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Hi, I'm Bunnyko. And I'm going to be creating a tutorial here for how to make um, a very
basic lolita skirt. um... so its pretty easy. You need about two and half yards of fabric,
less if you're using a different color for your trim. You'll need a sewing machine, tailors
chalk or some sort of marker, I use an old pastel. Um, scissors, measuring tape, and
if you have one, a ruffle foot and elastic for the waist cause I'm doing a half elastic
waist and some interfacing for the front part of your lolita skirt, which will be flat.
Now the first thing you want to do is lay out your fabric uh make sure its even. And
you're gonna cut two rectangles out of it. Now i'm doing these- normally I do- I'm five
foot two so I'm pretty short, and I have a really short torso so normally I do fourteen
inches for me. Two fourteen inch squares. But since I'm making this one to sell, I'm
going to cut these at sixteen inches because when it comes to lolita you'd much, almost
always rather have longer than shorter. So. I already have this one measured out for
sixteen. If you have a little rolly cutter-awesome. If not, just mark it and then cut with your
scissors. Um, the first thing I did was, um, with a printed fabric like this was I trimmed
it so that the um, print will be even and not asqew. You've got to keep that in mind
when you're selling this stuff cause sometimes its printed weird, like its printed off. So
even though the fabric like this one when it lined up matching on the edges it was not
lined up as far as the pattern. So, you've got to always opt for the pattern cause that's
what people are gonna be looking at. My blades a little dull so that's why I'm
pushing so hard-so that's one square of it. Even out the fabric. Oh and oh, I almost forgot
to mention you'll need an iron. But I kinda assumed that was a given. Ironing is one of
those things that I learned the hard way um, that you kinda need to do. I thought, you
know "why should I need to iron this? You know it's just gonna end up in the wash anyway."
and welp, that was one lesson learned. Stuff doesn't lay the way you want it to unless
you press it. So if there's any newbies out there please take that into consideration.
Hahaha uh, learn from my mistakes. Alright so another sixteen inches. Like I
said I just use an old pastel. Um, I found it washes out fine and uh, but just make sure,
don-don't use an oil pastel, obviously. Um, but go on ahead and... now this is also where
you might want to pay attention to where if you have a print piece where the edge of your
top- whatever's gonna be your top is- if you want them to match up. So, lets take a look
at what I got here... and. So this is, you can see where it would be on the print so.
Um, I'm not caring too much since the print is so busy and its all gonna be ruffled at
the top anyway you're not gonna be able to tell too much so. As long as the print where
I'm cutting lines up well. That's what I'm caring about at the moment. So, make sure
I have this lined up well. Okay, here we go. Alright and there's our two squares. Now,
what you're gonna wanna do is go on ahead and stitch these together, right sides together
and make basically a giant tube. So you're gonna stitch these two, and then, stitch these
two. Right along the seams here. Now make sure when you're stitching that almost all
these guys here have some sort of print border with text on it- stitch within that because
when you lay it flat that way it wont show. Now we have our tube, of fabric. Stitched
on the edges here- now you dont have to worry about hemming these because um, all the edges
on fabric (that I've found anyway) that come, are finished, so it wont fray. So don't cut
this. Um, you can go ahead and press it open if you want and I'll probably do that later.
Now you just want to set this piece aside, and if you want what you do is hold it up
to your waist, now drop it down about an inch and a half to two inches and see where it
hits. If it's too short on ya don't worry you can fix that here right now. Cause what
we're gonna be cutting out now is the ruffle. And the ruffle is gonna go on the bottom of
your skirt. And, um, I normally like a four inch ruffle, so I cut a five inch, five inch
strip. Um, cause that give me an inch for seam allowance and what-not. Um, I find that
using a ruffle foot uses a lot more fabric than doing b-than hand ruffling. Um, but it
makes the ruffling process ten times faster. So I would much rather um, have the extra
fabric than sit here with the extra time doing hand ruffles. I do think that hand ruffles
look a bit nicer than the ruffle foot ones, but I'm lazy and it's easy and it looks just
fine. So for the ruffle foot I am cutting six strips
of five inch wide fabric. Now, um, and basic-if you're doing hand ruffling you're probably
get away with maybe four. I never end up using the full six, um my ruffle foot usually tends
to like about five and a half or you know sometimes less than five, it all depends on
the skirt that I'm doing. Um, but I would much rather have too much than run out of
ruffle on the bottom of my skirt. So, alright I already pre-measured. I'm just gonna be
cutting out the strips now. And I'll be right back cause I'll-you don't need to watch me
cut all the strips. Well, I'll cut one for you. Five More to go!
