lolita craft patterns archive

*The Internet Archive has a browser extension that lets you automatically archive a page with literally two clicks

And immediately. 10/10. 14/10. Would absolutely recommend

It also lets you see any archived versions of a page with just a few clicks, so it's great for getting around paywalls, as well as for keeping data and news stories from being deleted or moved

You can get the extension (or app for phones?) here:

Chrome Extension

Firefox Add-on

Safari Extension

MS Edge Add-on

iOS app

The Wayback Machine Chrome browser extension helps make the web more reliable by detecting dead web pages and offering to replay archived versions of them.  You can get it here. For the past 20 years, the Internet Archive has recorded and preserved web pages, and hundreds of billions of them are available via the Wayback Machine.  This is good because we are learning the web is fragile and ephemeral.  For example a 2013 Harvard study found that 49% of the URLs referenced in U.S. Supreme Court decisions are now dead.  Those decisions affect everyone in the U.S., and the evidence the opinions are based on is disappearing.

-via The Internet Archive, January 13, 2017

And that was before the US government started deleting unbelievably important and massive resources, databases, and datasets!!

Next time you see a page and mentally go "ooh people need to see this," I recommend you hit a button and help a future you and millions of other people out!!!

There's a lot of different collar types out there, and they're all constructed slightly differently. It's really difficult to make a one-size fits all tutorial, but we're going to try.

If you're making a blouse/shirt, and you get to the collar, there's a few steps you should do first. One is to read all the parts of your instructions that tell you how to assemble the collar. The next is, if you feel like you don't fully understand the instructions, it to check out some tutorials and see if that makes things make more sense. If you're here, congrats on completing that step. The third step is to check if you have enough spare fabric to do a test run on your collar. If you don't have enough fabric to make the collar twice, go find some fabric to practice on, just in case.

This tutorial is going to cover two kinds of collars: single piece collars, and collars with a stand.

A single piece collar is what it says on the tin. The collar itself is constructed out of one piece of fabric. Sometimes, these collars sit flat on the neckline, and sometimes they will stand up off the neckline and fold somewhere along their length. When you are patterning a collar, it involves a lot of different steps to get a one-piece collar to fold where you want it to, so that it will stick up at the neckline where you want it to. When you're constructing a pattern someone else made, however, they're generally all built the same. In this case, the red collar is a flat-roll collar that doesn't stand up at the neckline. The white collar stands up a little bit, making it a rolled collar with a low stand.

Some people refer to flat-roll collars exclusive as peter pan collars, and some people use the term "peter pan collar" to describe any collar that's rounded in the front instead of being pointed. Because of this confusion, I'm not going to refer to any of these collars as peter pan collars. (this is also why I'm not referring to these as stand collars or convertible collars. If you get into sewing tutorials, at some point you're going to learn that no one knows what any form of collar is called or how its components work).

Some collars stick up off the neck because they're constructed with a separate collar stand. These collars are multiple pieces. They're a little more intense to make, but they can be built in more shapes than a one-piece collar.

This was going to be a tutorial for both of these kinds of collars, but I'm writing it right now and I'm like 15% of the one-piece tutorial and it's already a long as War and Peace, so multi-part collars will get their own tutorial later. I go over the basics briefly in this post, about halfway down, if you're stuck.

The collar of your shirt is right next to your face, meaning that when people look at you, they will see your collar. Because of this, even if the rest of your garment is a little half-assed, you really need your collar to look good. If the rest of your blouse looks very good, but your collar is sloppy, congrats, your whole blouse is sloppy. It's not fair but it's the world we live in.

This means that your priorities when you build a collar is that it is symmetrical and that it is smooth. Make sure you cut everything on the grain, cut everything evenly, sew precisely, pin as you go, grade and clip your seam allowances, and for the love of Mana please iron every single thing as you go. If it doesn't look good, stop, and fix it before you move on.

If you're a "i don't really understand that, but I'll figure it out as I go" kind of sewist, grab some scrap fabric and test it on that. With collars, you usually are working on smaller or on clipped seam allowances, so you get fewer chances to rip out a seam and retry it.

The first collar we're going to make today is from the McCall's Manikin pattern, which whoops why is that link there? is sadly out of print. This has a one-piece collar that stands up about an inch to an inch and a half before it rolls.

Step 1 is to make sure your neckline fits. Remember that you have seam allowance included in your blouse body. If your neckline is bad right now, you're not going to be able to fix it very easily once the collar is on. Be aware that if you change the neckline too much, the collar won't fit on it anymore. However, do not proceed with a collar where you know the shirt won't fit.

Your pattern will either have had you cut out the collar twice, or it would have given you a separate pattern for your collar and your under collar. It will also have given you some instructions on how to treat your neckline edge of your collar. In my pattern, the undercollar was clipped at the notches, and the neckline edge between the notches was pressed to the inside.

On a one-piece collar, the undercollar side (the side that faces your shoulders when you wear the finished blouse) is pretty rarely seen, so you're going to want to do your ruffle attachments to the under collar. This means that if the under collar is slightly more lumpy, no one can tell.

