did you ever make a proper madoka skirt tutorial? and what did you make the skirt out of? Just a cotton fabric? any particular type? it looks so lovely and fluffy
I never got around to making a full tutorial, just explained how to stack layers to give it the donut look. I tried, but couldn’t figure out how to explain it in text/images without it getting truly convoluted and then I lost steam and got busy with school. Being a university student is suffering.
(It’s also bullshit that I have trouble explaining it in text because if Christine can teach me how to do this over the phone, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to write it. Let’s give this another shot.)
Anyway, so.
The skirt is made of cotton sateen. It’s this amazingly beautiful fabric that is crisp, lovely to iron, and has this lovely shine to it without being satin-levels of obnoxious. It is what dreams are made of. I wish I had more costumes that used this. We also used it on Sayaka’s shirt, Mami’s shirt/arm warmers and Kyoko’s ruffles. If it were considered at the time, I would have insisted Christine use it for Homura’s shirt, too, but alas. (BRB, making Maya use it for her Satsuki costume.)
So anyway, you want to make this.
Once you break it down it becomes significantly less complicated than it looks.
Basically the entire skirt is rectangles. Also note that the skirt still has to be worn with a petticoat. This just gives you the necessary “donut” poof look.
A. You have a rectangle that becomes the waistband. Generally [your waist + seam allowance + room for elasticizing]” x 4”. This will be elasticized, not difficult.
B. You have a rectangle that will be the upper layer that domes over the tulle. This gets gathered down a lot, so you probably do something like [[your waist x 5]+ seam allowance] x 20” or something. It depends on how long you want the skirt to be, and keep in mind that this layer includes the bottom ruffle. You can do this in panels (as we did five panels of [waist]) or you can find one big massive long strip. Up to you and how you can most effectively use fabric; any seams will be lost in the ruffles anyway.
C. Then you have a rectangle that is the bottom layer, which can be much smaller, like [[your waist x 3]+ seam allowance] x 14”.
D. As many rectangles as you want in tulle for the stuffing inside. This is basically like a petticoat but sealed inside the skirt; any petticoat tutorial should give you an idea of how to do this.
You’ll notice that B is longer than C by about 6”. This is to include hem and ruffle. You can alter these numbers (20 and 14, in this case) to be whatever you want, as it will depend on your height and how long you want the skirt to be. Katherine’s skirt barely covers her bum (hooray, ruffles and matching bloomers!) but she is also 5’6” or something with long legs, if she were 5’0” and had short legs, that same measurement might fall to mid-thigh. You have to alter these numbers to scale to you, but you still want to keep the 6” (or whatever) difference to account for ruffle and hem.
So first you take B and you make it into the “skirt” by joining both ends and then hemming. Cool. Now you have a “skirt”.
Then you go five inches (or whatever you’ve decided to make your ruffle length) from the bottom of the skirt/hem and sew a gathering line all the way around. Gather this down to the width of C. Attach the bottom of the C-skirt to this ruffle line so you’ve essentially got one two-layered skirt, the top layer (B) having much more fabric.
Gather the top of C down to match the waistband (A). Sew (or tack, as you will still be adding D and B.)
Create your petticoat (D) layer to gather down to match waistband (A). Sew (or tack, as you still need to add B.) There are a handful of pictures of this process here but I’ve included some below too.
Now gather down B to match the waistband (A). Again, sew or tack in place. (It’s a shit ton of fun, I tell you. That many layers gets crazy.)
Attach waistband, install elastic.
Become cupcake.
Hope that helped!
- Jenn
