DIY Han Solo Skirt

In prep for Star Wars Celebration, I decided I wanted to do a fem Han Solo. I've been wanting to do this for a long time actually. But getting the costume or making one from scratch was daunting. I am ok at sewing squares and rectangles and mostly things with straight edges and no real patterns. I have not ventured into the clothing dept yet. So I can revamp or redo some clothing pieces for costumes if needed but never from scratch. A friend put me onto Cosplaysky.com tho and well, things have changed the game! So I bought myself the Han Solo costume there, where it will fit me and is tailored to me! I am only 5' tall and pretty small and petite overall. Small arm and leg lengths, etc. So having a custom made cosplay outfit for me, for a relatively cheap price? Sold!

All that aside though, I still wanted to be a fem Han Solo, not just a woman wearing his costume type of fem. I wanted to wear a skirt instead of pants. So after a lot of searching for the perfect A-line swing skirt that was the right length, size and color, (and small pricetag!) I finally went to work on this skirt! (FYI, I eventually found the skirt at a TJMaxx in a state thousands of miles from my home while on a family vacation. It's a CWonder designer skirt (they are now out of business) that normally is about 80 bucks. I found it there for a mere 20 bucks).

I will tell you though I ended up doing this twice, two different ways and one way that was clearly much better than the first.

Firstly, though, I also found the perfect color and width ribbon to use for the side panels at the crafts store. Cut them into the proper length I needed for the skirt. Then with permanent markers I carefully marked every inch with a line. Gently using the marker because they do bleed on the satin ribbon, so don't press the marker too hard or it will bleed and have a really thick line or uneven looking line.

Then my first attempt at attaching the ribbon was to use fusible web strips and iron-on the ribbon to the skirt.

Ironing on the sides using the fusible web.

This proved to be the wrong way to attach the panels.

The fusible web didn't really adhere to the thick knit fabric like it should have, no matter how much heat I used or how many times I ran over the damp towel over the ribbons (don't want to burn the ribbon by putting the iron right on the ribbon). So, then I used some frabic glue to help adhere the parts that didn't want to fuse with the webbing. Another bad idea as the glue bled through the ribbon and even when dry, was then much darker and sloppy and blotchy looking in those areas.

So, I decided to do it the right way in the first place. (Hey, lesson learned that's all that matters haha)

The old ribbons came off the skirt easily since none of the webbing really stuck in the end. And wherever there was glue, it came off pretty simply as well. Whatever glue did stick, I think there was a way to get it off completely if I wanted, but it would just get covered again anyway, so I just pulled off as much as I could with my nails.

Redid the ribbons as mentioned above with permanent marker at one inch intervals.

Then this time I took out the sewing machine instead. And though I still had some issues with this, because it's a thick knit skirt, the ribbon did stretch a bit with the fabric so one end on each side is a teeny bit shorter than orginally planned and therefore the ribbons on one side of each, are a little crooked. But with the natural folds of the skirt and how I will wear it, hopefully you don't notice it.

Close up of the sewn finished side. You may or may not notice the left side (top of the skirt, I can't turn the picture) that the stripes look a little diagonal which is because the ribbon stretched as I sewed around it. It's mostly noticeable at the top of each side so hopefully my Han shirt should hide some of it or the holster belt will hide it as well.

Below is the finished skirt! (view of the back of the skirt) The skirt has pockets in the front so I needed to sew the stripes onto the seam behind the pockets, which mean the stripes face the back a little more than they normally would. But I'm perfectly OK with that.

I'm so excited to use this at Star Wars Celebration next week! ^_^