I love the Gothic lolita fashion. Personally, I would love to wear this style more often but I guess I am more of a jeans and t-shirt person. I save all my nice dresses for cosplay. That is why I am doing an easy lolita tiered skirt tutorial thinking of one of my next cosplays.
Gathering materials
What I love about this fashion is that you can mainly use cottons and polycottons, which are fairly inexpensive, and still look amazing and royal. You are going to need a fair bit of fabric, between 2-3m for a knee-length skirt.
Always inspect your fabric carefully
My fabric was very cheap. I bought it from one of my UK online shops favourites called Fabrikate1 and it was a polycotton tartan in pink colours. This rather crisp fabric but yet light would hold the shape very well.
The pattern
I first considered a circle skirt for my cosplay but browsing online I saw a few lolita tiered skirts and changed my mind. In a sense it was supposed to be easier as all the pieces are rectangles.
This skirt has 3 tiers and each tier gets longer progressively. I originally had planned on a skirt with equally long tiers. However, my piece of fabric was too short and I had to change my plan. Pro tip, plan in advance, shop later.
And now for the Maths. Each tier needs to be 2 or 3 times as long as the previous layer. Starting with the top layer which is also gathered. This means, you need to multiply your waist x3 to get tier 1, then again x3 for tier 2 and one more time x2 to get tier 3. Can’t be bothered with Maths? No worries. Let’s make it easy.
I measured my waist and it gave me a total of 72cm. 72×3 = 216cm. Let’s round up to 220cm (round to 2m if you are short of fabric or 2.5m for extra oomph). My fabric was only 200cm long X 115cm wide so I decided to make my bottom layers shorter. I cut my top layer at 21cm, then I cut 3 more pieces which were 16cm wide (that’s the top tier X3) and 6 more pieces which were 6cm wide (top tier X3 X2 = 6 lenghts). I made the waistband with the leftover fabric. These measurements included my seam allowance to get a 40 cm long skirt.
To sum up, get a piece of fabric 2m to 2.5m long and cut 10 stripes. Your first tier will have one length (21cm wide), the second will have 3 (16cm wide) and the third will have 6 (6cm wide). Much easier, right?
Assembling the skirt
Now that you have all the pieces cut let’s join them together. I used a French seam to do so. I sew my pieces wrong sides together then again right sides together. This hides the edges but it is optional. Remember tier 1 is just one piece, tier 2 has 3 parts and tier 3 has 6 parts. You will end up with three very long strips of fabric. You can make the waistband with the leftovers.
Time to gather all those ruffles. I would highly recommend you to get a ruffler foot. You can get it for less than £5 and it will save you a lot of time. Keep in mind your longest piece is at least 12 meters long. Using the ruffler foot I was able to gather and sew the pieces together at the same time. How awesome is that?
Don’t forget to add a zipper and finish the edges. In this particular skirt it is actually a good idea if you do so before you start gathering. I used my serger because it was much quicker and the pattern disguised the thread very well.
Finally, you need to add a waistband. Inserting an elastic band is a possibility too but the waistband looks nicer in my opinion. It is pretty straightforward. Add some interfacing to the fabric. Right sides together with the top of your skirt sew about 1 cm in and fold the fabric on itself hiding the raw edges inside. Top stitch or hand sew the waistband in place. It is basically like adding giant bias tape.
And that’s it for this lolita tiered skirt tutorial, finish it with a cute bow and wear it with a petticoat underneath for extra puffyness. It will look amazing if you wear it with a puffy shirt.
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