Thursday, June 24, 2010

Maid Outfit

I was recently accepted as a member of a maid cafe, and I created this look for my character!

The entire outfit took about a week or so of on-and-off sewing to complete, and consists of a white ruffled underskirt, a black overdress featuring a scalloped hem layer and a sweetheart neckline, and a half-apron with a ruffled hem. Additionally, the traditional maid ruffle katyusha is trimmed with blue rickrack (because I am a member of the blue team), and coordinates with a matchingly trimmed ribbon choker. I did not take progress photos of this project, as it is actually quite similar to the construction of the Miwako cosplay dress (I used the same pattern with some sleeve and skirt length modifications for the overdress).

But onto the pictures!!

White ruffled underskirt:


Black overdress:


Scalloped hem with over a straight underlayer:


Sweetheart neckline (made by ruching):


Apron:


Katyusha and choker:


And of course, the dress modeled by me!!



The design of the underskirt/overdress combination was to have a cutaway style. Originally I planned to have just the scalloped hem, but with the apron, the lower half of the outfit just seem overly dominated by white in the front view, so I added the straight layer of black to lengthen the overdress a little bit. However it is only tacked on, and can be taken off or folded up when I want to wear the dress as not a maid outfit, since I designed it such that I could be comfortable wearing it as a normal Lolita dress.

The rest of the outfit is completed by black/white dotted stockings (with a white satin bow at the top, but it's hard to see), a long curly wig from Gabalnara, which I love. I'm not wearing makeup or my gray contacts in these photos, since I'm waiting for the contacts to arrive. The shoes are also just stand-ins, but similar to what I will be wearing.

The bodice is still somewhat loose on me, although I did try to use darts to shape the waist. I'm considering adding a crisscross of black elastic across the back to make sure the sleeves stay up during dancing. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the construction of this dress, although I've learned that I should make the side seams of my bodices straight, and not try to do any shaping through the side seams, since that just makes for some weird puffiness at the sides. Lesson learned. Also, my machine requires the needle to be inserted with the flat side FACING AWAY from me... I unnecessarily broke so many needles because I had somehow reversed it in my memory >_<

And even more pictures of me being silly!