#no trim

[flmboyz]

How 🤔 do you like your "BUMPSIDE"? Trim or No Trim

[everysinglefrancaise]

Robe a la Francaise,1750 The Metropolitan Museum of Art Accession Number: 1981.152a–e Notes from Museum: In a rare example of a full eighteenth-century dress in quilting, the proficiency of the silk to contain body heat is transferred from the more familiar elements of separate jackets and petticoats for winter. In this instance and a related quilted outfit in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the density of quilting mitigates the sleek lines of mid-eighteenth century. With some uncertainties in its state of preservation, this ensemble combined at-home coziness and social grace despite the added bulk.

[96shaq]

I ❤️ driving

🚗💨💨💨

[20dollarlolita]

I have a 4 yard piece of black cotton that I'd like to make a lolita dress with, but I don't have any trim. I'm thinking about putting buttons fown the front and making pintucks, and having a ruffle at the bottom, but I'm afraid it will still be too plain. Any ideas?

Okay, I was going to answer this a few days ago, because I didn’t want it to get eaten in all the replica debacle, so here’s an answer:

Details details details details, is my first piece of advice. When you’re making a solid color piece, a good rule of thumb (hand) is that you shouldn’t have a space on the skirt bigger than your hand that doesn’t have a detail in it.

(Blurry pic warning, proceed with caution)

For this case, folds in the fabric and seamlines do count as a details. Here’s the skirt from the No Fabric Store Challenge. As I’m going to talk about when I finish that challenge, I specifically chose pleats because they create visual detail. If I’d made this skirt as an a-line, where the whole middle sits flat, there would be a large chunk of fabric in the middle where nothing’s happening. You can see down near the hem, it starts to fill out and the creases and pleats disappear. I put the trim near the hem, where the visual interest would otherwise disappear.

This JSK is aware of that. Not only is it using a solid color Jacquard fabric that has its own detail woven in, but it still has details added to all the empty space. It’s a princess seamed dress, so it doesn’t have gathering or pleating to create texture at the waistline. Because of this, the accents at the hem come up much higher. Not only that, but they’re much bigger. This JSK has shiny ribbon and bows, lace trimming the ribbon, the ribbon-lace-bow combo heading off frills, and then there’s lace down at the hem again.

This OP has the same design sort of going on (dividing the skirt in 3′s, detailing the sides more than the front), but all of the decoration can start much lower on the skirt, because there’s texture from the gathering at the waist. This is also not a solid-color OP. In both this and the JSK’s case, having slightly textured/patterned fabric helps a whole lot with visual interest. When you’re working with a solid black, you have to work just a bit harder at keeping that texture both balanced and present.

Okay, so this JSK also has the super-detailed-sides thing going for it. That’s a lot more to do with sampling error than it is The True Way To Make A Dress or whatever. These are just dresses I own and it’s a look I like. Anyway, here’s an all-black JSK that uses minimal trim. There’s the two vertical stripes that define the center and the side panels. Almost all the rest in pintucks and ruffles, with some bows.

This OP has almost no trim, but it uses two kinds of fabrics. All of the techniques on this dress you can pull off with one fabric, if you’re using a fabric in weight somewhere from quilt calico to cotton sateen. Anything that’s thin enough that it’ll ruche like that and thick enough that you can’t see through it.

I’m going into detail about the different pieces because I think that’s where more handmade lolita messes up the most. Even subdued lolita and more classical pieces tend to have a lot of detailing in them.

Back to your question: If you don’t have lace, I’d add style seaming in the skirt. Either doing two vertical seams (like the pink OP and the black and cream JSKs) or dividing the skirt into horizontal tiers like a petticoat. Pin tucks are great in the bodice and on the skirt. Little bows are great for breaking up big spaces, too.

If you’ve already made the skirt, but are looking for how to attach it to the bodice, pleating it instead of gathering it, and then carefully pressing the pleats, will create its own kind of look.

I would normally suggest searching the “solid color” tag on lolibrary, but as of my writing this, their site is still a bit funky after the update and their search is still not quite that functional. The old daily-lolita livejournal still has a functioning solid color tag that you might be able to get some inspiration from.

[somewhereinthesticks]

Stusssssssy eyewear, 2024.

[daniellesbutt-blog]

It's haircut time!!!!

[kaisuki]

Please stylist noonas do not touch Kai's beautiful head of hair.