The Last Eight Months

I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, I promise! Read a whistle-stop tour of what I’ve been up to over on the new blog at rebeccarom.com… http://rebeccarom.com/2015/08/29/thelasteightmonths/

My Costume History is moving!

Hi all, and apologies for the radio silence – it’s been a busy couple of months. One thing I’ve done in that time is update my portfolio website, which now includes my blog and all previous posts from My Costume History. I’ll keep writing, but for future posts please visit me at rebeccarom.com/blog. Stay tuned!

Current project: Captain M’nure from Ubu Roi. Details coming soon!

 

Fairy Tales and Maggie Thatcher

Alackaday! It’s been far too long – sorry folks, got carried away with Christmas. Anyway, moving swiftly onwards…

My second conceptual costume design project of the course was Sleeping Beauty by Rufus Norris. This version is pretty nuts, featuring a flatulent fairy and a child-eating ogress among others. I was thrilled about designing it though, as I have a thing for the 18th century (as you may have noticed) and this would be the PERFECT opportunity to unleash a bit of period fantasy. Edmund Dulac! Kay Nielsen! PANNIERS!! I immediately pulled together some mood/research boards…

Prince

Ogress

King/Queen/Princess Beauty

I excitedly showed them to my tutor, and she was… not impressed. In fact, she was pretty insistent that I do something contemporary, especially since I had gone period with King Lear. As it turns out, indulgent period fantasy is a big no-no at Royal Welsh College. Following the rather tepid reception of my Shakespeare design, I realised I didn’t have a choice in this. Contemporary it was.

My new concept started with Fairy Goody, the filthy, farting fairy that casts the infamous spell upon being spurned by Queen Beauty at the naming day celebration. My Fairy Goody became White Dee from Benefits Street. The rest soon fell into place: Margaret Thatcher became my ogress, Boris Johnson my ogre, and a Made In Chelsea/Bullingdon Club/posh knob became the prince (also the ogress’s son).

Fairy Goody

Ogress

Prince

Ogre

I was able to salvage some of my original 18th century inspiration for the palace characters: King Beauty – well-meaning but useless; Queen Beauty – a snob obsessed with cleanliness; and Princess Beauty – an overprotected teen not allowed to grow up. I threw in a 50s twist because I found a bright green and pink vinyl covered sofa from the era that I just couldn’t ignore, and it was a natural progression from the Kim Woodburn inspiration image for the Queen.

Queen Beauty

King Beauty

Princess Beauty

I also collected images for the forest creatures, ogre, and Prince of Questions (who is really just a narrative device. He turns up being chased by the ogre at the start of the play, and because Fairy Goody needs a prince to break the spell, she tells him the whole story).

Prince of Questions

Ogre

Ogre & forest creatures

Ok you get the idea. I don’t have individual scans of my drawings, but here are some photos of the resulting designs:

Rough sketches. Ink, chalk, pastel, and charcoal pencil on murano pastel paper.

Rough sketches

Maggie Thatcher Ogress

Final drawings

Final drawings

Minstrel & Princess Beauty

Final drawings

I’m now home for the holidays, working at Eureka! and eating lots of chocolate. It’s nice to be back in my comfort zone – my mark on King Lear (48%) really knocked me for six. But something clicked with Sleeping Beauty. I’m going to revisit Lear during the break, and hopefully design something more compelling to show my tutors in the new year.

Onwards and upwards!

King Lear on Mars

First off, apologies for the radio silence these last three weeks. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in my first conceptual costume design project of the year: King Lear.

Results first:

For those unfamiliar with the story, King Lear is about aging, senility, madness, family, cruelty, and loyalty. Lear, in his old age, decides he can’t be bothered to actually rule the kingdom anymore and wants to remain king in title only, so decides to split up his kingdom and give it away to his daughters in accordance with how much they say they love him. Goneril and Regan are all over this, waxing lyrical about how much they love their father, but Cordelia doesn’t want to play that game and is just like “dude, Dad, I love you like a daughter, you know that, I’m not gonna say I love you more than any man ever cuz uhh I’m gonna have a husband someday and that would be weird” (I’m paraphrasing). Lear gets pissed, banishes Cordelia (who conveniently goes off to marry the king of France), gives his entire kingdom away to Goneril and Regan (and to their respective husbands, Albany and Cornwall), and then sh*t goes from bad to worse because the elder two sisters are dicks who don’t want to deal with their dad getting senile.

