Cosplay Making : Goddess Madoka - Part Two (The First and Second Skirt)

I put the first and second skirt together in one tutorial because they were extremely similar to make.

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The second skirt was pretty easy to do, not gonna lie. Just very time consuming. The most frustrating part was the ruffles. In case you forgot, heres the picture that shows what the second skirt is.

 First, I started our by cutting my purple material in half along the crease down the middle. After that, I ruffled the top and then pinned in on my dress form. Then I began to alter it - I cut the section in the front open and cut curves in the front because her skirt doesn't fall straight down, but curves and gets longer in the back. Kinda like a high low skirt but the front is totally open.  Only cut one side of the fabric!! This way, after getting the desired shape on one side, you will be able to fold the fabric in half and be able to replicate the good side instead of just eyeing it up.

This was the shape mine looked like after I cut the other side and it was laid flat on the floor. Ignore the wasit x3 part, the real measurement should be like 2x your waist so its not majorly ruffled, only ruffled till it lays nice. 

Once thats done, take your white fabric and pin the purple fabric onto of the white. Make sure theres so bubbles in the purple while pinning, or else when you cut it out they wont be the same size. Once your fabric is flat agaisnt the other and pinned tightly, cut along the edge of the purple so they will end up being exactly the same size. Once your done cutting, unpin you fabric and just put in somewhere that you'll remember. You won't need it for a while.

Next up you'll be ruffling! Since this costume has a good amount of ruffles, you might wanna invest in a ruffler foot (which I just found out yesterday aren't very expensive). This way, you won't have to worry about breaking your thread while hand ruffling. But its possible to do without one, I didn't use one while making it but I wish had. 

Anyways, cut out long strips of both purple and white fabric keeping them at the same width (Keep a straight width is very important here!!). I think I cut out like 9 yards of both at like a 5 or 6in width. Remember to leave some allowence at all the edges! Since my fabric wasn't 9 yards long, each section was about 3 yards long and then I would just sew then together and the edges to create the long strips. 

After you have two long strips of purple and white fabric, lay one on top on the other and sew them together. Sew the sides you DO NOT want to be seen together. You could spend some extra time here and pin both fabrics together or just take it straight to the machine. Either way is fine, but if you don't pin just constantly make sure that the bottom fabric is being sewed to the top. Try to keep your thread line as straight as possible which is diffficult for 9 yards of fabric but will give you a better result. 

After you finish that, flip it inside-out so the good sides of the fabrics should be seen. I would reccommend to iron them down this way to help the keep their shape. If you don't iron it now, you really can't iron them in the future since you don't wanna iron them once they are ruffled. 

Now on the good sides of the fabrics, sew a line on the top of the fabric, this will be the line you ruffle. Leave the tension on your machine low and longer stitchs so it will be easier to ruffle. Sew the line on not too close to the top or else the fabric could fray and break your stitch and you don't want the to happen. So sew about two centimeters from the top. After that lines sewn, start to ruffle it! I would reccomend ruffling it pretty tightly then if it's too short and doesn't reach end to end of the skirt, unruffle it a bit and spread the ruffles out. This took me like 3 hours to successfully ruffle it and get the thread to not break (use strong thread then you sew it) so get a good show or movie you like to watch or listen to some music, anything you can do to make the time go by quicker. This might sound really stupid, but take some breaks while doing it. It can really start to hurt you back after bending over it for three hours straight. 

Now that you have your fabric ruffled, pin it to the pieces of fabric that you had put to the side. I pinned them inside the fabrics so there would be no visible seam but thats suprisingly time consuming and meticulous so you can do it but if you don't, I think it would still look fine (*If you don't sew them inside, remember to lock your edges so they won't fray!!). Heres what mine looked like pinned -

It was very thick so I was really afraid it wouldn't be sewn by my machine but thankfully it took it like a champ B). But anyways, sew them together and then flip it inside out and it should look really nice! I remember I was really proud of it because it looked so nice and I showed my mom and she was just kinda like "Okay Lex thats cool. Now go away". Heres what it would look like if you chose to do it so you can't see the seams -

Now you're almost done with this piece for now. The last part is to ruffle the top up so its finally a skirt! 

Then you're done with the second skirt!! Now to the first skirt.

Honestly, you are just going to want to do the same thing that you did for the second skirt. The only difference is that you are going to want the skirt to close in the center, so just cut out a longer piece of fabric than before. And thats really all there is too it! 

^ If this happens to your ruffles, just take some thread and neeedle and (making as little of a stitch as possible), tack it down so you can no longer see the ruffle seams. Or if you want to be a perfectionist, you can take out the seam and resew it down but that just takes longer. 

So that is what the first three pieces of the project ! 

Sorry I don't know why but I didn't take many pictures during this part :/ But I hope you could follow along well and if you need clarification on anything please contact me through my Instagram or on Facebook!

Next Part - Cosplay Making : Goddess Madoka - Part Three (The Bodice)