My Pattern Making Space

So I am super slow at updating, I did these patterns last week and just never got around to taking the pictures off my phone till now. Yikes. I need to get a camera, as of right now I have been using my phone (which takes super tiny pictures) and my 3DS (which is tricky to get pictures off of) in order to photograph my progress, which is why I take so few pictures.

Anyway, I have a few pictures to show you guys the space the college provided me to work on the costumes for the senior thesis play.

The next post I have up will (hopefully) be showing you guys some of the finished pieces, possibly on the actors and actresses.

This is my table in the drafting room. Most of the drama kids use this room to draft floor plans for set design so I am actually the only person using it for costumes at the moment. This means I was given special access to that brown paper there. Aw yes.

 

 

This is what I have pinned to the wall next to my work space, it’s all the pattern sketches with measurements on them. I reference them as I go along and draft.

 

Here we have an example of what one of my pattern pieces look like before I cut it out of the paper completely.

 

These are all the pieces I drafted that day, it’s two vests worth of patterns for two of the guys in the show. If I am not using this paper to make patterns (or patterns I got off the internet and printed) I generally generate patterns in my room using the school newspaper and tape.

These patterns are all pretty one use in quality, so once I have the garments made I generally discard the patterns.

Well that’s it for now, I will be back soon with more actual pictures of the garments.

Cheers.

 

La Bete Costume Progress: Princess Skirt

So my spring break is over and while I was away I made a poncho and one of the four vests for the show. I’ll post pictures of those in a later post. This post is about the skirt for the Princess that goes over her giant hoop skirt. 

I ended up making this skirt when I got back to school because I didn’t have enough room to cut the whole thing out at home. This is all of the fabric laid out in my dorm hallway. Which I swept before laying the fabric out and yet it still managed to pick up dust bunnies. 

When I was designing the dress I was hoping it would only have two side seams. I was going to cut both the front piece and the back piece on the fold. However, the fabric didn’t end up being wide enough for that to happen so I had to cut out four panels and having to have side and center seams on the whole thing. It’s rather upsetting. 

So I didn’t feel like having to pin, cut, unpin, repin and cut four times over so I just used my dishes to hold the patterns down as I worked. Once all the panels were cut I pinned and started sewing. 

And then my bobbin was jamming and knotting horribly so I had to take the whole damn bobbin area apart and I ended up having to pull a giant thread knot out of the machine. 

And here is the skirt so far. It is frigging huge. I need to place it over the hoop skirt to hem it and add elastic and then it will be done. 

Making Bloomers for Madeleine

So since my last post I have been going to the school’s theater and using the drafting room to make patterns so I will have pictures of that up soon for you guys. But for now I have some pictures of the making process for the now completed bloomers that I talked about in my last post.

 After I cut out the fabric for the bloomers I realized that the jersey fabric picks up every little bit of dust in my room. Which is frustrating because I know I swept before I started working on this project.

 Here are the assembled bloomers before the elastic is put in, looking like a pair of gigantic boxers. I was a little alarmed that maybe I cut the wrong size out of the pattern but I trucked along anyway.

I  sewed the waistband down and created two sets of casing for the elastic to go through. Both sets of elastic really drew the waist band in nicely. Now the pattern instructions calls for me to make a casing for the leg holes and tighten with ribbon. However, because these bloomers are for the stage and we can’t risk anything coming undone mid-show, I sewed down elastic. This caused me to have to create some pleats as I sewed, one in the side front and one in the back of the bloomer. But they look okay and they fit nicely. I’ll have some pictures to show you of the finished bloomers in another post that should be coming next week about the first big costume fitting.