There’s a parallel story going on about Gloucester and his sons Edgar and Edmund – Edmund is the illegitimate son who convinces Gloucester that Edgar’s out to kill him, so Gloucester banishes Edgar who has no idea that Edmund is the one who set him up. Gloucester and Edgar end up wandering the heath together, Gloucester blinded after a scuffle with Cornwall, and Edgar disguised as a crazy beggar to avoid capture. All but three characters end up dead. I could go on but I won’t because time is of the essence and you’re all busy people.

colour story

So the first step in designing (after a rather lengthy and involved breakdown, that is) is deciding what themes to focus on, and to decide when and where the story makes sense. For me, the whole set up is crazy – on what planet is this a good idea?! None. None that are recognisable to us anyway, which is why I chose to set my Lear in a post-apocaplyptic environment. Maybe a giant meteor had hit the earth, filling the atmosphere with ash, turning the sky orange and the sun red. This mega disaster also fits in with the idea of entropy; that is, that the universe is constantly moving toward a state of complete chaos. The world of King Lear is chaotic and senseless; there are no gods to return things to an ordered state; the good guys end up as dead as the bad guys. It’s unjust, but it’s nature.

My original idea was to start with classical ancient Greek design for Cordelia (simple, rational, unfussy), and Byzantine extravagence for Goneril & Regan (ambitious, selfish, extravagant). I would have happily gone for a straight period piece – in fact, that’s where I was heading in my mind – but Tina (our tutor) advised against going too period as it would alienate a modern audience. I looked a lot at fashion designers like Alexander McQueen, Isabel Toledo, and Yohji Yamamoto (in fact, Cordelia’s dress is exactly Isabel Toledo’s design, just in different colours). My reasearch ended up looking like this:

Cordelia research board

Goneril & Regan research

Goneril & Regan

Goneril & Regan

Goneril & Regan

miscellaneous

And for the dudes:

Interestingly, at first I thought I had Goneril & Regan completely sussed and the men would be problematic. As it turns out, I had an easier time arriving at final designs for the men and a much harder time with the elder sisters. After finalising the designs and producing my line drawings, I sat down with all my swatches to work out exactly what would be made of which fabric before rendering. I wanted a really tight colour palette that reflected all the burnt oranges and reds that occur in volcanic sunsets:

sorting swatches

final swatches

My main approach, without being too period, was to focus on garments that could be simply constructed and cut from a single length of fabric (square cutting from week 2, anyone?!). I figure that in this post-apolcalyptic environment, resources are limited and they have to be clever about using what they have – hence the Asian style trousers for the men, and the Medieval dresses for Regan and Goneril. I attempted to update the look with quilting and cording for the men, along with motorcycle-style boots, but in the end I don’t think it came across that well.

Lear

Cordelia

Edmund

Gloucester

Edgar

Fool

Edgar as “Poor Tom”

Albany & Goneril

Regan & Cornwall

After presenting my work to the tutors and first year BAs yesterday, the feedback was that my designs are a good starting point, but the post-apocalyptic, scavenged element could be pushed a lot further – at the moment they feel far too period. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that I designed Lear’s coat to be an updated version of a Henry VIII gown (week 3 anyone?!) – a big sweeping silhouette with a yoke back and oversleeves, but also a massive collar and lapels to update it and make it look more modern. Maybe I should have given Goneril and Regan short cap sleeves? But then that would have felt too casual.

I was super excited to present my work yesterday, but came out the other side a bit deflated and disappointed that I couldn’t express myself better. Yes, I said “post-apocalyptic” and “scavenged,” but really that’s not what I wanted for a group of royal, powerful characters (which I did explain, saying that if I had explored the working classes or peasants of that world I would have incorporated more scavenged elements).

