SEVEN: Pride's collar.

As promised, an entry about the collar for Pride. When I think of Pride the first thing that comes to mind is having your nose up in the air and looking down on (other) people. So from the start, I had the idea that I wanted some sort of high fancy collar.

Had I gone the route of the tailor suit, I would have made it a very grand collar that sticks up, but I scrapped that and went with a corset and skirt.  So now the question is/was how to do the collar? Well  as I posted last time, Yzma from Disney's Emperors New Groove answered that.

I mean, that is a pretty badass collar it you ask me, and she wears it so well!!  Plus, someday down the road I am thinking of making a Yzma cosplay for myself, so making her collar for Pride doubles as practice right?

First off I needed feathers.  I knew you could but feather trim, I'd seen it on Ebay and the like, but not in my home town.  I found what I wanted on a shopping trip to Bangor, ME with my Mom back in September.

The short feather trim would work for the general shape and filler, but I wanted more drama, so on that same trip I found longer skinny feathers at Joanne's fabrics.

They look like this once they are out of the bag...

First off, testing patterns. I made a basic Mandarin style collar for my first try, and according to my friends it was pretty effective, but I found it was too close to my face, so my ears and hair interfered with the feather trim.

Lookin' good.... but needs more DRAMA!

Looks soooo good with my t-shirt and hooded shirt combo.

 That brown part is the paper pattern, not my neck.  But you can see what I mean about my hair getting tangled up in the feathers.

Measure twice, cut once.  Seeing how much trim I would need to go around the first collar.

So I ended up taking the first collar and slicing into the paper pattern and adding to it to get a wider top. It's a similar technique I used to make Maleficent's collar in 2012.  The result, more drama, but farther away from my actual head so my hair doesn't get tangled in it anymore.

I pinned the feather trim into place on a piece of horsehair canvas (couldn't find my light weight buckram.) And then staggered the longer loose feathers in. I got them pretty evenly spaced by slipping them in behind the pins holding the trim on, and then in the back added a couple extra between them, because why not?

The result looked like this, you can see the ends of the longer feathers poking out there.  Once the trim was on and I was ready to sew on the outer fabric, I clipped those off, I thought they might be pokey/itchy and then trimmed down my seam allowances.

After the feather ends were clipped and my seam allowances were trimmed, I pinned my purple fabric into place, and then the black taffeta which will be the inside.  I then top stitched them down/together and once that was done did the same for the bottom curve.

 I ended up not liking the top stitched look so I hand tacked some decorative trim over them to finish my edges. Then put in a button hole and button to close it up.

The finished collar looks like this.

Hooray! 

I've got the corset all cut out, but realized too late I do not have enough boning to bone all of it, so while I wait for that to arrive from Toronto sometime next week, I figured I work on the collar and bustle.

On to the bustle!!

I got featured in The Art Projects Feature Friday this week!  Go take a look!

Progress shots of the collar for my pride costume coming soon!!

SEVEN: Pride

I got  asked to take part in a group show this summer, but things have been hectic so I've only gotten a chance to start my piece now!  The show is called SEVEN and opens December 10th.

Each designer was given a choice of one of the Seven Deadly Signs, and I chose Pride. I originally wanted Sloth, but it was taken already.  But I am pretty happy with Pride now. A surface designer by the name of Dee Wilkie would make us each hand dyed silk in the colour corresponding to the sin.  Pride is Purple. I love purple.


One of those awesome oops moments happened when she was working on my silk, her dye pot was not big enough for the 5 meters she needed to make me, which ended up making my silk not solid, but having this awesome shattered look to it.

I like it even better this way.  I will be using black accents to break it up a bit, because that is a lot of pattern and texture.
When if first thought of what I might do I was thinking of a 1940's womens suit and skirt, but I wasn't sure how well silk would tailor and how much of a nightmare that might end up being, so I simplified my design and found inspiration in an unlikely place (though actually pretty likely for me):


Anastasia and Drusilla for Disney's Cinderella!

I'm going for a more 1880-1890's version of their dresses, but the idea is there.

Since I am running short on time, I am making this to fit myself and not a model, which means I was able to modify some of my previous patterns. Which is the entire reason I keep all my patterns lying around.
The skirt is actually the pattern I used to make my grad piece (MidKnight) back in 2012, only I made it the same length all the way around instead.

 

The petticoat is also from the same pattern but instead of just a bustle and the ruffle at the bottom, I've added a full crinoline bustle to it.  I know no one will see it, but I just had to use tulle in the same colours of the fabric Dee made. Why? Because I love hidden surprises.

The skirt and petticoat before I sewed them together.

Same skirt, now with a proper hem, bustle pinned in and crinoline properly poofed out.

 Next on the agenda:  Cutting out the corset fabric, feathered collar and  over skirt bustle.  What will the collar look like?  Well time for another Disney character to inspire me:

It wont be this extreme, and the colours will be reversed... but again, the idea is there.

And now I must go cut out a corset!