So we have all our strips. Now what you want to so is like the skirt, um you want to sew
them all together not in a tube you just want to make one really long strip of fabric. And
just like the other time just uh, go ahead and uh stitch these guys together at the seams
and just make sure um, you know if you have a pattern its all facing in the correct direction
and you're sewing um, right sides together. And when you're done with that uh you're gonna
want to press the fabric and press the seams open.
So I've sewn my fabric into a giant long strip and I've pressed these guys open and I got
rid of any wrinkles now um, this is where you're gonna want to hem the bottom of the
ruffle. There is a variety of ways of doing this uh sergers I think can just do it real
quick um, you can do it this way um, where you just I used a little roller foot and it
rolled over the tiny edge of the fabric for me but I'm not really good at it so some parts
stick out so then I go over that with a zig zag a really tight zig zag stitch to help
prevent it from fraying so you can do that if like you're going "oh no my ruffle is going
to be way too short!" you can do this and get yourself an extra inch on your ruffle
and not have to waste the fabric. Um, or you can do a rolled hem, which is what I'm going
to do here. I'm not a big fan of rolled hems uh, simply because every time I have one after
I wash the skirt um, the hem part for some reason always wants to flip up. Um, I've found
that pressing it after I stitch the hem down helps with that. Um, but honestly it's it's
I've found it's the best way just to prevent it from fraying and if I'm gonna sell a skirt
like this one I don't want it to fray. So, I go with a rolled hem. And that was what
that extra inch is for. Now I'm gonna go down the whole entire thing of fabric and roll
it over once and come back and then I'm gonna roll it over again for the rolled hem and
then um, I do two lines of stitching simply because um, like I said it helps keep it from
flipping up after I wash it. Um, I'm sure usually the girls that end up buying this
stuff just take them to the dry cleaners but I throw all my stuff in the washer and dryer
so. Um, alright. Bajillion more yards to go. And, I'm gonna go ahead and like I said finish
pressing this and then, stitch it down, and then I'm gonna press it again after I've stitched
it. Like I said, it's what I've found that helps. If someone else has something better
just let me know. Ooo new camera angle. Ok well now it's time
to ruffle and I put a little ruffle tutorial on youtube a little while back um and I don't
know how many people have a ruffle foot or whatever but I had major issues with it when
I first got it I couldn't figure out how to work it for the longest time. Um, so hope-might
as well include that here in this tutorial as well. Alright now everyones ruffle foot
is probably gonna be different um, but the little loop has to go on the up and down and
this has to get locked in. Alright and this part here is set on one which is the smallest
ruffle you can have and I'll actually-the wider you go like up to-I have one six and
twelve if you go on twelve it looks like a pleat six kinda looks like uh, a little bit
of a wider pleat. Um, basically (make sure I'm not on my fabric here) ok, um, what you
have to do is there's two black plates here and they got little teeth on them and you
have to wedge your fabric in between those two. You just slide it in I go-just shimmy
it until I can get it all the way over. M'kay. And then this piece here it's like a little
notchy that helps guide your fabric and keep it from sliding out of the ruffle. And, come
on here we go. Lets see if I can get it in there. Drop your foot down and pretty much
just go. Um. And you just keep on going until you're done. Um, I;m not gonna keep on showing
this this is basically the ruffle foot tu-tutorial I have.
So I've finished my ruffle. As you can see. Um, Now what I'm gonna do is sit here and
pin it right sides together to the bottom of my skirt and then I wanna go ahead and
um, stitch it on. What you need to know about- oh I forgot to you with the ruffle foot, um
good thing to always know is make sure your bobbin has enough thread cause if you run
out of thread halfway through your ruffle there really is no way to get like perfectly
back in there, your gonna end up with a gap and you can either seam rip the whole entire
thing out and re ruffle it or just kinda like hand ruffle that part when you stitch it on.