Generally, you will want to apply fusible interfacing to the undercollar, but if you're using sew-in interfacing, you want to sew it to the upper collar. Follow your instructions for that.

If you're making a collar for a clothing style that will at all allow you to put a ruffle or lace around the edge of the collar, I highly recommend that you do so. A little ruffle hides SO MANY SINS. Undercollar not lining up? Can't see it. There's a ruffle. Oh it's a 1/8" of in that one spot? Can't see it! There's a ruffle! Front of the collar meets a tiny bit off? That's to compensate for the ruffle, obviously. On a plain collar, you have to be careful that you're not even 1/16th of an inch off. On a ruffled edge collar, you can easily be 1/8" off in certain spots and no one can tell. That's why every rounded collar shirt at Hot Topic has a ruffle on it. Take some fabric or some lace, run a gathering line through the header side, and gather that up. Give it a little bit more of a gather than you think you'll need, because it will un-gather a little bit when you flip it right side out at the end.

You say, but Dollar-chan, isn't it hard to keep everything smooth with the ruffle? Isn't it hard to construct when you have embroidered tulle everwhere? Well, I'm going to share with everyone the greatest secret known to collar-making-kind.

Once you've sewn your lace around the edge of the collar, take a piece of contrasting thread (mine is red) and sew a hand basting stitch along the outside edge of your ruffle. Pull those basting stitches to gather the outside edge, until it lays flat pointed towards your collar. I've learned that this is the best system. Using hand basting will allow the outside edge of the ruffle to self-distribute, keeping your trim or ruffle very even. The first time that I did this I was so angry that something that worked so well was also so easy. It feels like cheating.

I know that you usually avoid doing this, but go ahead and iron the crap out of your ruffle or your trim, even though that's going to be putting creases into your ruffle layer. You want them to be as small as possible so that everything can line up right in future steps. You'll have some fun times getting everything to be pretty again when you're done with the collar, but that's a "done with the collar" problem.

Slap your upper collar piece onto your under collar, sandwiching all of the lace in the middle. Pin that.

Now, it's at the point where it's very important that the front edges of the collar are symmetrical. Depending on your fabric and your trim and your whatever else you're working with, this might be very easy for you, but I usually need some help.

I go back to my collar pattern piece, and i make a second copy of half of that piece on a new piece of paper. I then trim the seam allowance off the outside edge of that piece of paper.

I take my new pattern piece, and I trace the edges of it onto my new piece. Since I use the same piece for each front edge of the collar, I know that they will match up.

Take that hand sewing needle and contrast thread that you used for the ruffle, and hand baste the outside edge of the collar together.

We're hand-basting this instead of pinning it, because pins don't fold and move with the fabric. Also, a lot of people don't like sewing over their pins (for me it depends on what machine I'm working on) but I don't know anyone who believes that sewing over hand basting will be bad for their machine. It's annoying, but you get a better result. Also, it is less annoying that redoing the same collar part three times, so it's the world we're currently living in. Baste that edge and then run it through your machine. Sew right on top of that line that you traced, so that you have a perfectly symmetrical line of sewing.

If you turn it to the front right now, it's going to look a little bit messy, so let's turn it back inside out.

Grading or layering your seam is when you cut each seam allowance to be a different length. This makes it so that you don't have a harsh line where your seam allowance burns through to the front of the fabric.

When you're grading a collar with a ruffle in the seam, you grade the ruffle separately from the undercollar it's sewn onto. You can see here how my undercollar is shorter than the trim edge, which is shorter than the outer collar edge.

I also have clipped my seam allowance at the point of my collar. This lets it turn in evenly. If you have a very pointed collar, you want to blunt that corner when you sew it. You can see on my line of stitching that, instead of sewing to a single point and then pivoting, I came up to the edge and pivoted twice. This process, called blunting the corner, gives the collar room for the seam allowance to fit once it's turned.

You're then going to cut notches in your collar edge. I don't care what that guy on tiktok says, you need to do this on a collar, especially on any collar not made out of muslin. You have trim in there. You have interfacing in there. You have two layers of fabric in there. You need to take these notches out of the seam allowance or else your seam allowance won't be able to fit into your collar when you turn it to front. It will look bad.

At this point, we've probably done in 30 steps what your pattern instructions told you to do in three. Taking the time to construct the collar properly is worth it, because your collar is a very important part of your face. But, now that you've built it, it's time to put it on the neckline. There are a lot of different ways to attach the collar to the neck of the garment, and you should do whatever your instructions tell you to.

In the case of this blouse, you just sandwich the neckline seam into the collar seam, and sew it down. That turned down area is there so that you can access the whole area easier and make things smoother. Some patterns will have you use bias tape for a finish. Some patterns will have you cut a separate facing that will lie flat on the shoulders of the blouse.

