Advice, reviews and Ideas for making a Hakama

[Charuzu]

Hello minna-san, ^_^

One of the other things that I enjoy doing is sewing. I have made Yukata, Gi and easy and semi-easy stuff like that but now I have decided to try to make a Hakama. I have been thining about this for a while but now I have decided to act.
I have my Hakama for refrence but I feel VERY incomfortable doing it without a pattern. I have searched the net and I have found a few resourses:
-This site has Directions but something seem odd (http://luxnova.home.mindspring.com/samuraigame/hakama.html) (like the directions for the pleats)
-This site has a pattern (http://www.sewingcentral.com/cgi-bin/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=ccj01m.html&cart_id=)
-And so does this site (http://round-earth.com/MYOJC-1.html)

I was hoping that If anyone has done this before If the could give advice. Also, If I manage to be good at this I was wondering If I could profit from this.

Thank you Minna-san <(_ _)> *rei*

[DarQik]

When I got my hakama it was a bit long. So, I took it over to mom's house to get altered (I got excited and had already cut the strings). My mother is one of the those semi-professional costume/dress maker types.

She had that look in her eye... The one that says she's going to quietly take the whole thing apart to see how it's made then put it back together and make the alteration... Meaning I had better act fast, or my simple 20 minute change might take a few weeks... ;) (She's great though. Back in college SCA, she made me a bunch of stuff by hand and had people complaining it was clearly machine made with fabric tape and such. They got a nice lecture on sewing techniques...)


Anyway, the hakama evaluation without disassembly was that it wasn't a complex pattern, and looked pretty simple to make (that's a relative simple, I'd still classify as hard for my skills given I hate pleats).

After reviewing the price tag, she looked at the material. Given the quality of the material and the amount of fabric required, the material costs were high enough to make it completely not worthwhile to bother trying to make any of them. If you want to make a buck at it, you'll need to have good connections for the fabric supply and some cheap labor... There's a reason most of the textile industry in the US in imported.

[Charuzu]

Did she write out a pattern by any chance????

Also, I found Indigo Cotton on Clearance sale for $0.75/yd!!!!
I also have LOTS of white Muslin
^__^