What I should have said, but didn’t, was that the strong period reference was an intentional choice to show how humanity has had to start over again, and this is the point they’ve got to with that’s available in their environment. Maybe watercolour on banana paper (yes, it’s made from bananas) wasn’t the right rendering style to evoke a simmering, dystopian future where things are about to spiral out of control. Maybe I should have said, it’s King Lear on Mars.

But it’s all a process – as MA lighting designer Joe rather succinctly put it, we didn’t come here to be told we’re brilliant designers. So next time, I’m going to practice my presentation ahead of time to make sure that I can confidently express my complete idea, rather than a half-baked on-the-spot version that makes it look like I didn’t achieve what I wanted. AND I’m going to spend more time drawing and experimenting, because as I’ve discovered in the last two weeks, that’s where a lot of the ideas come from.

Mad as a Hatter

Week five was MILLINERY! I was excited for this week – making hats was always something I’d wanted to try, and it would be the first completely new skill I’d learn at RWCMD. The 3rd year BA’s (who did it last year) told us that we’d get to choose three hats to make: one felt, one straw, and one covered. With that in mind I spent the weekend researching Edwardian picture hats – but how on EARTH was I going to choose?!

So those were my options for a straw hat. Then I had to think about what to make for my felt hat – initially I wanted to make a bowler, but after seeing everyone else’s choices I decided to go for something more whimsical. Cue this fantastic 1940 Schiaparelli number:

Which then left the covered hat. I had initially figured my Edwardian hat would be covered instead of straw, so I didn’t have any ideas. That is, not until I saw Ellie’s picture of a Tudor headpiece, which reminded me that hey, the hat I make doesn’t have to be 20th century! Enter the Medieval heart-shaped hennin:

Once we had all chosen the hats we were making, it was time to stretch our felt hats on the block. Ruth, our tutor, said that millinery is a bit like cooking – it’s all about timing, and it’s best if you have a few things on the go at once. Felt takes the longest to dry, so that’s where you start.

First, you take a wool felt capeline like this (or if your hat doesn’t have a brim, you can get a wool felt piece that’s just the lump in the middle called a cone)…

…and stretch it over the most appropriately shaped block for the hat you want to make. Then you work out how deep you want the crown to be, mark it with some elastic, and cut and flatten to brim; like so:

It’s exactly the same process for the straw hat, again starting with a capeline if you want a brim, or just a cone if your hat doesn’t have a brim. By lunchtime the dye room was awash with hats on blocks!

Blocking our felt hats

Shaped blocks left to dry

Then it was onto the covered hat. I showed Ruth my reference pictures, and her instruction was “work out a pattern” for the heart-shaped bit. The idea of drafting my own pattern was daunting for about five seconds. Then I remembered what we’d been doing for all of week three, and once I applied the same flat-drafting process it really was pretty simple. Result!

wired hennin frame

side bits

After creating the heart-shape, I molded two separate side bits on a smaller block. In retrospect I think this method resulted in something too horizontal and bulging, but oh well, live and learn. Molding the buckram (that stiff hessian-looking stuff) was pretty gross – it comes on the roll glued together in two layers, which we had to peel apart. You have to dampen the buckram before you can mold it (actually, you have to do that with the felt and straw too – completely saturate them in hot water before putting them on the block so they mold more easily), which means the glue gets really sticky and slimy. Really not pleasant, and not altogether different from papier mache.

Did I mention millinery is a messy business?

Working on covered hats

Ruth working with Ellie

Once I had the side bits, I had to make a close-fitting cap for the whole structure to sit on. This basically comprises of Frankensteining a bit of buckram molded to the top of the head to a wide rectangle cut on the bias that wraps around the head, and then trimmed down to get rid of the pleats/bulges before sewing it together by hand. At Ruth’s suggestion, I painted the side pieces gold, the idea being I would eventually embellish them with gold braid and get that net-like effect from the exposed weave of the hessian.

Then came time to pad out and cover the heart bit. NIGHTMARE!

It really shouldn’t have been that hard. It was literally just glueing the fabric to the buckram – but my god those curves were awkward. I ended up staying til 7.45 that night getting it neatly glued and pinning on the inside layer of fabric before bringing it home to slip-stitch (which took approximately three episodes of Masters of Sex). It sucked. But I did it!