Whatever way they tell you to do it, just go ahead and do that. If you're stuck on a specific technique, send me an ask, and I'll see if I can do a tutorial on that. I can't make a tutorial on every method right now, because there's some fine details about figuring out where and how to have the front neckline overlap or gap.

You are going to run into some people who really don't like when the front neckline doesn't take into account the ruffle.

To bring back this picture from up above, you can see how the collar stops on either side of the button placket, but the gap isn't visible because the ruffle fills the space? Some people believe that you are required to have this gap when you've added a ruffle onto your collar.

There's also plenty of blouses out there where this gap does not exist, regardless of the size of the outer ruffle, so I recommend just doing what your pattern tells you to do. No matter what you do, someone's going to say it's wrong, and someone's going to say it's the only correct option. Welcome to the world of handmade EGL, where the rules are made up and as long as the coord balances, your construction was correct.

Today we have the Royal School of Needlework Stitch Bank! There are HUNDREDS of stitch types in the RSN Stitch Bank.

And more added regularly, let’s look at a recent addition

I picked the first one in the 25 recently added Elizabethan stitches, the Elizabethan French Stitch

The stitch bank provides written and photo tutorials as well as a video option to learn to do it yourself. There are examples of the stitch in use, resources, references, everything but a needle and thread!

If anyone who has enjoyed this resource has the means, I encourage you to adopt or sponsor a stitch to help keep this free to access. I know not everyone has the means to (fair, been there) but if you can, check out their sponsor options

And one other resource I have shared before, The Lady's Magazine. Embroidery patterns from 1770-1819. In case anyone wants some historic ideas for using all these new embroidery stitches

It's getting increasingly difficult these days to find truly free sewing patterns online. Even "free" patterns require making an account or giving an email address or even putting a card on file. So, when I found out that a site called Dr Cos has their free patterns just available for download, I wanted to support that. You really just go onto the page you want, press download, and the PDF goes onto your computer.

The limitation of Dr Cos patterns that I've found is that the instructions aren't very thorough. Most patterns are one or two sentences per step, with no photos or diagrams to help. The English pattern instructions are written in Japanese and then run through a translator software, so some terminology gets confused.

Anyway, I made their ruffle blouse pattern and took pictures while I did it, so I figured that I might as well make a post supplementing their instructions to make them a little bit easier to understand in case anyone else wants to make their pattern. Their instruction will be in bold, and then any additional information that came from me will be not in bold.

So here we go.

(1) Fold one side of "Chest ruffle (top)", "Chest ruffle (bottom)" and "Cuffs frill" in three.

This is describing making a very narrow hem on the outer edge of all four Chest Ruffle pieces and the hem edge of Cuff Frill. You can tell this because that section of the pattern piece is marked 3fold double turn.

There's lots of different ways to make an extremely narrow rolled hem. For this project, I pressed up `1/4", and then folded the hem allowance in half and sewed that down. If you want to give your local small business sewing shop some money, you can buy a rolled hem foot, but I personally think those are a waste of money. If you have a serger, this is a good excuse to break out the rolled hem setting.

(2) Serging the sides of "Cuffs frill" and sewing them together to make gathers.

Three components here. First, apply a seam finish to the short sides of your cuff frill piece. I used a serger with a narrow balanced 3-thread overlock (black thread) for mine, but you can use a zigzag, overcasting stitch, or whatever you'd like.

Second, sew the short sides together, to make the cuff ruffle. Press this and do all the sewing things you know you're supposed to do.

Third, sew two lines of basting stitches (or your chosen gathering method) onto the edge opposite your rolled hem. I personally do not like to pull on the basting thread to form gathers until later in the process, so you'll notice as we go that my ruffles will be flat strips for a lot of the construction steps.

(3) Gather "Chest ruffle (top)" and "Chest ruffle (bottom).

Take your ruffle strips and sew your gathering stitches along the non-hemmed side.

You get to make a design decision at this point. The easiest way to do this, which is what I showed here, is to stack the ruffles and sew the basting strips through both at the same time. This means that I get to interact with the top ruffle and the bottom ruffle as one unit.

(this image shows a later step in the process, and is here to demonstrate the eventual consequences of doing ruffles like I'm doing them here)

This does not make the prettiest ruffles. You get much more attractive ruffles if you gather each strip separately, and then sew them together. My ruffles look like a single ruffle, instead of two stacked ruffles. I did it this way because I didn't really give a crap, but i should let you know, it's not a lot more work to make it look a lot better.

(4) Serging the sides and hem of the "Sleeve", sewing the sides together with a sewing machine, and press seam allowances open with an iron.

Put a seam finish on all of the parts of your sleeve except for the sleeve cap. Sew the side arm seam. Press the whole thing so the seam allowances are flat.

(5) Fold the top and bottom of the "cuff bands" with an iron to give them shape.

