Make Your Own Custom Hoop With Me!

Need a hoop skirt for Dickens Faire, Halloween, reenactments or just because?  Can't find one with the proper shape?  Want to make your own hoop skirt but too nervous to try it on your own?  Come make one with me!

I'm teaching a Make Your Own Custom Hoop Skirt workshop at TechShop Menlo Park on Saturday, October 20th at 10:00am.  I'll walk you through the whole process of drafting a pair of hoops that are shaped and sized exactly as you desire, then help you turn your paper pattern into fabric and steel reality.  By 5:00pm you'll swish out the door in your very own custom drafted and sewn hoops!

The nitty gritty details-

• You don't have to have passed the usual TechShop safety courses to take this class, but you do need to know how to turn on a sewing machine and sew a straight line. (Pretty sure everyone reading this can do that!)
• We will provide all the tools and materials you'll need, including sewing machines, steel hoopwire, fabric (it'll be white), etc.  All you need to bring is your own lunch, or I you prefer I can point you to some good grub nearby.
• The actual class will be 6 hours long, but there's a one hour break so you can go get lunch, so the grand total shows as 7 hours.
• We'll be making round style hoops.  You can customize the width, length and shape (cone shaped, U-shaped, funky wobbly shaped, etc) but this method will not work for bustles, panniers or elliptical hoops.  
• We need a minimum of 3 students to go ahead with the class, so don't wait, sign up now! 

My fabulously drawn example of some of the styles of hoops you could make.  

I have a hankering to make that third pair!

 

 

I'm so excited to teach this class and I hope to see you there!  Much love to anyone who wants to boost the signal by telling your friends or linking to this post :)

Sewing Your Custom Drafted Hoops

I showed you how to draft a custom hoop skirt pattern here.  You should have ended up with a pattern that looks something like the following image, plus a list of hoop circumferences.

Now I'll show you how to sew it up.  It's really quite simple.  Here's the quick and dirty instructions in nine easy steps, followed by the slightly more complicated process I used for mine (partially by choice, partially because I screwed up), with a few photos-

1.  Trace out your pattern on your fabric.  It's easiest if you just use one long length of fabric so you only have to make one seam.  Make sure you mark the lines where your hoops are going to go.

2.  Sew your side seams together so that you have one big tube of fabric.  You'll want to flat fell your seam or stitch down your seam allowances so that your hoop boning won't get stuck in that space between the fabric and the seam allowance.  Trust me, it's a pain in the ass if you don't.

3.  Hem the bottom edge.

4.  Make a casing for a drawstring at the top by folding the fabric over and sewing it down, leaving enough space to run your drawstring through.  Just prior to doing this, you can make two button holes at the top center front for your drawstring to pass through, or you can just leave a small gap as you're sewing the casing.  In previous projects I've entirely forgotten to do this and ended up ripping small holes in the casing to get the drawstring in.

5.  Sew lengths of bone casing or grosgrain ribbon down along the lines you drew for your hoops.  Sew along the top edge and the bottom edge of each length of casing or ribbon, leaving enough space between for your boning to go.  Be sure to leave a small gap unsewn so you have a place to insert the boning.

6.  Cut your hoop boning to size.  You found the circumference of each hoop when you were drafting the pattern; add 1" to that measurement so that you can overlap the ends of your hoops.

7.  Feed your boning through the channels you made, overlap the ends by 1" and join the together with hoop connectors.   I believe it's easiest to start with the top hoop and work your way down.

8.  Run your drawstring through the waist casing.

9.  Your fabric will probably be gathered and bunched on the hoops strangely, giving them a misshapen and lumpy appearance.  Put your hoop skirt on a mannequin or a willing assistant and adjust the gathers so that they are evenly distributed around the hoops.  This takes some fussing, but in the end you'll have a beautiful hoop skirt shaped exactly as you wish!

Of course I had to make it slightly more complicated than that. 

Step 1.  Remove cat from fabric.  De-fur as best as possible.