Um, but when y-when you stitch the ruffle to the fabric what you wanna do is you make
sure that you stitch below your ruffle stitch otherwise your ruffle stitch will show. I
know this all sounds like common sense but you know, I'm dumb, and it took me a little
bit to learn this so perhaps there's other people out there like me. Um, and then a friend
taught me a trick to help prevent this from fraying which is once you stitch your ruffle
on I'll show you this probably when uh, when I'm done stitching it. Um, is you trim off
the extra fabric and you trim it down to like a quarter inch and then you zig zag stitch
overtop of it. Over the edge of it and that will help prevent it from fraying. So, um,
that's what I'm gonna do. Um I'll probably show you what I mean with the zig zag stitch
cause that might sound a little confusing. And, um I just ran upstairs real quick to
check with my boyfriend who's a musician which way the little notes had to go, um, and he
told me a little great trick that flag on the notes while the notes can always be right
side up or upside down the flag always faces right. So now my music is all facing the correct
way so I know which is top and bottom. Ok, probably should mention this before I
um, stitch. I got all the way around and I pinned and I reached my edge so I cut off
the extra ruffle. Like I said didn't end up with too much extra this time. Better to always
have extra than not enough. And what I'm just gonna do is before I stitch the ruffle on
is I'm gonna stitch these two together and then do like I said I'm gonna trim really
close to the stitch line and then do a zig zag over the edge to prevent it from fraying.
And I'm gonna go ahead and do the exact same thing to this. Stitch under the ruffle line
and then trim it down and do a zig zag stitch over the edge to prevent it from fraying.
But, um, just thought I'd mention this now that uh, you close up your ruffle, I close
up my ruffle anyway before I stitch it on. And uh, and you got a little extra and we'll
talk about this later. So, I've gone and cut it really short I know
my camera is kinda cruddy cause of the focus, um, but you can see there's the stitch line
I cut it really short now. To do the zig zag, set your foot zigzag. And, I don't know if
its gonna to be able to get a good close up here but... what you wanna do is get it just
halfway under the foot- like that and then um, when you zig zag... sorry it's gonna just catch... its gonna go
on the outside of the fabric and then on the inside. See if you can see that. And what
that does is it grabs it and um, and does like a little overlock and that helps prevent
the um, it from fraying. And so just go along and do that around the edge of your ruffle
and then we'll get to the waistband. Ok, so now for the waistband. Since I'm doing
a half elastic waist um, the elastic part is going to be the same uh, length as one
of those two panels that we cut out. So, the same inches this way. Um, uh, I am cheap and
I like to use as much of the fabric as I can so I took the leftover ruffle and I seam ripped
it and I ironed it a little bit and what I'm gonna do with this, is cut this down. Now
this is going to be half my waist this is going to be the front part that isnt going
to be on the elastic. My waist is twenty eight so I'm going to need fourteen. And um, what
I'm going to do is fold this over, iron it, and then fold it so that you know I have a
little bit of a hem and then fold it over again in half. And then that will tell me
how much I need to cut out length wise for this. Cause they should be the same. Alright
so. You could just not use the leftover ruffle piece and just cut out another piece. Um,
like I said I'm cheap and lazy and this already has a hemmed edge on it so might as well right?
Now I'm showing all of this on the video cause I know that if I were watching this this is
the part where I would get confused and be upset if they didn't show it. So I am showing
everything that I'm doing. Alright so...ironed. Now... go ahead and measure this out. Alright
so this is fourteen here. So this is the front part that's gonna be the waistband. And that
is approximately just under two inches so it would be four open, add an extra inch for
seam allowance so five inches. Or, four and a half since we used five for that and we
already have that. So, one two three four and a half is right there. Lets see, lets
line this up, and then, I can go ahead and cut. Ok, save this for a headbow or something.
Personally I'm not a fan of them, but everyone else is so, I must be wrong, right? Ok, so.
Just do the same thing, fold it over here, fold it over here and then fold it all in
half and then I'll show you what we're gonna do next we're gonna stitch it onto the back
of the waist. So, we're getting close to the end so feel
good! Now what we do is take the long piece that's gonna house the elastic and pin it,
to like I said- here's my seam so is gonna pin this one whole panel all the way down.
Now, then what we're gonna do is we're gonna run our elastic through. Fold in my edge here.
Well while its finished its certainly not pretty. Um, so I usually just um, run the
uh, pin it like as far as the edge that's how far that will come up that's just how
I choose it you can run it all the way down if you want or all the way up, wha-whatever
you want. Whatever you feel is good. But, I like doing it this way it's easier to thread
the elastic through I find. And then, just pin your little heart out. And once its all
done we'll go ahead and um, stitch it on there. I just use a straight stitch just go dldldluut
and stitch it all the way down and then we'll thread the elastic through.
