This tutorial was made in order to show how to construct an inexpensive, simple headdress. As akasha2004 had mentioned, she wanted to attend a convention with an oblong-shaped headpiece.

Not too long ago, I contructed a rounded-rectangular one for a friend of mine, which took me under 30 minutes to hand-sew, and the costs were only about 4 bucks. Keep in mind, though, that this method was only made for cosplay, and therefore the materials used were--er---rather cheap and unprofessional. It ended up looking quite good, though.

Pictures:







Tutorial:

1) Gather materials. Any materials at all that you can find lying around the house or at your local craft store.

base - any material that isn't too soft. something fairly firm is recommended. i used felt. *shrug*

lace - many lolis would all agree that the quality of lace is the most important thing. being that this is for cosplay, it didn't really matter so i ran down to the 99 cents store 2 blocks away from my house and grabbed a roll along with a bag of chips. XP

ribbons - eh. most people have them lying around the house or stuffed in a clost somewhere. in the pictures above, i used those annoying black straps inside of party dresses (for hanging purposes, i guess) to make the V-pattern. then i used some fat black ribbon and spare white elastic to make the strip down the middle. you can come up with your own designs, adding bows, little fabric roses, and whatnot.

straps - you can use ribbon for this too. in the one i made above, i can honestly say i used the straps of an old bra in my closet that i outgrew. XD

2) Hand-sewing the pieces together is pretty basic. Need I say more? As for how long it should be, that's up to you. Some lolis prefer theirs to be oversized so that is can hang loosely about their head, while other lolis prefers theirs to be small in a cutesey fashion. In the end, it's all up to you. Be creative. And have fun. ^^

--note--

If the lace your are using is pre-formed already, as in it can bend and be shaped in any direction you want, you can easily sew it on. If the lace you bought is plain and ribbon-style (which is most commonly sold), then it most probably cannot be shaped too easily around edges. To solve this, you can either 

a) gather up the lace, and pin it down onto the base before sewing, or 
b) PLEAT it down as you sew.

Here's a picture of one of my first headdress in which my friend asked me to purposely make every black stitch visible: (i dunno why. maybe she wants to make a fashion statement XD)



As you can see, my stitches are unbelievably messy, but what I want you to focus on is the pleating of the ribbon-style lace. (make sure you have enough, because it runs out pretty quickly) The pleats took me forever. -_-;; But that was a year ago. And I guess I've improved somewhat. ^^