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!
Welcome back! Today I will be showing you how I finished up Moana’s top! If you missed parts 1 and 2, click the links! :)
There is only one more embellishment to do on Moana’s bodice, and that is the star pattern across the middle:
That looks pretty painted or dyed to me. I’m going to make a stencil to trace and then hand paint the design. First, I measured how tall I wanted the design to be (about 2.5″ on this bodice) and cut a strip of thick paper to that size. Then, using perpendicular lines, I drew the design. You could trace it onto a thinner paper as well if you aren’t as confident in your drawing skills! I’m not confident in my so much as I am in a hurry. :P
I included a bit of the edges of the neighboring stars, just so I would know where to place the stencil next. I then cut out the stencil and lightly traced the design onto the bodice:
I personally prefer to trace and then freehand paint rather than paint right over the stencil. I’ll be painting over all the lines, so any goofs or imperfections will be covered. :)
I’ll be mixing an acrylic paint with Martha Stewart’s fabric paint medium. This stuff is seriously awesome! I’ve found that sometimes fabric paint colors can be pretty limited. By using a medium, I have the whole spectrum of acrylic paint at my disposal! I’ve used it several times before and have never experienced any cracking or flaking. The medium makes the paint quite flexible and capable of moving with the fabric. The color paint I’m using is called “Black Plum.” It turned out a bit darker than the embroidery thread, but they still match pretty well.
Mix the paint with the medium in a separate cup, put on the Moana soundtrack, and get painting!!
Yay, it’s done!!! :D
Now it’s time to bring all the pieces together. I started by baste stitching the upper flap to the top of the bodice:
Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the next part! :( I placed the lining and the entire bodice, right sides together, and closed the top seam. Turn the garment right side out and pin the bottom pieces together in order to do the scallops!
I drew the scallops first, then went over my markings with a straight stitch:
After that, I very slowly went over the straight stitch with a satin stitch. If your machine doesn’t have a satin stitch setting (mine doesn’t) set your machine to a zig-zag stitch and lower the stitch length as much as possible. My stitch width was set at a 3.
Here you can see the detail of the satin stitch. I’m applying fray check so that I can cut off the excess lower fabric, though I recommend applying fray check again after it’s cut. If it frays a bit, that’s okay! It’s fitting for an active adventurer like Moana! :) You can also see I was trying to decide what color eyelets to use in this picture, white like the shells or brown like the lace...;)
I had already decided that I wanted to do a lace-up back, as these tend to look very nice and neat, and it makes sizing very simple for the wearer! However, I was curious what the back of Moana’s top actually looked like, so for those of you who are curious as well, here it is:
Ummm??
Maybe I’m missing something, but is Disney seriously trying to tell me that throughout her entire adventure that top stayed up with ONE DRAWSTRING??
For reference, here is the back of Moana’s mom’s dress:
Okay that’s sort of better, I mean there’s some lacing and I see two buttons there. Well, my research was supremely unhelpful, so I decided to do my own thing. The wig will most definitely be covering this part, anyways!!
Finish up the side seams and mark where you’d like your eyelets to go. I’m going with coppery/brown because it looks a bit more natural.
Starting at a half inch down, I marked an eyelet every inch after that for a total of six on each side.
I like to use a crop-o-dile to punch the correct sized holes and install small eyelets. This tool is seriously a life saver!! I got mine on Amazon. On sale, too! :D
Here are the eyelets fully installed!
I left the upper flap free to hang over the eyelets. I think the look is more reminiscent of the look from the movie, but you certainly could install eyelets on that part.
Last but certainly not least: a modesty panel! Most likely the modesty panel won’t be necessary, but I always include one just in case! This one I cut a bit short so that it wouldn’t be seen between scallops if the bodice was tightened all the way.
In order to keep the modesty panel rigid and un-saggy, I installed two boning channels in the shape of an X on the wrong side of the fabric:
I had already straightened out the boning for these channels, and installed them before placing the two modesty panels together, right sides in. I then stitched three of the sides together and left the fourth open.
Use the open side to turn the modesty panel right-sides out and press the seams. I used a serger to then finish up the fourth side.
Pin the serged side to the bodice, just past the eyelets and sew:
And with that, the top is done!!! :D Here are the top and sash together, on my lovely model! :)
She’s going to make a wonderful Moana!!! :) See you guys in part 4 for the skirts!
Welcome back! Click here to go to Part 1, where I began Moana’s top and sash! Today I’ll show you the progress I made with the embroidery, and how to finish up the embellishments!
Once the embroidery is finished on the sash and the upper flap of her bodice, it’s time to pin the good sides together and sew! Make sure that you press your seams after you turn each piece right-side out.
Here is the upper flap pinned:
Here are the upper flap and the sash after sewing and pressing the seams:
Last time I had discussed that my plan was the iron what would normally be the center back seam on the front, as Moana has either a fold or seam in the middle of her sash:
I finished up the ends of the sash with a simple rolled hem, but you could most definitely fold the ends over and sew them shut as well. Voila! The sash is complete!
Now for the rest of the top! Moana has a sort of geometric brown lace trimming the upper flap:
I would be incredibly surprised if this was commercially available somehow. I thought about how I was going to make this for the longest time when luck intervened! I found this somewhat similar looking geometric lace in the clearance bin at Joanns!!
As you can see my original plan was to dye it brown, which I did attempt, aaaaaand managed to turn it orange!! :(
So on to Plan B!!! Use a sharpie and color it in!
The added benefit of coloring it with a sharpie is that this made the lace quite stiff, which is perfect for this part of the bodice. Ah, much better!!
I pinned one line of lace, triangles pointing down, to the lower edge of the flap and attached it with a straight stitch. Here it is:
Now it could be left like this, but if you reference the pictures, Moana’s lace has intermittent triangles that poke up from the lace ever now and again, so I took the lace I had left and cut out every other triangle (you can see this side hadn’t been sharpie’d yet when I made the cuts):
Once I finished coloring it in, I pinned and attached it directly on top of the first layer of lace, so now it looks like this!
Much better, in my humble opinion!! Don’t forget to fray check the raw ends of the lace that were cut!
Now, on to the shell border. I had a very difficult time finding shells that were like Moana’s in the movie, which look almost like little white coffee beans. Since I’m on a bit of a time crunch, I ended up getting white puka shells that already had a hole drilled in them on Amazon. I separated these shells into a small shell bin and a large shell bin. The small shells I will try to reserve for the skinnier parts of the flap and the large ones for where I have more room. I’ll be using brown embroidery thread to stitch the shells on, so that hopefully the thread is a bit more noticeable!
Not going to lie guys, this part was a serious pain in the butt!! I did one row at a time. I’m not sure if that made it any easier, honestly!! XD
Here are the finished rows:
I did put a dab of fabric glue under each shell to try and secure them. It seems to be holding just fine so far.
The last thing I’ll discuss for this part of the tutorial is the lining, which I had set aside up until this point. Since the embellishments are nearly done, it’s almost time to put the entire top together! Yay! :) I want my model to be able to wear the top bra-less and not have to worry about support, so I did sew boning channels into the seam allowances of the lining, and added a light, shaped boning to it. You can see the channels sewn in here:
With the lining taken care of, it’s time to finish this bodice up! See you guys in part 3! :)