 

They're still carrying this in the utility fabric section of JoAnns if anyone is interested

I used a striped cotton pillow ticking I picked up at JoAnns.  With a coupon it came to about $3 a yard.  It's finer and more tightly woven than regular ticking, and I love the combo of florals and stripes!

Plastic covered spring steel hoop boning and hoop connectors

You'll need some sort of spring steel hoop boning.  There are several kinds, but I tend to use a medium strength variety that consists of two bands of spring steel coated in plastic.  You can find it at corsetmaking.com.  They have another kind that is similar, only coated in buckram, but I find the plastic stuff is easier to cut and is a little stronger than the buckram stuff.  1/7/18 ETA: Two or more years ago this type of boning disappeared from the market entirely due to the death of the owner of the only machine producing it. Now there's a new company called Hoopwire.com that produces the plastic coated version. At this time they do not make the buckram coated version, though I'm not a fan of trying to stuff that type into fabric channels anyway. 

I know that Farthingales has heavier duty spring steel boning, but I've never used it so I can't say much about it.  You can figure out how much you'll need by adding together all the circumference measurements you came up with when you drafted your hoops (add an extra 1" for each hoop to allow for overlap). To my displeasure, corsetmaking.com doesn't carry hoop connectors, so I purchased mine in person at Lacis.  

Awesome cheap boning cutters from Lacis.  Possibly the only thing that is cheap at Lacis.

I got my boning cutters ages ago at Laci's for the dirt cheap price of $10.  They cut through the plastic coated steel like butter, but may not be as effective on the super heavy duty stuff.  

It's easiest to use one long length of the fabric so you only have to make one seam, but that would mean I'd end up with horizontal stripes instead of the vertical ones I wanted, so I sewed multiple panels of fabric together to get one long panel of the appropriate width.  Then I followed step 2 and sewed up the sides to form a tube.  All of these seams were flat felled so that the hoop boning wouldn't catch on seam allowances later on when I fed it into the channels.

Step 3. Remove other cat from fabric.  Attempt to de-fur fabric again, give up.  Consider at least getting matching cats next time.

 

At least piecing is period, right?

Step 4.  I realized I hadn't paid attention to my measurements earlier and had cut my panels too short, so I pieced in extra fabric at the top to bring it back to the right length.  Again, I flat-felled all seams.

Step 5.  I used a narrow rolled hem foot to hem the bottom.  It takes a little practice to get the fabric feeding in correctly, but it makes a very pretty, very narrow turned hem.  You can see a photo of a rolled hem foot in action here.

Step 6.  I made two buttonholes near the top center front, then turned the top edge down twice and sewed it to form a casing for a drawstring.  

 

Step 7.  I started out using bone casing purchased from corsetmaking.com, but I ran out after the fourth hoop casing.  I grabbed some grosgrain ribbon to finish off the last four casings.  

Step 8.  Unwind all the cats from the ribbon and kick them out of the room so the last casings can be sewn on in peace.

Pleats vs gathers.  Pleats look meh, gathers win by a long shot.

Step 9.  I had decided I wanted to use some excess fabric to make a pleated trim to go around the base, but upon pleating a small scrap to test the idea I decided that it looked like crap.  I'm kinda bored of putting gathered ruffles on things, but I had to admit it looked better than the pleating, so I hemmed and gathered 6 yards of fabric and sewed it to the base.

Step 10.  Quickly open door and throw some catnip toys to the yowling furbeasts to appease them.  Shut door before they can get back in.

Step 11.  I cut my boning to size (adding 1" to allow for overlap) and started feeding it through the channels.  I started at the bottom and worked my way up, but I think it's easier to to it the other way around.  Before I inserted each hoop I stuck a bit of tape on the end to cover the rough edges so they'd glide through easier.  To join the ends I overlapped them and taped them securely.

I finished each join by using pliers to clamp metal hoop connectors tightly over the taped area.  Those suckers aren't going anywhere!  