The pattern says to fold the top 1/2" and bottom 1/2" towards the center. I found this process really annoying. The easiest way to do it would be to either use a hot ruler (which I don't have) or to use a regular ruler to mark the fold lines on the piece (which I could have done, but didn't do, because if I don't make things hard for myself then what would I do with all my time? Anyway, as you can see from the pattern piece here, my cuff bands are wider than the pattern instructs. This made things messier on a future step on this projcet, which I didn't really care about since this is a mockup, but just FYI. It should be skinnier.

(6) Fold up the hem of "Sleeve" 0.5 inch to the upper side, and sew the upper side of "cuff bands" to the cuff bands position.

Fold the finished edge of the sleeve up to the outside. Doing it towards the outside makes the inside look prettier, and the hem is concealed by the cuff band.

I top stitched my cuff band on at the location indicated on the pattern. I folded the edge to tuck in the raw edge and make things prettier.

If I wanted to make things much prettier, I could sew the cuff band on right sides together with the sleeve, and then flip it to conceal the stitching. I didn't care that much, and the instructions imply top stitching, so we top stitched.

(7) Insert "Cuffs frill" under the "cuff bands" and stitch them together.

As mentioned previously, I prefer to keep my ruffled parts flat until I have them pinned at the location they will go. So in this case, I divided the sleeve hem into quarters, divided the ruffle into quarters, and then pulled the threads. I think this makes a much more even ruffle.

If I wanted this to be very nice looking, I would have flipped the cuff band out of the way, basted the ruffle down, and then pulled the cuff band over the basted ruffle edge and top stitched. This would have looked nice and attractive. I did not do that. I just shoved the ruffle into the casing and hit go.

(8) Fold the front side of the "Front Body" upward at the fold line to form the shape.

So here's an important note: if you make this shirt as indicated here, you will have the wrong side showing on your center front button placket. On my fabric, that wasn't a big deal, because my fabric is truly reversible. However, if your fabric has a face and a reverse, you will need some form of game plan to make this work. I'm going to do a full review of this pattern sometime soon, and I'll address how I think that should be solved.

In the meantime, fold your center fronts towards the front of the shirt. Don't forget to tuck your seam allowance in so that it's not hanging out.

(9) Insert "Chest ruffle (top)" and "Chest ruffle (bottom)" at the position where the ruffles are inserted and stitch them together.

Once again, I keep my ruffles flat until I have them pinned on the garment. Tuck your ruffles into the side of the placket and sew them in place. Again, if you want this to be very beautiful, you can do a few things that I didn't do here: Gather the ruffles individually instead of both at once, interface your plackets, baste your ruffles down with the placket open and iron the header before you sew the placket down.

(10) Serging the shoulders and sides of the "Front Body" and "Back Body", sew them together and press seam allowances open with an iron. it is easier to temporarily fix the edge of the ruffle around the neck at the end so that it can be tucked in with the "Neck Band".

Put a seam finish on your shoulder and side seams, sew them together at the shoulder and side seams.

This is also the point where you can try on the shirt, and make sure that anything that's really not working can be reworked. It's so much easier to make something bigger or smaller at this point than it is any any point beyond here.

Baste the tops and bottoms of the ruffles within your seam allowance so that they stay put and don't float around.

(11) Apply fusible interlining to the "Collar" and "Neck Band".

This is a mockup so I did not do this and therefore have no pictures. But here's a tip, the Reader's Digest Guide to Home Sewing recommends that you apply interfacing to the under collar instead of the top collar, and to apply interfacing to the stand (neck band) instead of the stand facing.

BTW now is the time to look at the pieces you cut. You will have two collar pieces and two neck band pieces. Decide which piece is the collar (that shows when the garment is worn normally), and which is the under collar (the part that only shows if the collar is popped up). You will also need to decide which piece is the neck band (part of the band that shows on the outside of the garment) and which is the neck band facing (the part that faces the wearer's skin, and is usually only see when the shirt is taken off). Depending on your fabric, it might not matter at all, but you need to make this decision and stick to it, just to make the next steps comprehensible.

(12) Turn the "Collar" inside out, open the "Neck Band" part, sew it together, turn it inside out, and iron it.

(13) Turn the "Neck Band" inside out, tuck the "Collar" into the collar position, sew together, turn inside out and stitch.

Start sewing the "Body" part of the "Neck Band" leaving 0.5 inches of seam allowance.

Fold 0.5 inches by ironing first to make it easier to make.

OKAY SO. As far as I can tell, there's a step here that is missing somehow. I don't know if this is a mistake or was somehow eaten by google translate, but something here is missing. Please excuse me for going completely off book and doing my own thing here. I frankly just could not at all understand what these instructions are trying to say.

Instead of trying to struggle with it, I just grabbed the "Shirt Collar With Stand" tutorial from the Reader's Digest Guide to Home Sewing and followed that.

Step A, you're going to put your collar and your under collar right sides together, and sew along the outside edge, leaving the shorter side open. Turn this to front and make it look pretty. Step B, you're going to turn up the edge of your neck band facing and press that in place. You don't want to forget this step or everything will get much harder very shortly. You will also put the right side of your collar towards the right side of your neck band, and sew the collar to the neck band. Note that the pattern has a marking to show where the collar should go. Step C, you're going to put the neck band facing right side next to the under collar. You're then going to sew the entire curved side of the neck band to the neck band facing. This includes both the part with the collar seam in it, and the parts where there is no collar. Leave the shorter side open. Step D, you're going to turn both the neck band sides down. Clip and iron things until they look good.

