Pikake x Love

BIG BOW! (SM part 5)

(kyaaa.. roughly a month later…. orz) … and the last piece I made was the large bow that went on the back of the skirt.

I wanted to make this bow a lot fuller than the small bow on the collar.  It needed volume, so I used a lot more fabric and pieces to construct it.  I added an additional piece to make it look like the bow had “tails” (you know, the end pieces that hang out of the bow?)

I cut three rectangles of red tshirt fabric. The main bow piece was 25” x 13”.  The tail piece was 25” x 7”.  The center piece was 3” x 6”.

The methodology of creating the bow was pretty similar to that of the smaller bow.  The main difference here is that the main bow piece would also give the illusion of the  ”loops” of the bow.  That’s why that piece is so big.

So to start out, I sewed the long edges of the main bow piece, “right” sides together.  This created a long tube, which was flipped inside-out, so that the “right” side was on the outside of the tube.  I then folded the tube in half and sewed the ends together to make a ring.

To make the bow tails, I took the tail piece and folded it in half, “right” sides together.  I sewed along the edges, leaving a small hole at the end to flip it inside-out (like how the small bow was made).  Finished up by sewing the small hole closed.

Here, I started putting the bow together.  I laid the main bow piece on top of the tail piece, making sure that the seam of the ring was centered.  Then, I scrunched up the middles, and sewed them together (a thimble was very helpful!).

The center piece was made the same way as with the smaller bow.  Folded it in half, lengthwise, and sew up the long edge.  Flipped the resulting tube inside out, so that the “right” side of the fabric was showing.

To finish up, the center piece was wrapped around the middle of the bow, and sewed down.  I used a safety pin to secure it to the back of the skirt (which was helpful, since it covered up some extra, bunchy material :P haha)

And so, Sailor Moon costume complete! (just in time for halloween? haha)

Sailor Moon Pleated Skirt (SM part 2)

The skirt took the most time to create (mostly because I measured and pinned down each pleat.. hellooo evening of hulu…).  If I had more time, I would have made the pleats a little more defined, but it turned out nice enough as it was.

OOOoh, a close-up..

I began by taking two measurements: my waist (where I wanted the skirt to sit on me) and my hips (to make sure the skirt opening was large enough to fit over my butt).

I got an extra-large blue tshirt at goodwill for a couple bucks.  It was actually a really nice dri-fit shirt.. felt a little bad cutting up a good shirt like that, but you get over that pretty quickly. :P But since it was a dri-fit shirt, it was slightly shiny, which added a nice effect. (Sidenote: for some reason, I imagine the Sailor Scouts’ skirts would be made out of some slightly shiny material. Why not dri-fit? Girls be working hard! haha)

I cut off the bottom portion of the tshirt (armpit to armpit) to create the skirt.  Did a little bit of math to figure out how many pleats and how big to make them.   I had 50 inches of tshirt to work with.  So my rough calculations ended up with making 10 pleats that were 3 inches wide, with 1 inch sections in the under section.

I bought some 1.5 inch wide ribbed ribbon for the waistband, since it wouldn’t stretch and leave me skirt-less during the party (heh) and it also gives the pleats some structure.  I cut a long section of ribbon (about a yard) and, using my pleat calculations, I pinned the pleats down to the ribbon all the way around.  Took that to my sewing machine and straight-stitched that sucker the whole way around.

Lastly, I cut a slit at the back so the skirt would fit over my butt (remember, the ribbon = no stretch), grabbed a safety pin as a closure, and voila! pleated skirt! :)

I was SO excited while making this project, that I neglected to photograph the journey.. :( but fortunately, I am a self-proclaimed “Champ at MS Paint”, so I’ve drawn out some crude diagrams below..

A few things:

As with all sewing projects, it’s super important to iron everything! Iron the tshirts before you do anything else to make sure all your edges are straight.  Also, once the pleats are sewn down, ironing each fold of each pleat is necessary for it to look nice and crisp!  My pleats could have used a little more ironing.. but oh well.

Using the safety pin as a closure/button for the skirt was sort of a cop-out. >_>  It was the fastest and easiest thing I could think of.  haha!  I thought the back looked a little bit janky with the slit and overlapping of the extra material (but yay, I’ll still be able to wear it, even if I get a little fatter!)… but then I remembered that the big back bow would cover it anyways, so no worries! :)

So there you go! First step of my Sailor Moon transformation!

Sailor Moon! (part 1)

The club I was involved with in college, AACF, has themed grad parties each year called Senior Sendoff. People tend to get really into it and go all out to get the right stuff (or it might just be me…). Anyways, I always like to make my own outfits/costumes. :)

This year, the theme was childhood TV shows. So I decided to dress up as Sailor Moon! Sailor Moon was one of my most favorite shows growing up and I still love it now. :3

I made it out of two tshirts, one blue and one red. Tshirts are probably my favorite material to do this type of DIY project, since it doesn’t fray and is a pretty forgiving fabric to work with.

Here are the sketches and diagrams I drew for myself. (Yes, hella nerd status using engineering graph paper..)

Over the next few posts, I’ll try to explain how I created each piece. :) It was all super simple and now I am prepared for Halloween .. or if I ever attend Comicon or something… haha. Stay tuned!