Assembling the Hakama: Part One

Fabric

If you haven't yet, you will need fabric for your Hakama. Traditionally they were either a solid color for casual and stripes for something a little more formal. If you need ideas for what is most traditional, I suggest browsing Okinawa Soba's Flicker page for ideas. The colors might not be right, but it will demonstrate what patterns are best.

I am using a hefty synthetic khaki green fabric, it is not very traditional, but has a nice earthy quality to it.

Cutting, Assembly, and Pleats

Pin your pattern to the fabric and cut it. At the top, if you have marked where your pleats will be on the pattern, it would be helpful to cut little triangles outward from the pattern to mark them. Or, you can mark them with a fabric pen or chalk.

Now it's time for some basting. Ahh, basting, it might seems like a tedious task, but it is a good step to take when you want to do something right. Sometimes I will skip it and just deal with having pins around, but basting definitely makes your pieces easier to handle.

With the right sides together stitch the inseam from top to bottom.

Now we are going to fold your pleats. You are going to need an iron, but not quite yet. Get it hot.

Starting from the center, where your two pieces are basted together, out from the seam 1.5" fold in half inward then back out again. Do this on either side of the inseam. The other four pleats should be folded inward toward the inseam. See below.

It should look like this when you are finished:

Guess what? More basting! Baste your pleats while pinned so they won't move. You could iron your pleats with the pins in and then baste them...but then your pins would be hot, wouldn't they? Once your pleats are basted, iron them. Make sure they are straight down from the top. You don't need to iron down all the way to the bottom, about 12" should do it. We just want to set the pleats for now.

Do this for the back side as well. Your two pleats in the back are going to be the same and the center pleat in the front, so it will form a valley, so to speak.

Next up: More assembly!