Let me start out this post by saying- I now have MASSIVE
amounts of respect for Ancient Japanese seamstresses. Figuring out how to draft a hamaka has been
one of the most difficult things I have done.
Holy pots of boiling water.
Difficult. Like HOURS and HOURS
of drafting.
Anyway. Because I
worked so hard figuring out what to do, I decided to post the pattern here. The pattern is fitted to a 5’4” female with
bust:34”, waist: 24”, hips: 35”. If you
are this same size, then GREAT! If not
the pattern won’t work for you. But…you
may absolutely ask any questions and I will attempt to answer them the best
that I can.
I was working off two tutorials. If you are trying to make a hamaka as well, I
suggest looking at these before going any further.
First let me explain why I had such trouble. The video from The Cosplay Chronicles helped
a GREAT deal with how the folding goes, but her measurement formulas just didn’t
work for me.
The pinned pattern has measurements, but they are HUGE. I would have swam in them.
So these are the pattern pieces I came up with.
They don’t look difficult.
They look simple. I can pleat
stuff in my sleep, but pleats that have to fold into pleats onto the other side
of the body…WHAT?! The result is
gorgeous. Beautiful. But wow was it difficult to wrap my head
around drafting-wise.
Just because I was paranoid I cut out a scaled paper version
of the hamaka, folded, and taped it together.
It looks good…now to try it with fabric!
So why am I doing this? I recently started watching Avatar and I LOVE IT. Mai's costume called to me, so for January's Thrifty Thursday I am making her costume. For those of you not familiar with Mai, there are some pictures (none of which I own) :)
Thanks so much for your tutorial. I had already looked at the videos that you referenced, but I was still having a hard time wrapping my head around it. This helped tremendously. My BF suddenly decided to be a Ninja for Halloween, and I wanted to at least get the bottoms right, instead of black sweat pants.
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