Step 12.  I inserted the drawstring, accidentally pulled the opposite end all the way through and had to start over.  I used a 1/4" wide grosgrain ribbon I had lying around as a drawstring.  The texture of the ribbon seems to keep my bow from untying itself when I tie it tightly, but keeps it from over-tightening itself to the point that I can't get it undone when it's time to take it off.

 

Ta-Da!

Step 13.  I wish I'd taken a photo of the lumpy mess that was my hoop skirt directly after I finished inserting the hoops, but you'll just have to imagine.  The fabric gets all gathered up on the boning while you're stuffing it in and those gathers need to be redistributed evenly around the hoops to get a nice even shape.  It's easiest if you have a mannequin or somebody willing to wear a hoop and stand still for a while so you can work on getting those gathers distributed right.  Both my mannequins were at work when I first finished my hoop, so I very nearly had my boyfriend put it on for me.  The photos would have been hilarious ;)  Eventually I got it all sorted, and the end result is pretty damn awesome.    

There's just one part that didn't work out for me.  While I was at Lacis I found some fine silk ribbon in the exact same shade as the stripes in my fabric.  I purchased it with the intent of making little bows to adorn the top of every fifth pleat or something, but since I did a gathered ruffle rather than pleats I don't know what to do with it.  Bows look a little silly on top of the ruffle.  I'm considering using it to trim my chemise, bloomers and petticoat so that all of my underwear matches, but then I'd be tempted to make a new corset so that it would match too.  I should probably bury the ribbon somewhere deep in my stash till such crazy thoughts subside...

How to Draft A Round Hoop Skirt With the Exact Shape You Want

And I do mean pretty darn exact.  Check out this photo of my finished hoops with my draft laid over the top for comparison-

Spot on!  (Ignore how high the hoop is off the floor, I like to set my mannequin to be much taller than me so I can comfortably sew hems and such)  You can use the following method to create any type of round hoop, whether cone shaped, bell shaped or a crazy undulating shape.

 You can't tell me you don't kinda want the third one now.

The key is that only round style hoops can be done like this; bustle/hoop combos, elliptical hoops and panniers won't work with this method.  But if the silhouette of your intended hoop design is identical from the front, sides and back then this will work for you. 

To start, you're going to need a largish sheet of paper, a ruler or an architect's scale, a pencil and the following measurements in inches:

• your height 
• your waist to floor measurement
• your corseted waist measurement
• desired circumference of hoop (optional; you could just draw what you like and go with the resulting circumference)
• desired distance between floor and bottom edge of hoop

We're going to make our drawing to scale; that is, it will be drawn to the exact measurements we need, only smaller.  For instance, you could draw it so that 1" = 1/4".  If I am 65" tall and want to draw my figure in 1/4" scale I would draw it 16 1/4" tall.  Choose the largest scale that will allow you to fit a figure your height on your paper.  You'll be taking measurements later, and it's harder to take accurate measurements off a tiny drawing.  Once you've picked what scale you'll be drawing at, stick with it all the way through.  I'll be using my real life measurements as examples, but assume that from here on I'm converting them to scaled measurements when I actually draw them (so when I say I drew a line 65" up from the floor line, I'm actually drawing it to my scaled height of 16 1/4").   

I've already got my figure drawn to scale, but I'll show you how I got there.

To begin with, draw a line at the bottom of your page to indicate the floor.  You'll also want to draw a vertical line down the center of your page so you can center your figure and hoops exactly.  The top of your figure's head will be [your height in inches] above the floor.  In my case, I'm 65" tall, so I drew a mark 65" up from the floor to indicate the top of my figure's head.

Make another mark where your waist will be using your waist to floor measurement.  My waist to floor measurement is 41", so I measured 41" up from the floor and made a mark.

You can guestimate the diameter of your waist by dividing your corseted waist measurement by π (3.14).  Usually your waist is more of an oval than a circle, but a corset tends to compress your waist on the sides more than front and back, making your waist very close to a circle.  My corseted waist measurement is 25".  Divided by π, I get a diameter of 8", so I drew a 8" wide line centered at waist level (green line in the above picture).

