Loli Sewing Project: The Series Begins!

By Futurowoman on Flickr

Lately, I’ve been finding myself thinking more and more about something I find really quite daunting…

I’m talking about sewing!

Of course, I have no idea what’s got into me. I'm terrified of my sewing machine! However, as much as I’d love to be able to, my financial situation at the moment keeps me from casually dropping £300 on beautiful brand dresses whenever I feel like it. So instead, I decided to start the Lolita Sewing Project!

I will be working through a variety of crafts and sewing projects, starting at first with small, easy things like headdresses, alice bows and wrist-cuffs, and working up to skirts, dresses and blouses. I would love to encourage you to join me along the way, whether you’re a self-making fashionista or a sewing novice like me!

To encourage myself to face up to my sewing fears, I decided to cute-ify my old sewing machine with the contents of a GLB sticker sheet and some Little Twin Stars notepaper:

Sorry for my bad quality photo! Be assured, a proper camera is high on the Hello Visdoll wishlist!

So I think it’s time to begin!

Setting up!

• Make sure you’ve got somewhere you can sew in! A nice wide area or a sturdy table in a place where you can fit an ironing board nearby is perfect.
• It’s important to make it look pretty! Decorate the area, keep it tidy, and have plenty of spaces to put your supplies neatly at hand. Why not put an old lace tablecloth under your sewing machine to protect the surface and make it look extra cute, or even deco your tools so you have something pretty to look at while you’re sewing?
• Be sure that you’ve got the things you need! At the very least you should have thread, extra needles, a couple of spare bobbins and a pair of scissors.

Getting started!

• Don’t start too big! It’s so tempting to run before you can walk—after all, how hard can it be?—but if you’ve had no experience, you may well find yourself with nothing more than a mess when you’re done. Set yourself small, easy projects to practise on before you push yourself.
• If you’re unsure about something, make a mockup first! Ideally this should be in a really cheap fabric, the kind it won’t matter much if you ruin. Then you can practise new things without the hazard of wrecking your precious project!

Now, I’m off to take a look at buying some of those perplexing Gosu Rori mooks and ransacking my grandmother’s 80s blouse pattern drawer. It’s time to get sewing!

I hope you’ll come along with me for the series!

(PS: How cute is this sewing machine? I wonder if it comes in a Cinnamoroll theme? Either way, do want!)

Lolita vs. the Rock 'n' Roll Chick World

by hćtr on Flickr

We live in a world where alternative can become mainstream as quick as winking and nothing seems to surprise people these days. So why is Lolita still so shocking?

I was reading an article the other day about the modern ‘rebellious girl’. That is, the girl who acts against society, who isn’t afraid to get drunk on a weekend night, who smokes and maybe even dabbles in drugs. You can see it everywhere: the Taylor Momsen attitude, photoshoots in nothing but panties—just see how popular the ‘one unnaturally dyed streak’ look is!

Its point? The Rock ‘n’ Roll Chick is, the article said, no longer outrageous. Far from it: it’s practically expected of this generation’s young women. Having gone to an all-girls’ school and college, where gossip was the food of the social network, this struck a chord with me. There seems to be almost a kind of exhibitionism in a young woman getting so drunk that she does things that, when she is later told about them, have her cringing into her hands and laughing helplessly at her antics. It’s like a show: who can smoke first? Who can tell the most tales about their sex lives?

There is, of course, nothing particularly wrong with this in my book. Indeed, I think it shows just how the times have changed; what is absolutely normal these days would have been absolutely shocking fifty, thirty, even twenty years ago. But on the other hand, it had me considering just where Lolita fits into this modern world. Why is it so shocking? Could it be, quite simply, just because it doesn’t conform one bit to our society’s good-girl-bad-girl dichotomy?

Alright, maybe that was rather trite. After all, you could say that the whole point of Lolita is that it doesn’t conform. But then again, you could wear a jumper on your legs and tape bananas to your head and that wouldn’t be conforming either: non-conformity isn’t that hard to manage.

What makes Lolita so special? Personally, I think that the reason why is far from just being stand-out because Lolita, well, stands out. I think that maybe the reason that it’s so shocking in a nothing-shocks-us world is because Lolitas look like bad girls— simply by not looking like bad girls at all. It’s a cryptic mixture of modesty and brashness, stand-out, extreme aesthetics combined with old-world sweetness. It’s the maiden of the past, twisted into something new and in a context where she’s so out of place that she becomes a singularity.

It’s so simple and yet so subversive, to take femininity to a level at which it almost doesn’t come across as feminine. Demure? Quiet? Hardly. Seeing the familiar in a way that makes it unfamiliar is always a little unsettling, and I think that could be what makes Lolita so special in western society.

Maybe we’re the new bad girls after all? What do you think?

Hello, Visual Doll!

This is the story of the girl who sets out on her personal quest to be her own dream, the vision in her imagination that she wants to live. She might never get there, but she will always be aiming to become her own perfect Visual Doll.

Visual Doll doesn't just refer to me. It refers to everyone who visits this blog and all its readers; anyone who aims to be visually shocking and as beautiful as a doll. Visual Doll will always believe in the concept of absolute beauty, that there is magnificence in everything if you look at it the right way-- and whether you choose to be mainstream or alternative, conventionally lovely or differently beautiful, Visual Doll will always celebrate that.

With love,