So I have my skirt I have my um, piece stitched on. Um, and what we're gonna do now is put
on the elastic so I use no roll elastic, um simply because I don't stitch through the
elastic cause I cant the way that I do it. Um and what I did is um, I cut another, what
you'd want is the other half so fourteen for the front and fourteen elastic in the back
so when it's relaxed its around your waist comfortably for me anyway would be twenty
eight. I always cut ti one inch shorter than that, so this is thirteen cause I like it
a little bit snug, I want it to grab me when its up there. Um, but it will still be enough
for you to get in. or for larger people to wear it or what-not. Um, the reason I'm making
this to my waist even though I'm gonna sell it is simply because if no one buys it, I'm
gonna want to wear it, someone's gotta wear it. So hahaha, um alright so now to thread
your elastic well there's the safety pin method which I have never found to work I always
lose the safety pin. I-I have a very difficult time. So, we are going to use that safety
pin, but not for that purpose. So, I uh, go ahead and safety pin your elastic to your-
next to the entrance, so that it wont get sucked in when we thread it through. My friend
taught me this method um, and I find it works great. So, uh thanks to Halley for teaching
me this. Alright and now you get a chopstick- very easy to hold onto you know where its
going. And you take the end of your elastic and you fold it over like in a triangle and
then you stitch it down so it stays there and then that creates a little pocket for
you to shove the tip of the chopstick in. and then that, gets shoved inside the uh,
band. And you just, work it on down. And then, keep on going! See! That much easier than
uh the safety pin method. And then just go on ahead and seam rip...this out. Now I d-my
elastic is a little small but I don't mind. I like it that way. You can fit your casing
to your elastic a little bit tighter, but I like the bands at the top to be a little
bit wider myself so, and its no roll elastic so its not like it's going anywhere. And it's
not like it's, you know excessively large or anything so. I think it looks fine.
So now that we have the elastic in the back and we have it just stitched in there on the
side, just straight stitch there, you got the elastic back. Now we're gonna want the
front. Now what you're gonna need to do for the front, you could just stitch it on like
this but when you have a flat front what you really want some interfacing here. And your
just going to iron interfacing on one side of this. What that does is that help keeps
the um, front part flat and from buckling. And it just gives you a little bit of like,
I guess stability there. Now, might need to cut that in a little bit more. I want it to
fit within that without sticking out any. And this stuff isn't necessarily cheap but
usually a yard lasts a really long time cause, I'm only using, you know, this much of it
at a time for things. Unless you have a really wide band of, um, the skirt top that you're
doing. Um, so like I said it's not cheap but it really is worth it or so I've found. And
basically its got little bits of glue that melt when they're heated and they stick to
the fabric. It's pretty awesome. Now what you're gonna want to do is in order to attach
this is- um basically gather the top of the skirt and then sandwich this on overtop of
it. Um, what I do though cause I'm lazy, is I just take my ruffle foot and I go on ahead
and ruffle the top of the skirt, the side we didn't put the elastic on, and then, gather
it from there cause it usually need to be a little more tight than what the ruffle foot
can provide but the ruffle foot gets me most of the way there so you know, if I can just
change out a foot and get there as opposed to sitting here for fifteen minutes hand gathering
the top of that I'll do that so. Alright so gather this piece, and then we're gonna sandwich
this overtop of it. So what I'm doing now, uh now that I've ruffled
the top of this is I'm gonna start pinning uh this piece on. Alright and, forgive me,
but I think this piece is upside down. Oh well. Not really gonna make that much of a
difference. So what you do is on the piece where the elastic is, you just kinda go ovetop
of it. And that's gonna cover up that stitch line. And just make it look nice. And just
cover that up, and pin through it and do the same on the other side. Alright. This also
helps cover up any elastic that is sticking out. And just overall makes it look very nice.
Oops, don't forget to turn in the edges. That will certainly help with the fraying. Alright,
now since I ruffled this and this is obviously longer than this, um what I do is I just find
the middle of both. Man this fabric is very similar to itself. Pin will mark the middle
there. And mark the middle here. And then, go on ahead and pin the middle piece together.
And what this does is it gives us a reference point for how much I have to stuff in on this
side and how much I have to stuff in on that side and, what I want to do now is just, like
I said make a little sandwich. Open it up and sandwich it in and pin it. And then I'm
gonna stitch down, across and back up. And then we'll be done!
And once you sew on the front there you're done with your lolita skirt! You got the half
elastic in the back here so if you have a fluctuating weight, you can, that's a great
idea for the half elastic. Um, also uh, if you uh, you can wear your shirts tucked in
and it'll look nice on the front, there. And if you want you can go ahead and add trim
along the top here or along the ruffle there. It'll look all sorts of nice for ya! And that's
your basic half elastic waisted lolita skirt.