Saturday, January 19, 2008

A few things I've been doing

Sometimes I work for the tailor, Ed. I don't get to do as complicated things for him, because he has such a traditional, complicated method. But yesterday I made some pants for him! They were huge diaper pants, with no crotch seam! The center front panel was also the center back, it folded around, and two side pieces left room for little leg holes. They looked really funny, just like an adult upholstery diaper!

I tool a picture of the pocket, because I think its just so interesting how pockets are put into things, so logical and yet still kind of tricky. Like origami. Actually, making these pants was a lot like origami. I'll put a picture of them up when they're on stage.

My main project recently has been Ophelia's dress. I posted a picture of the mock up and research before. The dress is made up of all these layers of really beautiful lace.

The feathery bits on the end are called eyelash. We've been piecing different bits of lace together, especially on the bodice. It turns out you can just cut up little parts of the lace and then sew it on in different areas, and make this amazing, constructed lacy fabric, that looks really complicated and like it was woven specifically for the garment. But its just held together with a zig zag stich!

This dress has three layers to it, a peach chiffon layer, a sheer sparkly layer, and then the lace. My boss Jill showed me this magical thing. Instead of doing french seams on the lace, we made peach bias tape and lined the seams with it.

So that when its against the underskirt, it completely disappears. So cool! The worst part about making this dress has been knowing that when we're all done, we're going to have to turn it over to Will in crafts, and he's going to distress it. Sad!

1 comment:

Fiberista Nora said...

too bad "de-stressing" actually involves "de-stroying"! Cause that looks to complicated and beautiful to destroy... Any word yet on when the show actually opens? I wanna come see it...