Hello lovelies,

last year was kind of productive, in between a book binding, tambour embroidery class, university and work I learned another new (and unnecessary) skill; bobbin lace.
Years ago I tried to learn bobbin lace on my own as I wanted cute lace for my first 18th century dress but I stood no chance against this craft. It was just too difficult to learn on my own without the help and guidance of a more experienced teacher. But lucky for me, I found a bobbin lace class.
My first session was on a Saturday from 10 am to 5pm and afterwards I had troubles with my back. I felt like an old grandma but it really helped me with the basics and I found out where I made the mistakes. It is still a very difficult craft and I respect all the people who really master it.
The teacher of the class is about 70+ and started bobbin lace when she was in her twenties, I thought this was amazing. It was not a surprise that I was the youngest in the class by far. Most of them were in their 50s-60s as well.

For the class we had to bring a styrofoam plate covered with fabric, needles and thread. I could buy the bobbins in class for 0,70 a piece.
Normally you thread the bobbins together on one string but I didn't know and threaded them separately. The green film gives the paper extra stability because you push in the needles at various points.

There are two basic movements: the cross (c) and the twist (t). Different combinations of these two stitches (ctc, ct, ttt, ctct, cttc, tct) and the placement of the pins create different designs in the lace.
There are two basic stitches: the whole stitch (ws) doing a cross, twist, cross (ctc) and the half-stitch (hs) doing a cross, twist (ct) with four bobbins. - makezine.com

 As you can see top and bottom are two different
My teacher also counts this stitch to the basic ones. I made a mistake in the middle top as I had forgot to twist after pining the needle.

I changed the colour of my styrofoam cover for my second lesson. It was already more advanced and I didn't have time to practise so progress was super slow compared to the second lesson.
But I did my first lace piece! Hooray. I could scale down the pattern and use thinner thread and I'd have lace for my dresses.



The second lace I did included a little twist called the spider. It was not as hard as I thought.




I do hope I have time to continue this craft. My goal is to do the historical bobbin lace I found in the book 17th century women's dress patterns and use it for my costumes.

All the best,

Auris Lothol

Hello lovelies,

last year I attended Dokomi and its theme was retro. Of course Lady Oscar jumped into my mind immediately.
I am not the Oscar type and therefore chose to do a Marie-Antoinette cosplay. Ryoko Ikeda made some wonderful illustrations but to be honest, historically wise they are more fantasy and Victorian than 18th century. Therefore I decided to combine the cosplay and the rococo form and make it a bit more historically accurate.





As for the fabric I didn't want to go with expensive silk or satin because it was a cosplay after all and for the robe I went with a pink polyester satin-like fabric. It was actually lovely to work with because it didn't fray that much and the pleats looked very full.

I did not have a lot of time on my hands for that costume (a month, every day after work) and it misses a lot of frills I wanted to add. I am not sure when and if I will wear this costume again but given the opportunity I will definitely try and add more decorations and frills and pearls and all of the good stuff.

Once again I used the JP Ryan pattern with slight alterations: I made the shoulder straps seperately and finished them in the historical way. A few of the long seams were made with the machine, all of the visible seams are of course hand made.

I started with the stomacher. For my Elsa cosplay I used stiff fabric to get the desired stiffness, this stomacher was made with sturdy lining and reed boning.





The skirt is pink polyester and definitely not the nicest fabric but it served the purpose. I see the making of both of my cosplays, Elsa and Marie-Antoinette as training for a bigger project: a robe a la francaise made out of real silk and hand made bobbin lace.


I used different kind of techniques for this, and I especially grew found of the rolled whip gather, as seen on the picture above. It was the 18th century way of gathering everything. For this you just whip gather (I always use an extra strong thread because the normal sewing threads snap at the pressure) about 5-10cm of your fabric and then pull, and then gather and pull again. That's all.


I decided to go witht his plainer skirt design. It at least looks similar to the third Marie-Antoinette picture from the top.

 I hand stitched everything to the skirt because the sewing machine would have been too obvious.

Next was the actual robe, the lining was made out of 100% light cotton.


The pink fabric was pinned on top but not flatlined, because that would have been more Victorian.

This is how the whole back looks like.

 One of my most favourite parts of doing the robe is pleating the back. I think this is the most elegant feature about it.











First fitting:


I finally wore the pictures at the convention. There was an adjourning park and M. made a few pictures of me.





I edited all of the above pictures, it seems like I have a kind of red phase.

Only the picture below was edited by another person, namely Eva Hime/Hane Iro. She also added the flowers and made it ethereal.

All the best,

Auris Lothol

Hello lovelies,

it is no secret that I am a fan of lucky bags because not knowing what's inside is the biggest suspense for me. And of course, the price is always fantastic. Usually you pay about half of the dresses worth or even less.
When Souffle song announced to sell L'armoire de versailles lucky bags I was thrilled. I own a dress (Emma OP) and a pink hat from this chinese taobao brand and wanted to get a few more items because their designs is amazing and the quality is really good too.
The price for the lucky bag was either $59.99 or $99.99 plus 21$ shipping. I ordered Lucky bag B and paid $120,99 which was about €112,63.


I got the Lucky bag B with an OP, a JSK and a scarf.
The OP is from the series Starlight Lily (star shining lily? Star Lily? the translation is a bit different on different sites) and has the image of a beautiful stained glass window underneath of heavy black lace.
 This is the front part of the dress, I think it is a shame that the beautiful stained glass windows are under the lace. I intend to either cut the lace or pull it up in strings.


And this is the back, as in the front the lace is hiding the wonderful design.

The other jsk is kind of blue/green, I can't really put my finger on the colour, and is called The Dream of the Pearl’s Memory (or Pearl dream?).


 I think the colour is more blue-ish and the lace is green.


The third item was a scarf and it has the softest texture I ever felt on a scarf. It also has a wonderful japanese styled pattern.


 This lucky pack really made me happy and it was definitely worth the money.

All the best,

Auris Lothol