This project has been quite literally years in the making. My first experience with the series was an emotional one. I was post-breakup and feeling numb from the way things had ended. I watched the entire Violet Evergreen season in an evening and it broke the damn on my emotions. To put it plainly, I sobbed. I cried so hard that I feel asleep on the couch in my 500 square foot, one bedroom apartment. When I woke up, I vowed to make a cosplay of the main character (for which the anime is named).
On January 1st, 2020 I began the long journey in creating my perfect Violet Evergarden. This project is still in progress and I am excited to be picking it up again. I got burned out after working on the cosplay for 6 months and proceeded to take a year off. Enter the year 2022. I am DETERMINED to finish this project. Hell or high-water!
Why did I get burned out on a single project in 6 months? It might have something to do with the hand-pleating, or perhaps the 1500 itty bitty glass beads I sewed onto the skirt. Or it might even have something to do with poking holes in yards of leather strips and hand sewing them to the dress.
It began with research into historic clothing. I determined Violet's dress to be similar to 1870's day-time bustle dresses, with some very anime aesthetics.
The images above and to the left are Open Source and were located on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website on the American Walking Dress 1870-75. It's quite an interesting article if you want to give it a read.
I started with the all-important butt pillow as I needed to create that bustle silhouette. Just having the skirts wouldn't do the trick. This has been, by far, the easiest part of the entire project. All of the lace used in this project was given to me by my grandmother and late great-grandmother. Using their leftover lace makes me feel closer to them. I like to imagine the beautiful garments they created with the lace before it was given to me. Some of the lace is only enough for small details, like the butt pillow.
I began looking through all my patterns and decided to alter a pretty basic blouse pattern I had for the upper section of the dress. This went through a lot of changes during the pattern-creating process. I also began pleating many yards of white cotton fabric. It took countless hours.
I modified a Truly Victorian skirt pattern for the front and sides of the bustle skirt. After that, it was mostly me just playing with the silhouette and making adjustments as needed.
I am not lying, it took me WEEKS to finish pleating. I had to take breaks, if only for my poor back. There were a LOT of yoga breaks. I even had to pleat the sleeves! Fortunately, I had good company.
I love when my family comes to visit me when I'm crafting. Our doggo is Charlie and my partner is Jason.
Shortly after this, my partner proposed! That derailed some of my crafting a bit. I didn't mind so much after the weeks of pleating.
I have no shame. Here's the video. Teeheeehee, only Jason would propose while I'm singing about the privilege to pee.
Anywho, back to Violet Evergarden. Cutting that pleated fabric was the most terrifying thing I have done so far. The sleeves were also tricky because I needed them to both floof and spiral! I ended up making a basic sleeve and hand sewing additional fabric in a spiral while keeping it on my arm. I do not recommend hand-sewing with your non-dominant hand. I really should just purchase a mannequin arm. That would have been so much easier... but I am le poor because I spend my money on cosplay and fashion and food.
The bustle itself was a really exciting part of the dress-making process. I needed to figure out how to make it drape the way I wanted to and have that bouncy flair from the anime. The solution was layers and pleats.
My partner was so cute and filmed me when I showed him all the work I had done. It was late at night and I was exhausted. I don't know why I spent so many hours that day working on the dress, but I did. Perhaps I saw a the end in sight and wanted to power on through?
Fortunately, my partner is also very funny and distracted me from pulling my hair out. As you can see, the toilet is smoking. Which is exactly what Jason screamed from across the house in a panic.
Needless to say, I found one of the good ones! Aaaaaannnnyyyway.... Back to dress progress.
It finally came time to make the bodice from my very carefully pleated fabric. It was terrifying. After that, I used my mockup pattern as a guide and began throwing it all together. I had to stop and use my seam ripper a few times, but the end was totally worth it!
You can really begin to see the shape of the bustle coming together in the picture on the right.
After the dress started to look like, well, an actual dress, I regained some of my energy. The sleeves went on and then the buttons!
However, I didn't even know what I was getting into when I began working with the leather. I've been told I never do things halfway and a small part of me wishes I had not used real leather for the dress accents. I had never worked with leather before and it was a difficult learning process. My fingers were positively raw from stabbing holes in the metal strips. It got harder when I had to figure out how to sew the leather to the dress!
I'm actually still working on this. I managed to sew down one side of the leather, but had to take a break to work on another part of the project.
Obviously, I decided to begin the next most TEDIOUS task of all... Beading. I hand beaded about 1,500 beads onto the skirt of the dress. It took weeks. WEEKS, I tell you!
By the end of it, the beading was NOT relaxing. It was just way too much. About this time, I decided a break was in order. A week turned into a month, and a month turned into three months... and change.... and now here I am. Beginning anew!
I am excited to learn how to make shoes, how to resin cast jewels, how to style Violet's wig, and how to make a suit jacket.
