Showing posts with label diy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diy. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

DIY Tulle Skirts: Planning

I decided to take the plunge and buy the aforementioned dress, and good thing I did yesterday because it's now sold out in my size today! Luckily enough, the same dress in a solid color blue also appeared, also the last one, so now I have two dresses coming! It's a bit overkill to have the same dress in different colors, but I'll think of it as my back-up in case the abstract print looks unappealing irl.


The blue version!

Also, in the previous post, I got a fabulous recommendation to pair a black tulle skirt underneath because the skirt is so short. That's definitely a concern of mine, and because it's a full-looking skirt, a bit of breeze could be embarrassing. This got me thinking about ways to cover up our "bobbly bits" when wearing short, and especially full, skirts. Models can wear short, swingy skirts and leap about the pages of a magazine editorial, carefree, completely oblivious to the dangers of public exposure that we normal people must constantly worry about.

I tried to come up with a few ideas on how to solve this problem:

1) Wear tights or leggings, although now that summer is approaching, I think this will become less practical.
2) Wear cute hot pants or some other kind of tight, non-bulky short shorts. I have a pair of polka dot American Apparel hot pants which are really cute, and I've paired them with the same brand's shorter, full skirts. However, sometimes I don't understand how these would be any different from underwear, except for a bit more coverage. I believe that when the wind picks up, all anyone will get a peek and assume they've seen polka dotted underwear!
3) A tulle skirt is a really cute way to get a bit more fullness under the skirt and cover up underneath! It can veer towards a punk rock-inspired look if the skirt was pink or any other bright pop of color or towards a gothic, lolita look if the skirt were black. Too much tulle could end up looking a bit prom, but I think a very toned down, cream colored tulle skirt could end up looking fantastic!
4) And if worse comes to worse, just wear cute underwear, haha!

After an exhaustive search for tulle skirts and crinolines online (and serious consideration in buying a girl's size skirt and praying to the 'skinny gods' that it would fit), I started feeling a bit crafty and decided it shouldn't really be that difficult to make one. Tulle isn't expensive, and plus I could customize it for length and "poofiness". Everything's gonna be hidden under the skirt of the dress, so it wouldn't have to be perfect. My only setback is - I don't know how to sew, ha. My only sewing experience has been a single summer home ec class waaay back in the day. My mother's old sewing machine is practically a relic, and I've always been afraid of it ruining my nice fabrics.

So, in my spontaneous diy mood, I found a few pictures for inspiration:


Probably the easiest to make, Taylor Momsen on set as Jenny Humphrey has a bit of hot pink tulle peeking out from under the hem of her skirt. In truth, I'm not sure if there's crinoline underneath or if they've just sewn some tulle on the hem.
The ultimate in tulle skirts, frothing at the mouth goodness. Of course, this one's meant to be proudly showcased for all to see, rather than hidden under a skirt. Balmain Tulle Skirt featured at Elle




While the poofy, striped dress in this ad for the Hello Kitty/MAC collection is over-the-top, I do like the piping of the tulle edges underneath.


If anyone out in the blogosphere has any recommendations, suggestions, advice, I would love to hear them!

EDIT: For those of you curious to know what happened to my dresses, well, THEY NEVER ARRIVED! After waiting for more than two weeks, I emailed CS and they refunded the cost. So I never got to do this little DIY project. :o(