Summer Queen, my final costume for Uni

The next costume I am creating is a drawing by Amy Brown, a favourite artist of my childhood. I know it doesn't look like much yet, but it should be really great when I'm done. I'm doing two skirts, which will both have two layers of fabric, and be hand dyed. One layer will be poly cotton and the other silk chiffon, to give it a very light and airy feeling. The bodice will be made out of artists canvas and then hand painted, this is due to the great texture of artists canvas, it's going to made to be reminiscent of a tree trunk. The almost peacock looking circles on the bodice and arms will be beaded, and the flowers and leaves will all be hand made. I'm really excited about the wings as well, I've never made wings before so it should be a great experience that I can learn a lot from.

 Here are the toiles of the skirts, I will most likely be using these for the actual costume as well and just dyeing them.

here is a sample leaf I've made. I'll be making the leaves out of silk organza and then using a fabric stiffener so I can bend them into any shape I want. Then I'll be sponge painting it to the appropriate colours. 

Checking out Fran's project

My friend and classmate Fran is doing some leather moulding for one of her costumes. In order to do this she needs a cast of her models head. So we’ve grabbed a couple of our friends from Tech Arts to help her out and make a mould, and then cast of the models head. I got to tag along and learn about the process a little bit as well. Though I still don’t think I’d be able to do it on my own quite yet. first you cover the head in plastic wrap and then you rub Vaseline all on the face, making sure to thoroughly coat the hairline as the  plaster will want to stick to it, get caught in it, and possibly rip it out :( Then start flicking and dripping the plaster on the head, just half of it though as you're going to make a seam line to take the two pieces apart and put them back together etc.

 once that is done use plaster coated gauze to strengthen the mould and to create the seam line

 then start adding it to the face, it is important to do the nose very carefully, the model must strongly exhale to ensure that the nose doesn't get clogged up and can
 still be used to breathe through whilst they plaster the entire face.

the finished mould!

A bird and a hat

Been working on creating my hat and the bird that will be decoration for my hat. The bird is made out of a Styrofoam base, then I have glued a combination of chicken feathers (that my mom sent me from our farm in California), and pheasant feathers (that I received from my friend who's father hunts).  It was quite different from what I usually do, so it was really fun to play about, I learned quite a lot.  

Here you can see that I have blocked both my hat and hat brim and stitched them together, I then have wired the brim. next I'll be putting millinery petershim on the inside crown of the hat. I still need to prepare the ribbon that will go on the outside as well, this will be silk duchess satin cut on the bias so as it can then bend with the shape of the hat. Then the bird will be mounted and I may add a bow or two just for the fun of it. There has been discussion as to wether or not the hat has fabric on the underside of the brim, I will need to discuss it further with my tutors and do some experimenting to see if that is the direction that I want to go. 

More decoration for the skirt

Spent the day making more knife pleats for my skirt, this time they actually get to be seen, ha ha! This round of knife pleats has been hand scalloped by yours truly after I made a templet and traced it onto roughly 50 feet of silk, to ensure that all the scallops were exactly the same size. Then the opposite edge hemmed and I proceeded to hand pleat the entirety of it, then sewing the pleats down by machine and then machine sewing them to the skirt. The machine stitch will be covered by one more layer of decoration, probably lace. 

 Also began work on my big 'ass' bow really happy with how that's looking on the skirt.

 Here are some samples of the lace that I'm considering putting on the skirt. The lace actually comes as lace fabric and then I have to hand cut out the pattern that I want for the decoration. I'll also have to put a gathering stitch in it so that it can be eased onto the skirt and isn't so flat. Then it will need to be hand sewn on to the skirt to hide the existing machine stitch line and to ensure that no new stitch lines are shown.

