Back to work!

Righto, work placement done and dusted, now back to work!  We've been given a deadline extension, so I'm feeling less stressed about getting this all done in time now.  I'm also feeling pretty good about myself at the mo, I just got some glowing feedback from the people at Prangsta Costume!  Apparently I've proved to be one of their 'most competent and reliable' work experience students, and, coming from a company that takes on about 400 students a year, that's quite a compliment!

I've been having issues with some of my emails not getting through to Sarina (outlook apparently doesn't like big pictures), but we seem to be on the same page at last.  Here's the flyer for the exhibition my dress is going to used in.  I'm not entirely sure how the design relates to Brighton, but the pressure's on now to get it to that museum quality standard!

Sarina's planning on making a shawl to go with the dress too.  I'll be taking it into uni on monday for her to see, so the plan is to have it completely sewn up by then.  We can then discuss whether it needs beading detailing or not, and I can find out more about this shawl.  Now that the deadline's not til wednesday, I might just have time to put in the beading before Hand In.  We'll see.

I've been working on putting my Supervisor's Bible for the Circus Project together whilst I've been in London, but that still needs a few finishing touches before wednesday too.

Dress Design

Here's the design I've decided to go with for my dress, as well as a few other ideas I had a play with along the way.  Typical me, I've gone for the most complicated one there, but I've fallen in love with the criss-crossing panels and the way it perfectly works with the zigzag waist.  It also reminds me a little of the sunbursts that Sarina was referencing at the start of the project, so that's always a plus!

Of course it does mean that my ingenious plan to cheat bias cutting by keeping all my sewing lines on the straight grain has been scuppered somewhat.  Never mind though, I always like a challenge!  Making sure these seams are immaculate is going to be one heck of a job..
I haven't yet decided whether to use the same design on the back of the bodice or to possibly get rid of the silk diamond shapes on the back, so theres just the crepe, and the draping silk sides - as in the drawing.  We'll see how I feel after I've gotten the front sewn up.

Other designs:

Fabric!

I found some gorgeous fabric to go with the silk today.  I went up to Birmingham with my mum and my aunt and a lot of fabric-buying ensued!  The stuff I found is a really lovely drapey fabric that really compliments Sarinas silk.  It has a slightly more 'camel' tone to it, and a crepe-like texture that's fabulous next to the smooth sheen of the silk.  I'm not positive as to the fabric type, but I'll refer to it as crepe from now on for simplicity's sake.  It was only £7.99 a metre too, which was fab, considering I would have been wlling to pay upwards of £15 for a good quality fabric.  I ended up getting about 6 metres worth, so plenty to play with!

I'm now working on adapting the dress design so that the two different fabrics mesh well together.  It's proving quite a challenge to work things out so that I don't need more silk than the 2 metres I actually have.

Toile

Here's how my toile's looking right now:

It's not completely sewn up, but you get the jist.  Generally I'm happy with the shape.  The squares need to be larger though, as it's too short, and the drapey armholes need some work too.  I've also come to the conclusion that there's too much fabric in the side skirt panels, so I'm going to cut a quarter out of the square when I do my final piece.
The neckline also needs a different finishing, as the slipstitching from the bias binding shows through on the right side of the fabric.  Will have to mull things over.

Development: Sarina's dress

I've gotten to the point where I'm happy with the basic design in 1/2 scale now, so I'm going to scale up the pattern and sew it in full size this week.  I'm trying it out on a greenish-grey silk first, as a sort of toile, before moving onto the nice expensive silk Sarina wants me to use for the final piece.  We're not certain exactly what we'll do with it though, as she only has two metres, and I've managed to design it with a masses of fabric in the skirt.  She has some grey/silver silk that we might be able to use with it, and make the tonal contrast a feature.
For the time being I'm going to sew up my toile, and then we'll have a better idea of how much fabric's going to be involved.  I had intended to use a crepe back satin for my toile at first, but Dexter was concerned that it was too heavy a fabric for all the fullness at the sides, and would make it look clumpy, so I've opted for the green-grey silk instead.
The other issue we'll have to look at when the toile is done are the open sides. At the moment, in 1/2 scale, they are open right down to the waist - which is a nice feature, but maybe not appropriate in a wedding dress.  I talked about possibly making/sourcing a matching slip to go underneath, and Sarina also suggested that a couple of little buttons either side might work too. But once again we'll wait until I've got the toile sewn up before we make a final decision on that.

More mini toile photos

I wanted to make the waistline lower, so these were the results:

Had a go at a barrel cut bodice, but it didn't really work out.

So I returned to my original bodice and extended it to drop the waistline.

Final mini toile!

I don't want my final dress to stick out at the sides so stiffly, but I think once it's sewn up in a nice drapey silk, it'll fall flat rather than stick out like that.  I'll start putting a normal sized toile together after my work placement, so I'll be able to see then.
I've really enjoyed having a play around with shapes and seeing how they change the garment.  I actually had to be quite strict with myself, as it would have been all too easy to go off on a tangent and spend the whole project faffing about with miniature toiles, rather than getting round to finalising a design!

Miniature Toiles

So here's what I've been up to:

Bodice based on the Madeline Vionnet dress referenced earlier.

How the skirt panels would fit together.

Exploring petal shapes.  I quite like this, although I prefer sticking with the squares for this project.

A bit too 'flamenco', but interesting to play about with.

I wanted to create more draping at the sides, so looked at doubling and quadrupling the panels used for the rest of the skirt:

Rectangle shape (double the squares used elsewhere)

Longer at sides too?

Creating loads of fullness with a square panel four times the size of the others.

Update (April 12th):  I thought I'd draw out some of the shapes I used to clarify things a bit..