Mad as a hatter.

Last week I jumped into the strange new world of Millinery work (hat making).  I have to make a horned headpiece for the 13th fairy.  I started with the horns, which I made out of millinery wire. I wound the wire around a cone of surger thread to get a nice round shape.

I then taped the ends closed with masking tape.  I figured I needed 3-4 different sized circles to make the horns taper just right. (The big coil is the millinery wire).

Once I had all the circles I needed, I removed the masking tape and wired the loops together with a fine wire. I then guessed at how long a piece of wire I would need to go up and around to form the shape of the horn.  Once that was cut, I started to wire the circles to it.

Jump forward to having all the circles on (here is where I decided I wanted 4 loops instead of three).

Checking my horn vs my head form.  Not quite all wired yet, but soon.

Part two involves hat weight buckram!  Which comes by the meter and is incredibly stiff.

Until you get it wet.  Once wet, you can form it to any shape. You form it by tugging and pulling it into shape. I later added an elastic to keep it down and then T pinned it into place. The tugging and pulling process took about ohh 10 minutes. The long wait is for it to dry.

Jump to the next day! The buckram is dry and hard as a rock! Time to trim off the excess and mark the horn placement.

And here are the finished horn bases. They took me 4 hours to make!  I added an extra little  V of wire at the very top to give fullness and shape to the top of the horns.

I will be fitting it on my models head, attaching the horns and covering later!  Stay tuned!

Snow Princess. complete!

 I finished the Snow Princess!  I finished it earlier this week (Wednesday) and then went back to Malificent which I hemmed and also started the hat for!(but that is another entry for later).  So instead I will talk about hemming the vest!  It took me a morning of hand sewing but I did get it done.

It took a morning because that hem is very wide and had to be tacked down with a little hidden zigzag stitch, which was back stitched every 2inches or so, so that if the thread got caught on something and broke, the whole hem wouldn't come undone.

After I hemmed the vest I gave it a good pressing and hung it up and moved onto the last detail of the costume: The snowflake on the right side breast of the corset.  I thought of a few ways to do it, I thought I would applique it in cotton, but then decided that was  a great deal of work and thought I should choose a fabric less likely to fray like leather, or ultra suede or even Vinyl. I ended up choosing vinyl.

First I did a test on a scrap of fabric with some fabric glue. I wanted to make sure it would stay glued to the fabric even when crumpled, tugged and pulled about.

I left it to dry over my desk lamp since it had a curved shade to it and the final piece would be over a breast  and therefore rounded not flat. Once it was dry we tugged and crumpled it and it stayed attached.  The only thing of note being I really needed to make sure the end points had glue.

Close up of the now attached snowflake.

And the full look on the corset!

And that is that!  She is hung up, protected by plastic and waiting for her photo shoot and then the fashion show!  This garment will also be worn at Anime North by its owner/model Laina Martin!

Next,
I jump into the world of hat making in order to give the 13th fairy her horns!

Frying pans, who knew?

My tangled princess is finally done!  The wig is in Saint John  with my model who is styling it for me and making Rapunzel's  crown once ebay gets off its lazy bum and send her the gems she needs, Kazeki_chan  on Deviantart is making Pascal  for me and I even found a frying pan!

It's just the right shape and not too heavy.

As for the sewing end, The costume is done. I added some lace I dyed to the skirt today and I am satisfied with how it looks.

Huzzah!

Vest progress

Turns out I did have more progress shots on the vest then I thought I did!  So lets get to this!

The inside out edition of my lining for the vest.

And now the outer layer, with the lace in the armhole attached.  I actually originally made the armholes more like for a shirt and then later decided to make them bigger before I sewed the gray layer together, which ment re-drawing the lines on the pink lining after it was sewn.  Which was sooo much fun since it was a slithery fabric and already sewn, but it worked in the end. Live and learn.

The vest once again is ment to look kimono like, so here is where I added an extra strip over the front of it to give it that bound look.

And here is a (sadly blurry) picture of the bound edge with the purple detail edge attached to it.

The vest, on my judy which also houses the nearly done 13th fairy costume (just needs a hem and hat/staff).

The vest (with collar!) inside out as I attach the lining to the outer fabric along the armhole openings.

In dire need of a good pressing, here is the vest, all that is left is to fit my model for the hem and attach the lining to the back vent and hemline!

