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Inaccuracies

Material

In the video, the material of the clothes clearly has a sheen to it. I believe the fabric I used was a cotton poplin, I didn't really check. Basically, it was not shiny at all. Secondly, I totally thought the balls on the top was just fabric, until I was looking closer at references and realised they were pompoms. :sigh:

Proportions

I always thought the top was oversized so I made it oversized on me. However, halfway through the project, I was looking at the video again and realised that it isn't really oversized, just flowy. :sigh: The hem reaches his mid-thigh and the sleeves probably just past his palms. My hem reached the top of my knees and the sleeves were longer than the hem. To be fair, I am much smaller than Közi, so the proportions being a bit off was inevitable, but those sleeves were totally deviating. At that point, I might as well have just been a pierrot and I still would have been on theme.

I thought there were more inaccuracies, maybe I'm forgetting something.

From a Technical Perspective

Material

Due to the time constraints of this project and my limited knowledge, I went to Spotlight for all of my sewing materials. Spotlight is not a local brand, hence the prices there are not the most budget friendly. The cheapest fabric was the cotton poplin. Unfortunately, this fabric was quite thin and not suitable to be worn as a single layer. Of course, I did add another layer, but if I had chosen a more appropriate fabric from the start, maybe I wouldn't have had to. I reuse this material for my prom skirt and I had the same issue, having to wear another layer underneath the skirt.

Construction

I went into this with a plan but not a draft. I had an idea for what shapes I would cut out but didn't make any patterns. This isn't necessarily an issue, but for this project it did mean having to add triangles of fabric here and there to fix my mistakes. I was definitely relying on the fact that the top was loose and the crotch of the pants was not visible when worn all together to hide my mistakes. For the underlayer of the top, I made it straight instead of flared because I thought it wasn't necessary, but due to the lack of stretch, it is hell to put on and take off. As for the pants, I made a pair of shorts out of a stretchy fabric I also bought to wear underneath since, as previously mentioned, the fabric was thin. The collar was confusing, I hate sewing around circles. It turned out standing up but at least it was covered under the ruff.

Finishing

I didn't have a sewing machine so simple finising methods would have taken too much time out of my small time frame. I had seen pinking shears (fabric scissors with a jagged edge) used before in short sewing videos and I thought it would be an easy solution to my problem. Even after checking other people's opinions on pinking shears, which were generally leaning towards negative, I was desperate. Do I regret buying them? Yes. They served their purpose for this project since I wouldn't be wearing this outfit any other time anyway, but I would avoid using them for future projects. I'm not sure if this is due to the pinking or my own stitching and construction, but I only just noticed today that there is a big gaping hole in the back (or front?) of the pants along the seam. I do remember on the day I wore it to school that I could feel a seam rip but I didn't know it was that bad. The reason I think the finishing could have been what contributed this is because I sewed my seams then pinked the seam allowance. Perhaps I cut too closely and either cut a thread or the threads of the fabric unravelled enough to give out.

Miscellaneous

I noticed when I started but my stitch length was much too big. This is simply insecure, it makes it easier for the two pieces of fabric to be pulled apart and the gaps between the stitches become a lot more apparent. It looks ugly, basically. Also, I coloured the black edge of the ruff in permanent marker which means I cannot wash it, ever.

I'm no expert at sewing but these are the problems most apparent to me. I am very self-critical. I still shake my head at myself from 6 months ago.

White skirt

I started off with a big rectangle of white fabric I had leftover from a previous project and sewed a seam to make it a tube, finishing it with felled seam. I used invisible hem (I believe there is another name for this but I don't know it) to sew the casing for the elastic on the top and, of course, hem the bottom. For the ruffles, I had one longer and wider one as the lower tier and a short and narrower one as the higher tier. They were about 100cm different in length so that the ruffles had a different amount of fullness to them. After sewing seams to make the long ruffles, I hemmed them with a rolled hem. I may have gotten progressively got lazier and was more sloppy as I went but I got faster, I guess. After hemming, I gathered the strip before pinning and basting it to the skirt while it was suspended on a hanger. I just used back stitch all around to attach the ruffles.

Unfortunately, on the lower tier, I made a big mistake and knotted the gathering threads too short so it didn't fully cover the skirt. I ended up just sewing the ends of the ruffles together anyway. The small amount of bunching wont be very noticeable under the tier above, I hope. I made sure not to knot the gathering thread too short for the second tier.

The two tiers all done.

I sketched out the design I was going to embroider onto the skirt. The score was for the song Gekka no Yasoukyoku by Malice Mizer because this song has sentimental value to me. However, after I had already embroidered the 5 lines, I had major second thoughts about the embroidery. I think it would make the skirt less versatile. I removed the embroidery and washed the skirt to get the pencil markings out.

This is the finished skirt after I had sewn in the elastic band. The pencil marks are still slightly visible but i hope they will fade with time.

Black skirt

I had bought the fabric ages ago and I'm not sure what I was doing when I originally cut it because I had two possible squares of fabric to work with and both were only about 53.5cm in length for the half circle skirt, even though I wanted the black part of the skirt to be 55cm. Including the circle i cut out for the waist, the length of my square should have been at least 70+cm. I worked with what I had and ended up with a skirt much shorter than I intended when I cut out the circle.

This is how the skirt may look like with the black, then the white strip for the piano tile pleats, and black lace on the bottom. Funny story about the white strip: I think I had cut the ruffles for the white skirt much earlier but I never realised until after I had already made new ones. These ones were not as wide as I wanted them in the end so maybe it was for the better. I'm repurposing the wider one to be the piano tile pleats of this skirt.

Here I have finished sewing the waistband and zipper onto the circle skirt. It was hell, I hate sewing on circles. I also messed up the zipper end so if I zip it up fully I could totally get stuck in it and have to perform a super pro gamer move to get out, but whatever (totally not speaking from experience).

I was sewing on the piano tile pleats onto the bottom and I may have made the strip too long so i have a bunch of extra wasted. Maybe I shouldve made each white tile 1cm wide like I had originally intended, but I was scared I wouldn't have enough fabric so I changed it to 2cm.

Iriginally, I decided to use a longer lace for the trim but I ended up deciding on a shorter one because I think it looks nicer. I didn't have enough though so there is still a gap of lace left, I will go buy more. To be honest, I'm second guessing the addition of lace entirely but it's a bit too late for that.

This is the final skirt. Alright, in this picture I still hadn't finished up the lace but other than that, this is it. The hem falls about just above my knee which is shorter than I wanted but I guess it's fine. Originally, I was going to layer the two skirts but I've decided against it because I just dont think they go well layered. The silhouette just doesn't really work. I will just wear the white skirt to prom but this skirt is still really cute.

Edit 30 Nov: I had forgotten to mention that the blank keys on the piano pleats were made with black ribbon.