At this point I sketched in my figure from the waist up to that mark I made for the top of the head.  I got a bit fancy and drew undergarments and whatnot, but don't worry too much about details.  It's also no big deal if you can't draw people very well; the point is to just get a very rough idea of the shape of the body above the hoop.

I know I want my hoop skirt to have a total circumference of 95".  I can find the diameter of my bottom hoop by dividing 95" by π, which gives me 30.25".  I also want my hoop skirt to be 6" off the floor, so I drew a line 30.25" wide 6" up from the floor (make sure it's centered!).  I added in some feet to complete my figure.

Now you can draw the shape of your hoop skirt!  So long as it starts at each end of the line you drew for your waist, finishes at each end of the line you drew for the base and is symmetrical you're golden.  I made sure my shape was exactly the same on both sides by drawing it on one side, then copying it to the other side by folding the paper in half on the centerline and tracing it.  Whatever shape you draw is exactly what you'll get, so take some time to get a shape that pleases you.  I wanted a very bell type shape reminiscent of the early 1850's just before hoops were invented, when layering multiple petticoats gave women's skirts a shape just like an upside-down U.

Once you've got your overall shape down, you'll need to draw in where your hoops go.  Keep in mind that you can space hoops farther apart in areas where there's little change in shape, but you'll need to space them closer together in areas where the shape changes drastically.  In the drawing above, the most drastic shape change takes place in the top half of the hoop skirt, so those hoops need to be closer together to maintain that shape.  Also consider the overall size of your hoop skirt.  Larger hoop skirts will require more support than smaller hoop skirts.  I once made a giant hoop with a nearly 180" circumference that failed because it only had 6 hoops holding it up.  It's better to err on the side of caution and add too many hoops than to have to few and watch your hoops collapse under the weight of your skirts!

Click photo to embiggen 

Now that you've got your hoop skirt drawn as you like it, you'll start taking measurements.  You are going to measure each space between hoops at the side edge of your hoopskirt (see photo above for example).  Don't forget to measure the distance between the top hoop and your waist too!  Measure straight from the edge of one hoop to the next, disregarding the curves.  Remember, you don't want to measure in the middle of your drawing or you'll end up with too little space between your hoops.  In the photo above, look at the area between the top hoop and the waist.  If measured on the edge, the result is 5".  If measured in the middle, it's 2".  That's a big difference!  You can write these measurements directly on your drawing or put them on another sheet of paper, but make sure you have them for later when you make your actual pattern.

Next you'll measure the length of each of the lines you drew for your hoops.  This will be the diameter of each hoop.  You'll only need these numbers long enough to find the circumference of each hoop.  

Now that you have the diameter of each hoop, you can easily find the circumference by multiplying the diameter x 3.14.  The result is the length each of your hoop bones needs to be (well almost; we're going to add a bit extra for overlap when we actually make the hoop skirt, but ignore that for now), so write each one down next to its corresponding hoop for easy reference.  

Click on picture to embiggen

Now you've got all the measurements you need to make your pattern!  You can draw your pattern out on paper full size, or you can save time and draw it directly on your fabric.  

First, you'll need to make a rectangle as long as the circumference of your bottom hoop (so 95" in my case) and as high as all of the measurements in between each hoop combined (in my case, 6+6+6+6.25+3.25+3.5+2.25+5= 38.25).  

You can also draw in lines for each of your hoops, using the measurements you took in between each hoop to space them properly (see above).  

Add however much you want on each side for your seam allowance (yellow area in above picture).  

Add a bit on the bottom to fold up to make a neat hem (green area in above picture).  If you add enough on the bottom, you can also use it to encase your bottom hoop.  

Add enough on the top to fold down to make a casing for a drawstring (pink area in above picture).  Ta-Da!  You're ready to start sewing up your hoop skirt.  I'll show you how in the next post! Update: Learn how to sew up your custom hoop pattern in this post.