4" overlap)
Here's a picture for how we came up with the square count for the skirt. Also handy to see how it's put together.
This is a close-up of the corner edge of the skirt that I took at the FIDM exhibit in LA a couple of years ago. It shows how the lace stitching.
Here's a graphic of the main lacing of the skirt made by DustinCropsBoy:
And the matching graphic for the edges of the skirt:
I have to add that when I did the lacing on my skirt... I started on the bottom and laced up the toward the top on each row, leaving the extra lace at the top for tying off. It was easier for me. Also.. don't be alarmed when the columns fold together - they eventually flatten out.
I put all these graphics onto printouts for my own use when I was making the skirt... along with some other pictures I have. I made those into PDF's if you want to download them.
That's a thumbnail of the first one. The file is large at 1.5 Mb (lots of pics) You can download it here:
http://www.dmeb2.org/images/zamskirt_pics.pdf
This is the second PDF:
File Size is 570Kb. You can download it here:
http://www.dmeb2.org/images/zamskirt2_info.pdf
Hope all this helps...