Hello friends!! ヾ(＠°▽°＠)ﾉ  Today I will share how I made a very cute and pastel Hello Kitty skirt for fairy-kei!!  It is very ruffly and cute!!  I made some changes to it while I worked, so you will also see how I fix things on the fly so that I like them better~

There aren’t any pattern pieces needed for this – the pieces are all rectangles!

Here are my fabric choices –
some cute coordinating fabrics with Hello Kitty designs in pastel colors!
The pink gingham will be our ‘main’ fabric choice
while the squares will be contrast pieces

–

I’m measuring and marking the main fabric
about 14 inches down, making my marks on the wrong side
so that I do not ruin the pretty pattern~

This kind of skirt is incredibly simple.
Cotton fabric like this opens up to about 45″ across when unfolded,
so all I’m doing is cutting an entire piece of that 45″ length
that is 14″ wide.

This makes a skirt that is ‘miniskirt’-like, as the finished photos show.
When I want to make a very full skirt such as for Lolita,
I would do TWO full 45″ pieces that are cut to the length that I want the skirt to be.

–

The contrast piece gets several marks made down it,
but it is opened up to 45″ and the whole width is being used,
just like the other piece.
Since this will be the ruffles along the bottom and it needs to be fuller
than the main skirt piece, I cut two rows of it.
And then, a third row that will serve as the skirt’s waistband.
(I end up abandoning the idea for a waistband later and removing it,
so you do not see a waistband in the finished photo at the top of the page.)

–

Here is my single piece of 45″ x 14″ main fabric,
and three strips of 45″ x 4″ or 5″ contrast
(the width of the ruffles is up to your preference for how long you’d like them to be!).

–

Now I’m pinning one strip of the contrast along the top of the main fabric
to serve as the waistband.  It looks like I have my pins on the incorrect side
by putting them on the right side of the fabric, but this is my preference
because I French seam everything so that they are neat and finished on the inside.

Anyway, in the end I removed this waistband,
so even after putting the time & effort into pinning and sewing it,
you’re going to see me take it apart again several steps from now. ・°・(ノД｀)・°・

–

The waistband and main fabric are French seamed,
and you can see my pins along the side
which will be the vertical seam at the back of the skirt!

–

Moving on to the next pieces,
the two strips that will form the ruffles get pinned together at both ends,
so that they make one loooooong strip.

–

Here are the ends of the strip sewn together.

–

Then, the time-consuming part is folding over both sides of those loooong edges
and hemming them so that they are neat.

–

I was lucky to get a ruffle foot with my machine,
so here I am running a ruffling stitch 1″ down from the top of the strip.

Alternatively, you can do this by hand by running a hand needle over and under
and gathering as you go, or by making a straight seam by machine
and slowly pushing the fabric under the needle to gather it.

–

The ruffled strip gets pinned along the bottom hem of the main skirt
(btw the main skirt gets a hem along the bottom…).

–

As you pin you will probably have to keep gathering by hand
and pinning evenly, overlapping the ruffles when needed
to get them down to size for the skirt.

–

Even if it ends up using a LOT of pins, it’s worth it!

–

Now I’m sewing the gathered ruffles along the bottom of the skirt for real.

–

Pretty neat!!

–

Now, the top of the waistband gets folded over to make a channel for
elastic to go through.  It needs to be wide enough to fit the elastic
and rolled under slightly for a neat finish.
Sew riiight along the very edge of the folded-under part.

–

Elastic is easy to push through if you attach a safety pin on one end.
This is how super neat the waistband and its elastic looks when done!

–

This skirt is finished!
It’s technically wearable right now,
but I decided at this point that I didn’t like the shape of it.
If I’d used twice as much width for the main pink fabric,
then it would look cute because it would flare out,
but with the waistband and main fabric being the same width,
it just looks weirdly shapeless.

–

I slept on it before doing so, but finally decided that the waistband had to go.

–

I pulled the elastic out of it too, and folded over the top of the main piece
to make a new elastic channel, and recycled the same piece of elastic.

–

There we go – this shape is much cuter!!

–

Now to add details!!
Get out all of your favorite ribbon and trimmings and lay stuff out,
deciding what would look nice and where.

–

Pin your preferred details in place and sew them down.

–

I even sewed down ribbin bows in a T-shape across their center.
Clear nail polish is awesome for dabbing on the ends of cut ribbon
to keep it from fraying.

–

Here are all of the details done!!
The skirt is finished!!

–

The blue bow at the top is cute and visible if your top raises enough to show it…

…but it looks cute with a top that hangs below the waistband, too!!

I am happy with this project even through the mistakes I made with it!
I needed to make those mistakes with this skirt in order to learn from them.
I learned that 1 length of 45″ wide fabric is fine for this miniskirt-like look,
but that I should use twice that much if I want a full, ruffly skirt.

Thankfully, even this style of skirt is fine for Fairy-kei,
because its rules are so lenient!

I am still able to enjoy this adorable skirt, and I LOVE its ruffles and bows!!

Tuesday, October 13th, 2015   3:00 pm
Tags: Hello Kitty, diy fairy kei, fairy kei skirt, pastel, sewing, sewing tutorial.
Subscribe to the comments feed if you like. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.