#sorry if i seem a little inconsistent with uploading art recently

[radical-6]

Hey everyone, I received a bunch of messages asking me how I made my skirt for Kaede Akamatsu from the new Danganronpa game, Danganronpa V3. I wrote a quick guide, so if you're interested, read on...

To make my skirt, I custom-designed a musical note pattern on a purple background and uploaded it to Spoonflower, a fabric printing website. I've recently made the pattern public, so if you'd like to use it for your own cosplay, you can access it here:

http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/5978234-kaede-akamatsu-skirt-by-sinkuu

However, this was my first time working with designing/custom printing fabric, and using Spoonflower in general, so it ended up a little finicky. Spoonflower also has a lot of crazy options, so it's easy to get lost in the mess of DPIs and repeats and types of fabric you can print on. Hopefully this guide makes it...less convoluted.

So, on Spoonflower, you can print three sizes of fabric: yards, "fat quarters" (1/2 yard x 1/2 yard), and samples. What you're going to want here is yards, unless you only need a little bit more fabric and don't want to waste money on an entire extra yard.

This is what a yard looks like. To print my pattern, set the repeat setting to "basic".

Kaede's skirt has four musical bars on it, so you want to cut a yard of my pattern into three pieces. You get two four-bar pieces you can use for the body of the skirt, and then a leftover two-bar piece that you can't really use for the skirt itself, but that makes a really good waistband. When cutting between the sets of staffs, there's about 4.25" vertically between each staff, so you want to measure up (or down!) 2 1/8" vertically, and cut there to make sure to get even length pieces. Without a waistband or a hem, each skirt piece is about 14" long. THIS COULD BE A PROBLEM IF YOU ARE TALLER THAN 5'8". More on this later.

Spoonflower gives you about 41.5" of horizontal pattern per yard, so if you get two four-bar panels out of that it's 83" of skirt, plus a 41.5" waistband per yard.

This is what a fat quarter looks like. Again, set repeat to "basic". 0

It gives you one four-bar horizontal panel that's about 20.75" long. So it's useful (and cheaper!) if you just need a /little/ bit more to finish the skirt, but overall the yard is going to give you waaaaay more bang for your buck with this pattern. (83" of skirt vs 20.75" of skirt.) ​ ​How much fabric you need is completely up to you, and your measurements, and the style of skirt you choose to make. Danganronpa is unfortunately incredibly inconsistent with its art, and Kaede's skirt has been drawn as knife pleats, box pleats, no pleats at all, just gathered, and some weird sewn-down bell abomination pleat. Pick your favorite!

...Seriously, pick your favorite.

I went with knife pleats, since in the game itself they seemed to be the most common thing that came up on the skirt roulette during cutscenes. Plus, I like knife pleats. Using myself as a fabric example calculation...I have a 29" waist, and a knife-pleated or box-pleated skirt needs a rectangular block of (skirt length, here it's 14 inches) by (waist measurement x 3). So, I needed 87" inches of skirt, plus a little seam allowance. A yard gets you 83" inches of skirt, and 87" is...over that. So I ended up getting one yard, and a fat quarter. Yaaaay, math. If you do a gathered skirt, you can probably get away with only using one yard depending on how much you gather it.

Here's another reference image (waistband from the yard not pictured) of what cutting two panels out of a yard looks like, and what cutting up a fat quarter looks like.

This isn't a tutorial on how to pleat/gather a skirt. If you're looking for one, I recommend this one here: http://fattogami.tumblr.com/post/55535810050/how-to-make-a-sailor-uniform-part-2-sewing-the  Google is also your friend!

Pleats tacked down, (but no waistband) the skirt looked like:

And finished, it looked like:

--- So, why is the skirt length a potential problem for people taller than 5'8"? I'm 5'8", and I designed the pattern for myself. Danganronpa has REALLY short skirts, so I made the skirt...really short. If you're significantly taller than 5'8", there's a high chance that your ass is going to be out. You can compensate for this by making the skirts waistband sit lower on your hips, and use a mid-hip measurement for the waistband rather than a waist measurement, but it might be easier for you to just use a different pattern, or make your own. I'm sorry, really tall people. I think you're cool, and I WISH I was that tall.

Here's a picture of what I mean about my ass almost being out at 5'8", in case you are taller than that and need convincing to abandon hope, all ye enter here.

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Another big question is, "what fabric should I pick"? Again, it's up to you. I used kona cotton because it's slightly nicer than regular cotton. Since I did a pleated skirt, I also interfaced the entire thing with featherweight interfacing because I like my pleats extra crispy. Any cotton should be fine for either pleated OR gathered skirts, or I guess twill for pleats if you're really fancy and have money falling out of your pockets. Maybe a heavyweight knit like jersey for gathered if you're again, fancy, and have money falling out of your pockets.

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A few final notes:

1) Spoonflower fabrics tend to fade a little bit in the wash, since they're printed on. The fade is more pronounced with dark inks. Since this is a black pattern printed on dark purple, DO NOT put it in the washing machine, or pre-wash it, or post wash it. If you need to clean it, either spot clean it very carefully by hand or dry clean it.

2) This isn't a very high-contrast pattern, so while it shows up great in real life to real human eyes, it doesn't photograph well. If you're very particular about photoshoots, you're going to have to be careful about the lighting you're in, or be prepared to do some photo editing after the fact. Unless you've got a really nice all-over light source, or can point a light directly at the skirt, it tends to wash out to just a plain purple skirt in pictures.

3) The song that appears on the skirt isn't canonically accurate (I made it before the game came out in JP and Kaede's full design sheet was released), but it IS a real song! It's actually "The First Noel", but slightly bastardized. I erased some slurs between notes, removed some crescendos/decrescendos, and took out some staff markers and clefs to make it repeat seamlessly. In retrospect, I should have made it "I Stepped on the Cat".

4) If you use this pattern to make a skirt, I don't need credit, but hey, feel free to send me a picture of what you make! I'd love to see it.

5) I'm finished with NDRV3, so I know the entire game plot/spoilers. If you want to crawl into somewhere private (like my inbox) with spoilers, feel free, but keep spoilers off this post and anywhere public. Be considerate to fans who are waiting for the official English release in September.

6) With that said, absolutely crawl into my inbox if you don't like Shuuichi Saihara. I love talking shit about him.

I'm not super active on tumblr these days, but you can either contact me here, or @skelefiend on Instagram!