She Makes an Impression, where ever she goes, she makes an impression from the head to her toes...

Okay, yes that is actually one of the Holograms songs not one of the Misfits, but I don't mind. With that here are some pictures of the progress on "acidic rocker".

I thought I would babble about the process of paper to garment.  So, to start you make a paper pattern.  Here is mine,  for a "princess seam" top there are four pieces, a center front, center back, side front and side back (It helps with the shaping and makes a top that follows the contours of a woman's body). The two little pieces up in the left corner are the side front and back and the ones drawn on the paper not yet cut out are the center front and back.

Next you would cut them all out, make sure the armhole seams and hem lines match up (called truing up seams) and then lay out your fabric. You can see below to make the top, you need one of the front and back and four of the side pieces.

I've done the same here for the skirt. They are upside down looking, because the fabric has a nap (it's furry, one way is rough when you drag your hand along, the other soft and smooth, that is called a nap).

I did the same with the base of the collar.  Both the collar and skirt will be cut into to give it a jagged finish like the picture two posts back.

The next step was to cut them out, I let them hang over night, which I really didn't have to do, but it kept them out of the way.

The next day, I surged the edges, usually I would match the surger thread colour to the fabric, but I knew these would be hidden by the lining in the end, so I wasn't too worried about matching. After that it was a matter of pinning the top and skirts together and sewing them.

Here they are all sewn together and the seams pressed flat. The skirt is extra long so I can later cut points into it. It will be much shorter in the end.

I'll post pictures of the dress and collar as I cut into them and put in the zipper tomorrow. Hopefully, weather permitting, I'll have some pictures of the dress so far on the model by Monday!  I was supposed to fit her tonight, but Canada in the winter decided to throw a snow storm at us instead!

13th fairy fitting!

Last night I had the model/owner to be of the 13th fairy into the studio for a fitting.  I wanted to see how it all fit and mark for the hem.  She has to wear this in a fashion show (which will involve a short set of stairs) and then for a weekend at the Anime North convention in May, so I wanted it to be long, but not so long she will step on her hem and trip/tear the dress. At the very least I wanted it to be near floor length and hid her feet so she could wear comfortable shoes (or even sneakers if need be) and keep them hidden.

She got the garment on with a little help, the last time she wore it, there was no zipper up the front so she could just slide it on like a coat, but now there is a zipper and the front is sewn up so it's more like a really long and heavy dress.

While she was wearing it, I noticed a weird problem with the shoulder.  It was ridging up on  the back of one side very obviously, and slightly on the other.

 After fiddling with it I realized that it was the seam binding I had put in there to hold the sleeve to the facing (a second layer of fabric to hid bra lines and such).  I had sewn the sleeves seam allowance to the facing and I really should have bound each separately.  So I'll be unpicking that and doing each in hopes that it will remove the bump.

The next challenge was finding this thing:
It's usually in our room, but was in the first year room, which was locked and the key in a box with a combination lock, who's combination none of us could remember. >_<  I wont say how myself and another student got in, ingenuity I guess, the hard part was getting the key back in the box. :)

The hemmer thingy, sadly I do not know its official name, I only know its the greatest thing ever and when I found one for myself at a second hand store department store for $5 I squealed loud enough that probably the whole store heard me.

What does it do you ask? well it's a ruler on a stand, with a little metal hinged piece that almost looks like a gator mouth.

The end is rippled so that when you stick a pin through it, its wiggled though the fabric and will stay until you take it out.

I had her stand on a little stepping stool to make sure the length was right. The ruler and the sliding metal piece allow you to move your hem line up or down to pin.  In the end, it means you will have an even hem all the way around your dress.  I did pin this from one edge of the train to the other as always floor length, but I may angle it down so the dress trails more in back.

And now a shot of my model Liz Eaton in the dress from behind,

And from the front!

Enjoy!

On to the next!

The 13th fariy (as I have been calling her) is nearly done!

 It just needs a hem and the loop for the train, and well the hat, but I am taking a break from black for a bit. Tonight I have the model in for a hem fitting and then I'll go back to working on the next piece.

Which is a blast from the past!

