Construction of The Black Forest

You know how brands are always naming their prints things like Milky Planet, Vampire Requiem, and Creamy Soda Pop. Well my print is called The Black Forest, so my dress is called, you guessed it. The Black Forest!

My you are a grumpy lolita!

I'm really proud of this dress, it's a little unfinished, and there are some construction issues with the bodice, but all in all it just what I wanted. And now I'm here to tell you a little bit about how it was made.

I bought velvet for the bodice, if you can avoid working with velvet please try. It's essentially tiny fuzzy balls all strung together to create a fabric, and those balls will fall apart with the least bit of provocation. If you do want to work with velvet, keeping a few bottles of Fray Check at hand is a very good idea. I used a pattern for the bodice, but altered it of course.

As you can see I cut out the pieces of the bodice, but before sewing them together I hid some red trim in the front so it was just peaking out. Only the first three pieces were sewn together at this time.

Before sewing the back part of the bodice on I sewed on my military style braids with gold thread. Also something you should avoid if you can help it. Metallic thread is incredibly thin thread with the foil-like metallic part spun around it. It snaps terribly easily and it's frustrating when your braiding keeps moving. The patches I had to sew on by hand because they were slightly beaded. They used to be frog toggles and clasps, but I cut the toggle and clasp parts off and used them as decoration. A maroon embroidered lace was added onto the front. After wards I sewed the back parts onto the bodice and added in a lining.

Here's a closeup of the patches. It's a good detail shot of some of the trim I used as well. You can see what I did with the rose buttons from an earlier post.

When I sewed on the skirt I realized it was too long because I wanted to add a fat line of velvet to the bottom to tie the fabrics together better.

So I cut it off.

There, that's better. Then I added more of the embroidered lace to the bottom of the skirt

Close up of the embroidered lace. It's quite soft and silky. I bought 8 yards of this lace, I used 7 on the dress alone.

After finishing up the dress enough so that I could wear it I knew I was gonna need some sort of head piece for the Lolita Fashion Show at Wonder NW. So I threw together a simple headdress out of the scraps left over from the dress. The tree line of The Black Forest makes up the main piece, with a strip of gold braiding running down the middle, and that maroon embroidered lace looks just as nice flat as ruched.

The bows are super tiny and made of velvet. They are possibly one of the most difficult things I've ever made! And you see that little ball trim on the end? You can't really tell from my pictures, but I used that same trim on the part of the sleeves where my arms poked through, and it was HELL to sew into those tiny bows.

You can see in this picture I added some more gold trim to the bottom, but I haven't decide if I like it. I just put it on for the show, but I might replace it with something I like better at a later date.

So far this dressed has cost me around 167$ not counting things like the blouse, accessories and such. A pretty penny to be sure, but well below what a brand lolita dress, or hell even something from Fanplusfriend would cost. Plus I get the satisfaction of people asking me where I got my dress, and I get to tell them I made it^^!