Afternoon Projects: Faux Sukapan

It's been way too long since my last update! School is starting very soon so there have been a lot more people to hang out with from Summer. The cafeteria is getting so crowded! Gone are the days that I could eat when I'm hungry without standing in a huge line. Ah well... but it's kind of exciting isn't it?

Yesterday I finally sat down with some of my cute fabric and decided to make a skirt! I want to make real sukapan in the future, but I think I need to find the right fabric for it. If it's too stiff I'm afraid it'll look too much like shorts. But in the mean time, I figured I could make some fake sukapan with my lace shorts and a gathered circle skirt! 

My lace shorts. Wouldn't it look cute peeking out from a skirt?

I found this fabric at Joann and while it's not absolutely perfect for himekaji (the print is a bit small compared to most Liz Lisa skirts) I still think it has a cute effect. This kind of skirt is very cute and also very easy to do. If you've ever made a circle skirt, it's exactly like that, only instead of using your actual waist measurement, you make the opening wider so that you can gather it as well. After a bit of experimenting, I found that a gather of 1.5x your waist measurement is ideal. I think this look is much cuter than a regular gathered skirt, since you can get really full without having a whole lot of bulk right at your waist. Since I wanted this to look like sukapan, I made sure to hem the skirt just short enough so that the bottom tier of my shorts would peek out from underneath. I really like the result!

 

As you can see, this skirt really is just a huge circle skirt that's been gathered to my waist measurement!

I gathered most of the skirt and sewed it to a waistband. When you do this, you shouldn't be lazy like I was and you should use interfacing. I was originally meaning to have the entire waistband be elastic but found that it was adding a bit too much bulk to my waist and it was unflattering. When I changed my mind the waistband had already been sewn shut so I didn't bother with it... but it would look much better if you used some!

I did leave a small section in the back ungathered so that I could add some elastic. I love elastic skirts and shirring because it always fits you perfectly, it's easy to get on and off, and it's really comfortable.

I'm sure this is something that I'll make again, so I'll be sure to document the process a bit more carefully next time and turn it into a full blown tutorial.

All of the things I ordered in the last two hauls have arrived, so I'm way overdue for a big review post, so you'll be seeing that soon!

Thanks for reading~