Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Lolita Clothes

So, if the bloomers and the tags/keywords didn't give it away, Gothic Lolita fashion is a hobbie of mine. I say "Gothic Lolita" because that is what people are familar with, but mostly I just like sweet lolita and casual lolita clothing. Of course I'm too cheap to buy outfits myself, so I've set out on an adventure to make them myself.

I've been constantly browsing thrift stores looking for anything that may go with a casual lolita look, or anything that can be altered. I'm not very good at sewing and I don't like to use patterns, so I'm pretty much winging it. The bloomers were the first thing I've made. I've bought a few basic stuff so far for customizing: a pair of shoes, socks and tights, tshirts, a black polka dot square dance skirt, and a baby blue cardigan. Next projects are a cupcake skirt patterned simple skirt, and currently working on a petticoat.

I'm making the petticoat out of tulle, something I've never worked with. I browsed the net to get an idea about making petticoats and the concensus was that it's better to buy one instead of struggle with it. I don't have $30-40 to burn so I opted for the challenging route.

So far the only issue I've had with the tulle was in cutting it evenly. I don't have any special cutting tools or methods to make straight lines easy, I just lay a ruler on top and cut away! I'm sure that makes some seamstess out have heart palpatations, but it's just what I'm used to. I've never cut such loooong pieces before, so it sucked.

For those who are wondering, I bought 6 yards of tulle, elastic, and liner fabric for about $18 at Joann. So far it's way too much fabric. The tulle I folded so that there were 4 layers and cut 3 strips 8 inches wide: one layer is double my waist size, one layer is 3x my waist size, and the last layer is 4x my waist size.

I then seperated the three stacks into six 2 layer thick pieces. Each piece was then sewn into a "ring" by sewing the two shortest ends together.

Next I sewed a gathering stitch along the top line of each ring. I've never done this before so I goofed on the first tier (fixed now). The gathering stitch was done by sewing with the longest stitch length on my machine and with the tension around 1 or 2. If you leave a long tail of thread on each end you can tug them to make the fabric ruffle. My machine seems to put the ruffle in there automatically when I sew the tulle (hurray for less work!) so if anything I just need to loose those gathers.

The gather stitch is normally sewn near the top, but I did mine about 1-1.5 inches down so that I can sew that smaller ruffle on top to the outside to add extra poof to each tier. Currently I am working on pinning each layer to the next. For this I need to try and make the top of the bottom tier the same length as the bottom of the tier above it. I'll photograph the petticoat when it comes together.

No comments:

Post a Comment