Waistcoat

I was keen to start making again! I knew waistcoat would be a difficult garment to produce so I was eager to get started as soon as possible. Creating the welt pocket was very challenging, but thanks to Hester she made it a lot simpler. I went home afterwards and re did two more samples in order to get the process clearer in my head. Thinking about it, this is something I should do more often when it comes to tech skills. I can be a slow learner,
but when it's clear in my mind I am able to get the samples done, which then helps to do it again when needed.

Final fitting

During the final fitting we felt there was something not right with the costume. The cage and the dress looked very separate from one another and it just didn't work very well. After some thought we decided to create some smaller foam pieces that come further down the garment in order to bring the whole piece together. Overall I am happy with the results of the complete costume, there are a few elements that personally I'd like to have tweaked, had there been more time.

Spray Painting

After getting the base of the cage ready yesterday, we needed to start spray painting today. We used black spray paint to cover the whole caging then used a cloth to add on silver paint to create a metal look! We also used googley eyes to create rivets on the foam! We should have created and sprayed a sample for this as we didn't know how the paint would look, however our deadline was tight so we wanted to make the most of our time.

Go Go Go

This may be one of the most hectic deadlines yet. Every day has been another part of the costume to tackle. By the end of today we wanted the bodice that would be holding up the caging to be finished, as well as a good start on the foam caging. The importance of weekly/daily and even hourly deadlines has become very apparent in this project. I've realised how differently you need to work when working as a team.

Problem solving is something that has been extremely necessary during this project. Many things that we thought would work ended up needing a lot of tweaking etc. The foam for the caging needed to have some wire added to it so that it looked sturdy when on the body. We realised that without wire it moved far too much on the model to give the illusion of metal.

Skirt

As Niamh and Zennor had started on the petticoat. Sophie and I thought it would be best to get started on the skirt seeing as we now had the front panel printed. I started to cut out each pattern piece while Sophie machined it together. The Skirt was simpler than I thought, we slightly adapted the skirt pattern to create a train.

After looking at the skirt we found that it was quite plain. The skirt needs something added to create some volume and shape potentially some ruffles at the back. I am going to work on some samples of ruffles to pin onto the skirt for the next fitting with Nikki.

Caging Sample

After chatting to Nikki and Hester, both suggested that we use Plasterzote foam and then spray it to make it look like a metal. They also both suggested we create a a mock up of the cage to know how much foam to buy.

It became clear while creating a paper sample that we would not need as much as expected which works in our favour as the foam is quite expensive. This made me realise the importance on samples throughout the design and making process.

Drafting Hip Block

Niamh and Zennor had set out to start on the petticoat together. Meanwhile Sophie and I worked on the hip block for bodice. I've found throughout, that I struggle a lot with creating a block. It is something that I am getting better at and wanted to use this opportunity to learn. We made a few mistakes throughout the process but we had Nikki's assistance as well as our instructions from tech skills, which made it a lot easier.

Printing

After deciding on a final design we thought it would be best to get booked into the dye room as soon as possible and get started. Our group consisted of Niamh, Sophie, Zennor and I. Niamh created an image for us to use for the silk screens then the next day Sophie and I had booked in with Jess to use the dye room. Honestly, i'd always been worried about the first time I would use the dye room properly as I found jess quite scary! But actually after her showing us how to use everything and teaching us how to create the silk screens, I found that she's actually lovely!! The process of making a silk screen and printing was something I had never done before but so glad I learnt. It taught me that I need to be much more confident with using the different facilities around the uni whilst I'm here and to not be scared!

Printing onto the fabric was very daunting as we were printing black puff binder onto white fabric, which, of course, can easily go wrong. However we got into the swing of things pretty quickly and had a finished printed fabric for the front panel of the skirt by the end.