(14) Serging the hem of the "Body" and sewing with a 0.5" fold-in machine.

Fold the hem inward to finish.

Finish off the bottom hem of your blouse in whatever manner feels emotionally correct to you. Just be aware that you need to keep your lower edge ruffles aligned so that you don't sew too much of them into the hem.

(15) Insert the "Neck Band" into the "Body" and sew it together.

I did this by sewing the neck band onto the blouse, then pinning and sewing the facing down. This is why we ironed the edge of the facing first; it's very difficult to press this raw edge down when the garment is in this state. The correct way to attach the facing to the shirt would be to hand sew it, but I didn't care enough to do that, so i just pinned and stitched it from the outside.

The collar is now done.

(16) Sew the "Sleeve" onto the "Body" and Serging the armholes.

So, if this pattern had notches, you'd have to take care to make sure that you're not sewing the right sleeve onto the left armhole. The arm holes are not symmetrical, and the sleeves have a front end and a back end. Go have some fun looking at the pattern to figure out which side of the sleeve you're holding.

Sure would be great if someone invented some kind of foundation marks, like little notches in the pattern, to help us in this kind of situation. Too bad that's never been invented and so we'll never have those (seriously indie pattern makers WHY ARE YOU SO ALLERGIC TO NOTCHES. THEY MAKE THINGS EASIER. GIVE THEM TO US. GIVE THEM TO YOURSELF. GIVE THEM TO THE WORLD).

The easiest way to make sure that your sleeves go on the proper arm is to just mark the front and the back of the sleeve cap when you're cutting out your fabric.

If you're having problems getting the sleeve to fit the hole, look up tutorials for easing a set-in sleeve.

(17) Make buttonholes and sew on buttons.

This is a mockup and so I did not do that. I am going to be using safety pins for all of the fitting projects that I'm about to do with this mockup.

Okay, so here's my finished blouse. I'm wearing a very oversized t shirt under it, because I'm too tired to have reasonable clothes under this shirt. I've got plenty of comments about this pattern and what I plan to use it for in the future. However, for this post, let's just call this a success.

Pattern pieces fit together. Pattern markings made sense. Instructions were a little bit bare bones and there was a step where I couldn't proceed without outside help, but I kind of expected that going in. I question some of the design choices, but it absolutely looks like their pattern rendering when it's done. I feel like I got out of this pattern what I was expecting to get from it. I definitely love that this is a truly free pattern, able to just be downloaded. I really, really wish this had pattern notches on it. On future uses, I'm going to be adding notches, but for this specific fabric that I used, I did okay without them, though I did miss them. I'm not going to make a huge deal out of them, though. <In the distance, we hear Gordon Ramsay screaming "where's the lamb sauce" but the words lamb sauce have been replaced with the words pattern notches>

I will be doing a full review of the design of this blouse, and why I don't think that on its own it's a particularly lоlita blouse, but this post isn't the time for that. It's already long enough as it is.

I am absolutely going to be hacking this pattern into an EGL garment pattern, and I"m taking y'all along for the ride with me. That's right, kids, we're going to be doing a 20dollarlolita pattern draft-along in the future on this.

Anyway, if you're looking for free or inexpensive patterns, my experience with Dr Cos was that this pattern looked like the render and was easy to follow. I recommend doing a test garment first, so that if you end up messing up due to bad instructions, you don't have to re-cut your nice garment fabric.

🎶 Pretty Melody, this flat headdress takes us to the most nostalgic times in lolita, the early 2000s! The headdress is made of cotton, with cotton lace and satin ribbons, the notes are hand-embroidered, the roundings are made in the form of small black roses!

This is a post mostly for the Pattern School kids, but it's easier to find things on the tumblr than on Discord, and maybe someone else will find this useful, so here we go.

Anyone who is interested in sewing their own lolita fashion is aware that there's not a lot of lolita-specific patterns out there. Because lolita fashion clothing is also very highly detailed, even if you're following a lolita-specific pattern, if you don't build it to look like lolita, it will probably still not look like a lolita garment. To make sure that you don't throw a ton of energy into a garment that doesn't work out, you need to research existing pieces, to draw inspiration from (or directly copy) their design elements.

However, when I go onto Lolibrary.org and say that I want an OP with either short sleeves or princess sleeves, I end up with just under 300 pages, with about 25 results per page. Let's be honest: I'm not going to go through 7500 individual dress listings, and if I do, I'm certainly no going to do it more than once. What I need is a way to filter these listings into 40-50 of the most relevant images, and I need to be able to look at them all at once. I need a research board.

