Making Moana Part 4: The Skirts
Aww yeah the “Making Moana” Tutorial is back with a vengence!!! Today I will be showing you how I am going to tackle Moana’s skirts! If you are interested in how I made Moana’s top and sash, click through for parts 1, 2, and 3 now!
Welcome back, everyone! So I will be starting with Moana’s grass skirt first, as with most of my cosplays, I prefer to build from the bottom out in order to make sure everything is laying correctly.
So my first plan was to get a bunch of loose raffia and make my own grass skirt. I attempted that and ended up with a giant, skimpy mess!!! :(
My dog was a big fan of the raffia, though.
I honestly think it’s worth it to invest in a grass skirt that is already tied, which is exactly what I went and did! I saw that Hobby Lobby had adult grass skirts in their party section, but then I saw that they had this:
A grass skirt meant for a table that is 9 feet long!!! This is the one that I ended up going with. :P Moana’s grass skirt is extremely full, there hardly seems to be a gap in it, even when the wind is on her:
So I’m going to take as much of the 9 foot length as I can to make the grass skirt as full as possible. I’m going to be hand-sewing two layers of the grass skirt, one on top of the other, to this pretty neat, nautical trim I found at Joann’s:
I cut a length of the trim about 40 inches long (the length of my model’s hips) and hand-sewed the two layers to the bottom/middle portion of it, leaving some of the loop at the top:
My initial plan was to attach this skirt to the outer skirt, but the loops actually make it super easy to size to the model, so I left it separate and used cording to tie the overlapping parts together. I made sure that the grass that overlapped ended up showing through the slit in her outer skirt for more coverage.
Here is what the skirt looks like with the loops tied together:
Well that wasn’t so bad! Now onto Moana’s overskirts. I made a mock-up of the two-tiered skirt using Simplicity 8074:
I turned the C skirt 90 degrees and evened out the points at the bottom, then I halved the length in order to make the shorter, upper skirt. Here is my mock-up on the grass skirt:
Moana’s skirt looks like a thick, woven fabric. I decided to use a cream-colored monk’s cloth to achieve this affect without being rough or scratchy. Be warned, though! If you’ve never worked with this fabric, it frays like crazy!! I had to serge all of the pieces immediately upon cutting them out. This is a close-up of the fabric:
Moana’s skirts almost look more like a blanket that has been folded over, then tied in place with her sash:
I still cut the two skirts separately as there were some darts involved, but I sewed the tops together (good side to bad side), then flipped the upper skirt over the top of the lower skirt. Make sure you hem the open ends of the slit for both skirts BEFORE you sew them together! I forget to do this the first time. Here is a reference to guide you:
Once all the hems are done, it is time to decide on a closure for the skirt. I went with a giant snap, right where the upper corners of the slit overlap. It has worked quite reliably so far!
And you can see a few of the embellishments in those final pictures as well, which I will be talking about next time! :) Thank you so much for reading! As always please let me know if you have any questions! See you in part 5!