 It's the ring leader of The Misfits from Jem and the Holograms.  I've been calling it Acidic rocker.  You may remember seeing it a few posts back when I was talking about mock-ups and pinning in to get a closer fitting pattern.

 Stay tuned for some pictures of this garment as it is being put together and for some pictures of Dark farie on the model :)

Cosmic Warrior Finished work

Finally some decent shots of this piece!

The costume itself is done, I fixed the ribbon detail on the front with Steam a seam and it looks 100% better then my hand sewing job.  Much crisper.

I still have to find supplies and a way to make her hair bobble gems and I will probably be re-doing the wing details with a stronger velum paper.  The ones I had suffered greatly in storage (most I was able to squash flat again with heavy books) but the hair ones, well I don't think you can see in the photo, but they discoloured slightly (I think the hair spray  in the wig yellowed them somehow).

The moral of this story?  Take your hair clips off your wig for storage and store everything flat in a box.  But enough with the mistakes!  On with the pictures!

Yes, the skirt is short, which is why I made hot pants to wear under it.  Actually, I am not sure how any of the sailor moon girls fight, its rather hard to move your arms up with those sleeve caps, and were not even going to talk about how unmanageable that hair is!  Really, I'd spend more time detangling myself from my hair then fighting Evil.

Many thanks to Point of Light Productions for these awesome photos! 

Collar that gown

Well, the garment is together and now its time to make and attach the collar.  It's a crazy standing up high collar, so originally I was going to follow Linda Spark's tutorial on how to build an Elizabethan wired ruff, but then I decided to try Buckram first.

This is just one layer of the rather light weight Buckram my school store sells.

 

I

I couldn't stop thinking about how it looked like my 13th fairy was wearing a Pet collar so she would stop chewing her stitches. The 13th fairy does not like the cone of shame. :P


How it's on there:
 The  neck curve was already there on the pattern, but to get it to sit better I scored up the seam allowance.  One layer held the shape really well, but I was worried the fabric would bend it, so I ended up sewing two layers together, and low an behold, I didn't even need to do the wire support that was in the Elizabethan collar tutorial!

The next step was to take it off the garment/dressmakers Judy and attach the black fabric.

I pinned down the  bottom neck collar edge so it wouldn't slip when I sewed it and then I edge stitched the black fabric on with a sewing machine.

After the black was attached it was time for the purple lining, which I hand sewed to the black.

Here is what it looks like pinned onto the robe. It's a little wonky  looking right now.

And here it is from the side. There is an obvious bump there, but that will go when its sewn in.  Obviously

Testing how it looks when folded, which really didn't work with the pins, but you can get a general idea of how it will look eventually.

And that is all for today! The collar is on now, and I have started on the purple binding for the center front (which will conceal an invisible zipper).

We are official!

The new convention center has listed our fashion show on their website~

How exciting!

Further progress.

I actually did this on Friday, but didn't want to post it all at once.

Friday I drafted the train for the robe. I just folded my fabric in half and I knew the widest point of the train would be the width of the fabric, so after drawing  a slanted line (the length of which was the length of the back seam on the dress) I then drew another slanted line to make it longer, I later curved the edges to make it prettier.

It came out looking really great.  Below is the train pinned to the back of the robe, as well as the sleeves (also pinned).

Here is the top of the back train sewn in into the back seam. There is a little pleat in there for added effect/ volume management. My flash really lit up the fabric, and so it looks much more shiny then it really is, however it does show the black on black pattern really well.

The sleeves, now sewn in. Probably some of the weirdest sleeves to draft for me to date. I'm sure that will change someday.  They worked out great but came with a small problem:  The black fabric has a tiny bit of stretch to it and the purple taffeta lining does not.  So we noticed that it bagged down at the bottom, which looked awful.

We were able to remove the bagging by pinning small darts/seams. Thankfully there is a seam there already, so it's not going to be a major hassle to fix. It does however, involve me having to unpick the sleeves from the dress to get at the inside to alter it.

And here is the back of the dress in all it's glory.  I'm going to attach a small loop at the end of the train so the model/owner to be can slip it over her wrist for easier movement.

Next steps:  Fix the bagging in the sleeves, sew and attach the collar, bind the front/ put in a zipper and finally hem it.