I want to make a dress out of this pattern. The fundamental elements of lolita fashion are there: there's an option with puffed sleeves, the center front with the tucks is similar to a lot of things I've seen before. However, if I just make this dress exactly as instructed, it's not going to make a lolita dress. We know this because their model picture was with a dress made directly as instructed, and it's not lolita.

In order to make sure this reads as lolita, I need to research pieces with similar construction, and see how those dresses handled the way those elements. I'm not just looking for pieces I like; I'm looking for anything that's constructed the same way as the element I'm looking for.

In the dress pattern that I have, there is a proper armhole (top row). In lolita fashion, it's common to have the top of the sleeve elastic, and have there be no constructed arm hole (bottom row). Almost every lolita OP I've made has used the elastic sleeve method. I'm not as familiar with the proper armhole sleeve (in the context of EGL), so I need a lot of references for how this is constructed.

So let's go over how this works really fast:

Identify the elements of the garment that you want to research. Generally, I pick the things that will be the most difficult to change in a pattern. Getting rid of that arm hole will be a pain, so we're just going to be living with it.

Collect as many images as you can of garments with that design feature. You're not just looking for images you like. You are collecting everything. Remember that you can look at things beyond Lolibrary, and that it's actually helpful to do so. Go on Google Images and search up "short sleeve lolita dress" and see what comes up. If you feel like you've reached the end of one search, it's time to change your search parameters. In Lolibrary, I find that the best way to do that is to narrow the search. You can make it only show you certain brands, or exclude all of Jane Marple a certain brand. Generally, I will adjust parameters until I have a result that's 30 pages of results or fewer. It only takes like 15 minutes to scroll 30 pages and harvest the most relevant results. Then, I change the search terms, and start again. On Lolibrary, the most recently-submitted pieces are first in the search results, so the only way to find older pieces is to narrow the search to something you can reach the end of.

Place all your collected references onto one image. Make all of them easy to look at in one time. You can absolutely do some forms of design here. I tend to keep my designs pretty free-form, but I will usually have some vague sense of why I put stuff where. Sometimes, I will collect references that look like what I want to make at the top of the board, and ones I don't want it to look like at the bottom of the board. Sometimes, I'll arrange the pieces more by the release date. Sometimes they're based by color, or by putting similar pieces next to each other, or just by vibes.

Keep going until you've filled up your image. The advantage of putting all of these in one location is that you have an easy visual guide for when it's time to stop adding things. Your background is still showing all over the place? Add more items. Oftentimes, we find the best references at the point where we push beyond the place where we'd normally give up.

Look at the pieces on the board, and start drawing your conclusions.

Start by looking at the whole picture. Take your image board and look at your general trends.

What brands are you seeing the most often (the fact that Baby and AP use little frames, MM uses the same wallpaper, sketchy websites like Milanoo will put their watermark on the image, etc, makes it easy to tell from a distance if you have a lot of those brands)? What colors are you seeing? What substyles are you seeing? Looking at trends like this is

If you want to make a sweet lolita dress, but nearly all of your designs that have your construction element are gothic designs, this is information you should know before you commit to cutting your expensive fabric. Sometimes, when you see a general trend that's very different from your vision, it's a sign that you need to find a new pattern. In this case, we can see that this specific detail (armsceye instead of elastic shoulder) had a lot more reference for older pieces and for more classic pieces. I hadn't actually noticed that trend until I made this board.

Then zoom in. What do your favorite images on your board have in common? What do your least favorite images have in common? Is there overlap? Do your least favorite and your favorite items share design traits? Why do you like that trait on some items, but not others? Learning what you don't like, so that you have a reference of how to not construct or style something, is as important and useful as learning what you do like.

Check your whole board one image at a time, and see what looks the most like your pattern. Yes, everything has your chosen sleeves, but what garment with your chosen element looks the most like your pattern? How similar does that garment look to the rest of the items on the board? You do not need to make a copy of this garment with your pattern, but if a lolita garment with nearly the same construction as yours shows up, you absolutely should know that.

Now, for this case, I made one mood board, and thought I had everything I needed for this dress. I knew how I wanted it constructed, and I had references that backed up my design decisions.

But then I had to go and fuck it all up, because guess what?

I decided to make it all white.

So the thing about making it all white is that white-on-white has the potential to be the most boring colorway known to mankind. I also know for a fact that many all-white garments use fabrics that are inherently detailed: satins, organzas, jacquards, etc. I have white linen-blend cotton and an Ikea curtain. This means that I need to look at what successful shiro pieces look like, and arrange them based on fabric.

In this board, more OTT pieces are on the bottom right, and pieces out of less shiny fabrics are on the top left. Items that I liked the most for this project are right next to the technical illustration, and pieces away from my vision are closer to the edges. I also usually will scale pieces I don't like to be smaller images, and pieces that I really like will be larger.

However, there's also a lot of small images in this board because I still had too much space showing by the time that I felt like I was done. When researching anything, it's important to not stop too early.