For the extra train of the skirt I'll be doing a very similar thing I'm making scalloped knife pleats out of the pink duchess satin (machine stitched on), then I'll be layering over that with the slightly gathered hand cut lace (which will have to be hand sewn on), not quite sure what I'll do for the rest, I'm thinking I'll do some gathered frills in the pink silk chiffon...we shall see...

making and fitting the sleeve in

For the sleeves I’ve mounted the silk onto the silk organza again, and then I have made a separate lining out of a light cotton. I’ve done this for a couple different reasons, first as it is a sleeve and will be bending and moving I want a fabric that is a little bit more durable to be in there, and second I want a fabric that is opposite to the fabric on the inside of the sleeve, meaning that since my sleeve is mounted on silk organza a need a none slippery fabric for the lining so that they will be able to move with each other, never put a rough fabric with a rough fabric and be VERY carful putting a slippery fabric with a slippery fabric. It’s really best to just do opposites. Now that I’ve made up my sleeve and my sleeve lining I’ve butterflied my seams and hand stitched them together so that I can turn my sleeve inside out and know that the lining it attached to the outer sleeve and won’t ever get twisted :) 

As my model wasn’t feeling well during our fitting and I was unable to fit the sleeve she has graciously agreed to meet up with me so that we can quickly throw her in the corset, wack on the bodice and fit that darn sleeve. 

Not going to lie, I was a bit frighted at first as I HATE sleeves, and I had some trouble with them on the last costume I made, but I was extremely lucky and the fit perfectly and she even commented on how very comfortable they were and how she was surprised at the amount of movement they allowed. WOOO HOOOO!!!!!

silly model trying to be a princess :) 

Guard for wrong side of the skirt

To protect the underside of my skirt I’ve made a nice bit of knife pleating to attach to it, this is again a very period accurate thing. They would make these “guards” out of cheaper more durable materials like cotton so that when they were dragged along the ground they could take the brunt of the damage and save the expensive fabric of the skirt, if they ever got to filthy and worn down they could then be easily replaced. Having a guard on also helps to way down the skirt a little bit and keep it laying flat. As I am a bit narcotic I have tea dyed my cotton so that it is not such a harsh white, I specifically chose to tea dye it opposed to using chemicals because I wanted it to be done naturally and have a very natural appearance. I then hemmed on edge and then hand dagged the other edge. The totally length of fabric ended up needing to be about 540 inches. I then hand knife pleated up the entirety of it then sewed the pleats down by machine and then machine sewed the pleats to the skirt I also sewed on a piece of lace to try and hide the hemmed edge of the pleats, this is so it will look nicer if it was to ever accidentally flip up….yes I know I’m crazy….Tea dying :) 

yum, look at all that tea!

pinning all my pleats down, yes they are all the same size.

sewing them together and adding the lace edge.

All that work and this is all you can see when the skirt is laying down correctly. Don't worry that horrible stitch line that you can see will be covered by more decoration. 

Remaking the skirt

As previously mentioned we discovered at the fitting that the skirt looked far to heavy with the silk mounted on calico. So I have not taken the entire thing apart, recut it out of silk organza and a light cotton. Then mounted the silk to the silk organza and re-sewn it together, as well as sewing the cotton together separately from the silk. I will then attach the two skirts together at the waist band, making sure that the seams are both on the insides of the skirts. Because I'm a bit crazy I also added a lace edge around the bottom of my inner skirt, just incase the outer one where to flip up something a bit more pretty will be seen.

Now as you can see in the photo the seams need to be pressed like nobodies business, but since the silks are so delicate and prone to easy wrinkling pressing them is a task to say the least. 

First I lay it on the ironing board wrong side up and gently steam my seam allowance so that it wants to open slightly. I have to make sure not to actually set the iron on the seam allowance (SA)at this point.

 Then I turn fabric right side up and use the vacuum on the ironing board to suck the fabric down, I then must double check that the SA has opened up correctly then I must smooth out the fabric with my hand making sure that it is as near to perfect as possible.

Then I lay a teflon sheet of my SA and NOW I may lay the iron on it. Being sure to set the iron down then lift it completely off and then reset it down. ironing along the fabric will create wrinkles.

This entire process takes freakin' forever, but is totally worth it as my seams are 20 times better than before. The whole look of the skirt has definitely changed and my hard work has not been wasted or in vain what so ever :) THANK GOODNESS!!!!