Hey there, you pretty thing!
I want to start uploading more sewing tutorials both to this blog and to my YouTube channel, not only lolita related tutorials but all sorts of things, from accessories to clothing and etc.
Looking for things to delete from my PC I found some old footage from a bloomers tutorial I recorded back in 2014 and decided to edit it while I'm still working on recording new ones.
One of my goals for this year it to have a written version for all of the video tutorials I upload, and luckily enough I had pictures of this bloomers tutorial! I still need to make a written version for the Usamimi I uploaded last week and for the petticoat tutorial I uploaded in 2014 (which has more than 300k views now!), but I do not have pictures for those, so I'll have to make those items again, which might take some time to happen.
Now, moving on to today's tutorial!
The pattern I'm going to show you in this tutorial is a very practical one and you can use that to make a lot of different bloomers (longer, shorter, bigger, smaller, etc) by just changing a few things before cutting your fabric, however, the model I'm making in this tutorial is MeLikesTea's BL04 - Daily Bloomers
Examples of bloomers you can make
For this project you are going to need:
- Fabric (usually 1~1,50m)
- Eyelet lace
- Eyelet beading lace
- Satin ribbon
- Elastic tape
- Thread and a sewing machine
In the video I show a little better how I use this weird pattern of mine, but basically I just like to have a base for the curves and I decide how wide and long I want the bloomer to be and draw that directly on the fabric instead of creating a new pattern everytime.
In any case, the width of the pattern will usually be the hips measurement divided by 2 + 10cm.
You'll need to cut 2 pieces like the one in the photo below.
Ex: My hips measure 85cm, therefore 85/2 = 42,5 +10 = 52,5, so I'll make it 50~55cm wide
You can find patterns in some lolita fashion magazines such as Gosurori, GLB and Otomoe no Sewing, they will be similar to the one below and you can also change them as much as you want. You can find some scans of the magazines above by searching them on the internet, but I'd recomend you buy them because they are awesome magazines!
Fabric wrong side upwards/ Lace wrong side downwards
I don't know why but there wasn't a picture of this part of the process, I'm making another bloomer like this soon so I will take better pictures and add them to this post!
Sew the eyelet beading lace over the junction between the lace and the fabric, this way those seams will be hidden!
Just remember you have two legs so make sure when sewing the lace you do that correctly, and by that I mean that when you'd looking at the final product (like below) you will have one piece that is BACK-FRONT and another that is FRONT-BACK.
Right sides facing upward
Now proceed to sewing the legs closed, you can either sew using:
- Straight seam + zigzag
- Overlock/Serge
- French seam
French seam consists on sewing the parts with the wrong sides facing each other, than folding it inside out and sewing it again.
Right site facing upwards
It does take more time than using a serger but it is faster than doing the zigzag thing and looks much nicer than that.
How the inside looks after french seam is done
The outside once french seam is done
Again, there are no picture yet of this part of the process, but what I did was to fold the fabric to the inside by 3cm and sew spaces for the elastic to pass through.
There are 3 spaces a little narrower than 1cm because that was the width of my elastic tape.
I apologise for the lack of pictures in this written version so far, as I said I'm going to be making these bloomers again soon (because I received a commission for that) and therefore I'll be able to take pictures of the missing process and upload them here along with the explanation.
For now, take a look at the video, it might help you to understand what the hell I did hahaha
Also! If you have questions regarding this tutorial leave them in the comments below or in the comment section on youtube and I will answer them in this post and make this more and more complete according to your doubts!
Take care!