The dress with the long sleeves in the top right corner, was the first one that I looked at and could really visualize making with my pattern. I found that about 15 minutes into the search. The one on the right most was one I didn't find until I was right about to give up. I'm very glad that I found it, because it's very close to what I am looking to make. I can honestly just steal all of the styling and make that dress out of this pattern.

Once you have your research board, you're ready to actually make your design. If you're a sketchy person, you can sketch. If you're not a hella sketchy person, you can bust out a croquis or just a stock photo and draw your design on top of a template. If you're very much not a DIY art person, you can grab your favorite images off your mood board and slap them together, or just circle your favorite parts. Keep the rest of the mood board handy, because you want to have something to reference when you're building or buying things. Fabric store doesn't have your dream fabric? Well, you've got a page full of backups. Math made one ruffle too short? Good thing you've got a page with a lot of different ruffle proportions. When you have a research board, things that would be huge setbacks become minor annoyances.

(TY to Brittany for the rainbow dress image)

Once yo'u've got your images of what you want to make, if you want, design boards are a great next step. (I'll do a post on that but basically a design board is like a research board, but instead of 40 different garments that you could be inspired by, you have 40 different things inspired by one garment. Okay that makes no sense so just stick around for Mood Boards Pt 2)

Anyway, that's my favorite way to research before I adapt a normie pattern into a lolita garment. Knowing how to adjust the pattern is one thing, but knowing what fabric to get, what lace to get, where to put the lace, what ways to potentially style my finished garment, and a lot of other stuff is the best way to make sure I don't fuck up my nice fabric or waste a bunch of time on something that won't work right when it's done.

FAQ (okay no one has asked these yet, but I'm predicting that y'all will):

Do I need to make a separate mood board for each design element? No, and you probably won't do it anyway. It's very possible to get all of your major design concerns into one board. If that's the case, I recommend sort of arranging your board so that you've got each element in its own corner of the board. This just makes it easier to keep track of what elements you need to put more research into, as well as explain to other people what you're trying to do.

Why do I actually need to do this? First of all, because it's important to know what you're looking at. Researching beyond the bare surface level is the secret to DIYing something in a fashion as picky as lolita.

Secondly, it helps you work in a collaborative process with other people. Showing someone your mood board when asking for help can let them know what your level of understanding with the situation is, which can much more easily get you help. In addition to talking with other people who wear lolita fashion, you can show a research board to outsiders and people who don't understand the fashion at all. You can show it to a fabric store employee and ask for help finding fabrics with a similar inspiration, and you don't need to give a lolita101 speech when you do so.

In the specific context of 20dollarlolita Pattern School, which is a project I'm working on both here and in its own dedicated Discord server, it also shows that you've done research. No one at Pattern School is getting paid to help you, and no one is expected to spoon feed you research images while you decide if they do or don't match your artistic vision. If you come to the party with, "this is what I found, these things match my artistic vision, and these things don't fulfill my artistic vision," you're much more likely to get feedback you want. It also shows respect for the labor that other people put into helping you.

Plus, making a research board is free. It costs no money. If you're currently waiting to have the money for your first coord, or you're jumping into your first handmade piece, you can spend several weeks just slowly assembling a board that shows your personal likes and dislikes in the fashion. "Hello, I'm trying to buy my first dress, and here's my research board with my favorite colors and styles," is so different from, "Hello, I like lolita, and I don't know what a stubstyle is, but I don't like green." You can start building a dream dress board (or dream closet board) right now, even if you don't make your first purchase until 3 years from now.

Put your ideas into pictures. It lets you communicate with other people. It lets you communicate with yourself. It lets you communicate with the past and with the community.

Free Patterns Websites

Dr-Cos - Cosplay & basic garment sewing patterns; some free & some paid

Mood Fabrics (Sewciety) - Garment basics, free patterns

Miss Carol Belle - Lolita sewing magazine & pattern archive

SKS Props - Free Armor & Prop Templates

Pattern Shops

First Stop Cosplay - Cosplay Sewing Patterns & Beginner Tutorials

Indigo Patterns - Cosplay Sewing Patterns & Templates

Simplicity - Catalog & Archive of Simplicity (McCall's, Butterick, VOGUE, knowme, NEWLOOK, and burda style) sewing patterns

Kamui Cosplay - Armor Patterns for crafting (EVA Foam)

The Evil Ted - Prop & Armor Patterns

Momo Kariño - Cosplay Sewing, Accessories, & Prop Patterns

CosPayton - Cosplay Sewing Patterns & 3D Print Kits

Hey everyone! I updated the lolita diy master-doc a bit!

Additions: -Added some suggestions -Added tutorials from @20dollarlolita (A really good blog to check out in general for lolita diy in general) -Added a Sarah Spaceman video

I also double checked the master-list on the @fyeahlolita page to make sure i didn't miss any still working links but we are all good! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ Next on the agenda -Adding links to free patterns from the Dr Cos website (There's a lot....) -Possibly scanning some of my GOSUROI magazines that aren't part of the drive link available

And remeber, you can always add suggestions! It dosent only have to be a tutorial. It can be patterns one can buy or download, general sewing information, other archive links and, of course, videos!

also, given your clear commitment to archival fashion history, i was curious if you knew of any companies that sold lolita sewing patterns specifically? i tend to prefer to make my clothes these days, and i love collecting specialty/vintage patterns ;w;

(no worries if not! you just seemed like a good guy to ask~)

have a good evening!

