We’ve all seen it before: The scandalous, daring anime skirt that is completely open in the front, yet manages to defy gravity and remain obscenely poofy. Now, usually the fluffy skirts of anime girls everywhere can be handled by adding a hoop skirt or a petticoat underneath, but what are we to do about the open panel? No one wants their hoop skirt or petticoat to be seen, but without it, you lose the gravity defying poof that gives the character their signature silhouette.
Fear not my friends, for the open hoop skirt tutorial will now grant you a solution.
To begin, I will say that I started my own open front hoop skirt following this tutorial here(It’s great and if you’re doing a full length hoop skirt, definitely check it out). The reason that I decided to make my own tutorial is because I picked up some extra tricks to make it work when you don’t have bendable plastic.
Here, we will be modifying a hoop skirt rather than making one from scratch.
First, grab your reference picture, and determine what shape/how long your need your hoop skirt to be. In my case, I was making Saber Nero’s cosplay from Fate/Extra:
Because her red skirt only comes to mid-shin or so, I knew that I didn’t need a full length hoop skirt. However, because we are taking out a section of the hoop skirt, I would recommend getting a long hoop skirt with a lot of hoops, and to cut off the excess.
This is what I started with:
It’s a 6-hoop skirt from amazon, way too long, and completely the wrong shape. This is all fine, because we’re going to be reconstructing it.
The first thing that I did was cut off all the excess after the 4th hoop. Take out the hoops, and serge the edges to stop the fraying. Don’t throw away the extra fabric and hoops–they will be used later on in the tutorial. This step is optional if you plan on keeping your hoop skirt long, but know that you might have to buy some extra boning for the last parts of this tutorial.
Also optional, but this makes it a lot easier to handle the hoop skirt: Insert an elastic waistband instead of the ribbon tie on top. In my case, I had to seam rip the casing because it was too small for my elastic band, and sew down a larger casing. This was necessary for me because the skirt was going to sit very low on my hips. (And I just plain don’t like the ribbon ties.)
Next, put the hoops back inside the skirt:
Now, the fun part! Mark where you want your hoop skirt to start. I used a tape measure to get it even on both sides. When you are satisfied with how it looks, cut away! (Don’t cut through the actual boning tho!) When you are finished, you can take apart the hoops and remove the panel that you have cut through.
It will look roughly like this! Don’t cut any of the boning yet, remove it from the hoop skirt. Serge all the raw edges.
Taking some heavy duty scrap fabric (I used a type of flat braid I found at Joanns), sew it to the edges of your hoop skirt to create a casing. Note: I actually left gaps between stitches on the inner layer so that the original hoop casings going perpendicular to the new casings weren’t cut off. That way, the new casing is giving extra support to original casing. Also, I didn’t show it in the diagram, but please remember to close the casing at the bottom of the hoop skirt.
Optional: I took the extra fabric that I cut off from the hoop skirt, serged the raw edges, gathered it a bit, and sewed it on the halfway point around the hoop skirt and at the very top. This is solely for the purpose of hiding the hoops so that they don’t show through your fabric over the hoop skirt.
Put your hoop skirt back on the dress form. Cut little holes right outside of the new casing you installed, and slide your hoops back in. If your boning is sharp, I very much recommend wrapping some tape around the edges to make it as dull as possible because there will be pressure applied to the fabric that the hoops hit. Once you have the hoop completely in place, cut a little bit past the point of where the hoop skirt ends, and tuck the edge into the casing (Don’t forget to dull the edge of the boning). Apply fray check to the holes you made and sew it up. Depending on the quality of your hoop skirt, you may have to do some hand sewing if the hoop casing is coming loose when you originally cut out the front panel.
So, now your hoop skirt probably looks like the picture on the left:
How do we get that extra poof? Well, take your leftover boning, and insert it into the new casing you made like so:
The two blue pieces of boning will help create a strong end point for the hoops going around, while the orange piece will channel the blue ones and make them poof out. The longer your orange piece is, the better. As a result, your hoop skirt will now flare out a lot more! (Thank you lovely engineering boyfriend for this wonderful idea)
Now, your open front hoop skirt should be all set! Go forth and impress the world with your remarkable, floofy skirt!
Please feel to message me here on tumblr or on my cosplay FB page (Istoria Cosplay) if you have any questions!
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