I actually fit this on the model yesterday along with the sleeves and I didn't need to take it up at all! Score! One hem coming right up.

I aplogise for the lack of updates, or updates that are few and far between of late.  The fashion show is in a month as of next week and  stress is kicking in and making me work straight though without remembering to take pictures!

Here is the cut out fabric for the vest for the snow princess.

Sadly as I said, I got too focused and have failed in taking too many more photos!  I'll see what I have and upload them.

Time to roll up those sleeves and get to work!

I actually made these last week, but waited to post about them!

Here is what that Bias cut cotton strip was for, edging on the sleeve.

What it looked like after it was sewn down and ironed to the right side.

And again with a more full shot of the sleeve.

The Sleeve cap is pointed, and stands up so here it is before it was sewn, once side was interfaced with a stiff interfacing and the other not.

The crown now sewn together. I did in fact wear it as a hat for a while.

I skipped a step there, above you can see there is lace on the sleeve. I bought it pre-gathered and then sewed it to the sleeve.

The sleeve flipped right side out and ironed.

The ribbon that will  be sewn into the back seam and will hide the elastic gathering in the sleeve later.

And on to the lining!

Due to the way the lining works and the shape of the sleeve, I couldn't really sew it all the way around, so I sewed it to a point and then hand sewed the last bit together, thus keeping the point nicely!

The lining now attached at the hem and the ribbons  and pointed caps as well.

I had to hand sew the lining to the sleeve cap, because I didn't want stitching showing on the outside.  I later added a 1 inch wide casing on the inside as well to house the elastic when it goes in.

I hope it all stays up, if now I will add some rubber ribbon for gripping to the top of the sleeve.

Break? What Break?

It was March Break (or reading week) this week, so what did I do?  Go someplace warm and sunny? Go to Disney World?  Take the week off and sleep in/play video games and never get out of my Pj's?

No, I went to school every day from 9-4 and then again some evenings from 7-11  and worked more.  I guess I got a decent amount of work done.   I fitted a new model,  had a final fitting for Pizzazz, re-fitted the hem on Malificent and got a ton done on the snow princess.

I am  pretty sleepy so I will just post some pictures of some of things I finished this week!


The snow princess shorts have an elastic in the waist band, and the lining and outer fabric are hemmed.

The corset ruffle is bound and ready to be sewn onto the corset.

The choker collar is done, complete with 2  awesome button holes and cute snowflake buttons.

The snowflakes are on an elastic shank, and act kinda like little cuff links.

I magically removed the wire from the hot pink ribbon I bought ( I did not realize it was wired at the time of purchase) and made the Giant  bows for the sleeves.

And because I have a little baggy of  snowflake buttons, I will be adding them to the bows because I can.

And I cut some bias strips for later....

Which I then ironed and folded in a half...  but what for?  You will have to wait and see! Mwa ha ha.

I had my model in during the weekend and fit her for the Snow Princess.  Thankfully, it all went well.

She jumped around, twirled, jiggled and everything between and the corset held her in.  I do have a couple small changes which I have now made:  You can possibly just see some white dots near the bottom of the corset, I hadn't pulled the fabric down far enough when I sewed the band on the bottom so there was some ripples in the outer fabric.  As of today, I had taken that apart and pulled the outer fabric down and now there is no rippling.  I also tacked the lace down more, cause it wanted to flip under and finished off the piping ends.

The back now with grommets.  The dark bits hanging down are the ends of the purple piping that is along the top. One of the final steps is to tug on them, which brings the top of the corset into the body more, thus  containing and securing the chest better.

After I fit the corset, I fitted the culottes.  It was really only a matter of pulling in the elastic in the waist band and then after that, marking the hem for pinning.  When the costume is done, the culottes will be under the corset, but my model wanted pictures of her wearing both. :)

This, which currently looks like a bleached version of what I am sure Kermit the frog looks like before he is sewn and stuffed is in fact the sleeve for the snow princess.

Which, once sewn, looks like this!

 I fixed it today, I made it shorter and made the points at the top not as huge.  It will stay up by a combination of elastic and possibly some rubber waistband strips to avoid slippage.

The last thing I fitted is the false collar/choker for the snow princess.  It will be held on by two snowflake buttons on an elastic shank (loop) which will go through button holes.