You flatter me so!

Personally, I can’t sew for shit (owing to laziness and a paralysing inability to complete projects). But I am delighted whenever I come across those who are willing to take on handmade lolita. DIY is the lifeblood of our fashion.

I can pass on a few resources that I am familiar with:

Avantguache lolita resource sewing list- details loliable commercial patterns from western pattern retailers. Useful as they would be in english. Updated 2012.

Sew-Loli livejournal community- member submissions and advice. You can go to the tags section and filter by patterns. Formed in 2004, updated 2016.

MissCarolBelle’s wordpress blog- provides a complete list of all of the patterns available in the GLBs, Gosurori and Otome no Sewing*. The ultimate lolita sewing archive. Thank you for your service! Updated 2023.

‘GosuRori’ (2004-2010) and ‘Otome no Sewing’ (2012-2022) are I think what you are looking for. They are lolita sewing books that are often referenced in the community. Gosurori can even be enjoyed by slackers like myself for its old school content and brand advertisements. You can buy them secondhand or find PDFs online (Miss Carol’s blog has some, as does the Internet Archive). They are in Japanese and range in difficulty. Here is an introductory english explanation of Gosurori courtesy of Miss Batty-chan in 2005.

i have struggled to find tutorials & templates for making handmade egl pieces , sooo — i made this account ! hopefully it can help someone 🤍

if you find a tutorial that isnt on this account , I'd appreciate if you sent me an ask linking it !

i dont purely post egl tuts as that is very hard to jump straight into . there are other tuts like pleated skirts and upcycling blouses that include experiences that are good to have when making handmade egl pieces . please dont be disappointed as this is still directed towards egl !

account owner - @stitched2u

tagging system ♡︎

Once upon a time I used to follow the blog of someone who worked in the fashion industry who would write irate posts on fitting and quality issues, teaching me in the process why ready to wear trousers never fit properly, exactly how to set a sleeve, and why T-shirts sometimes start to turn themselves into corkscrews once you've washed them. I'm pretty sure this is not that blog, but I think I found it when I was trying to find the aforementioned one again.

The Shapes of Fabric is a really cool blog with a mix of basic guides like drafting pattern blocks (a base pattern you can use to create more complex garments) and really fun patternmaking experiments that are basically practical geometry.

If you're going to use older sewing sources, it's often really helpful to have at least a basic grasp of what pattern drafting is and how it works, so I'll be linking to some tutorials on how to draft some basic pattern blocks (bearing in mind that I've probably not used this source in particular, but the idea is more or less the same however you explain it):

pattern making basics

how to use basic pattern blocks

bodice block

dartless bodice block

pants block

The site also has a bunch of helpful guides, like these ones:

welt pockets

fitting bodices

fitting pants and skirts

sewing plackets and collars

more on collars

jacket sewing

sewing sleeves

sewing pants

T-shirt refashion from regular unisex shirt to cute lolita-style cutsew! No serger/overlocker machine used, only some elastic.  So happy to have finally  redone this shirt to something that fits and is comfy but cute. Base tee shirt from https://preciousbbyz.com/

Check out the tutorial and video here!

My friend bought this Abilletage skirt, but it was a bit too small for them. They asked if I could alter it for them. I have very minimal sewing skills, but I accepted the project (because im a pushover). So here's how I did it.

First I had them put the skirt on and measured the gap. The skirt had a zipper and they couldn't zip it all the way. There was a 7 inch gap.

I bought 2 yards of this very light bamboo cotton fabric that reminded me of chiffon. I wanted the fabric to flow because I wasn't confident I could make something structured.

I cut out an 8 inch "box" of fabric to act as the base (i stacked 2 bc the fabric was a little transparent) Then with the rest of my fabric, I cut 5 rectangles out to be each bustle layer. I used the gathering foot on my sewing machine to ruffle them up (i had to learn how to change the foot and tension, there are multiple youtube videos that were helpful)

I also made sure to finish my hems with a double fold hem. This made it look very professional!

I made sure everything lined up before I altered the skirt. Then, the scary part! I seam ripped the skirt. I did not want to mess with the zipper, so I used the front seam. Then I added the plain 8 inch "box" on without the ruffles sewn on. I attached the ruffles by handsewing.

(before and after) it isn't very clean looking, but it's on the inside plus there's no raw edges showing!

I didn't make a new waistband, I just folded over the top ruffle and stiched the sides closed.

And here's the final result! I think it makes the skirt more classy, plus it fits bigger now! I know it doesn't look absolutely perfect, but I thought this might inspire some of you to try it yourself and gain some experience like I did!