Anyway, after working on the hennin late into Wednesday night I came in on Thursday ready to go back to my felt hat. I had wired, bound, and sewed the crown of my straw hat to the brim in between working on the hennin, resulting in this understated (read: unfinished and undecorated) little number:

I’ll get around to decorating it sometime. Maybe. Probably not. Anyway, felt hat! First thing was to delicately take it off the block and trim down the brim to the appropriate width. After trimming, it needs wiring and hand-sewing around the edge of the brim to bind it. After wiring and sewing the brim, Ruth helped me pleat it to look like the picture before leaving me to sew on the crown.

Blanket stitching wire to brim

Completed wiring

Hand-sewing crown to brim

My hand-sewing under the brim is really pretty shoddy, but the felt was thick and my fingers were sore and by Thursday afternoon I can’t say I was particularly bothered anymore. Not that you can really tell in the photo…!

If I were to do this one again I would scale the whole thing down – I was imagining a much daintier hat, but just went with what Ruth suggested for the brim based on what we could see in the photo. One of these days I’ll put a band on it to hide the janky handsewing around the crown, and hopefully attach a fantastically Surreal bow!

Once the felt hat was done (or as done as it was going to get – Dot and I had a field trip on Friday, so we only had til the end of the day on Thursday to work on our hats), it was back to the hennin. Of the three, this is the one that isn’t actually wearable because it is still in bits. However, I assembled those bits and got a photo which I think lends a decent impression of what the finished product would look like:

And yes, I was kind of going for the whole “evil Duchess” thing.

This week, I am in the building NEXT DOOR (gasp) with the four MA Performance Designers working on a Shakespeare costume design project. Now I just have to figure out what the heck King Lear is all about…

MA Week 4: Corsetry

I’ll be honest, I was a bit nervous going into corsetry week. Our tutor, Jill Salen, has literally written the book on corsets and as I’d made two before, I feared she (and the rest of the class) were expecting great things.

Fortunately for me, having made corsets before meant I got to choose a corset from another period, so I chose to remake these linen jumps from 1790:

Linen jumps, c. 1790, Hereford Museum

Jumps line drawing, from Corsets: Historic Patterns and Techniques by Jill Salen

It doesn’t look like much in the picture, but when it’s on a body it’s really stunning. Also, as there are only ten boning channels, it wasn’t completely unreasonable to do by hand in a week. But more on that later!

And then we had a rather relaxing overview of corsetry – what a busk is, different materials used for boning, metal eyelets vs hand-worked ones, and so on. After trying the reproduction of the linen jumps, Jill said I’d have to take out 1″ on the double at the centre front, 1″ on the double at the center back, make the side back smaller, bring up the armhole 1/2 an inch, and take 2″ out of the shoulder straps. Get on with it then!

Mine was decidedly more effort as I first had to go to the library and get the original pattern from the archive. As it was two A2 sheets, I then had to copy it the old-fashioned way with some tracing paper (33p per sheet at the SU shop! Useful). I had the pattern copied by lunchtime, and then after lunch set to work grading the pattern and making a toile.

Jumps toile front

Jumps toile side

Jumps toile back

Turns out I am reasonably ok at grading patterns down to size, as the toile was very near bang on. In retrospect – as in, once the corset was completely made – I realised I should maybe have taken my inch out of the corset front from the middle, rather than just hacking an inch of the centre front as it affected the shape at the front. Still, live and learn. By the end of the day, I had my graded pattern:

graded jumps pattern

A few more tweaks first thing Tuesday morning and I was ready to cut out. I got linen for the outside and a striped cotton for the lining – I wanted something that felt Georgian, or at least our 21st century idea of Georgian. I got a metre of each, because WHO KNOWS I might cock up and need an entire metre, but nope. I could have gotten away with half a metre:

Still, now I have some lovely linen for another project!

Once it was all cut, Jill let me sew it all together on the machine – HURRAH (I thought I’d have to do it all by hand, as sewing machines didn’t exist in 1790)!

pinned layers

pinned layers

machine-sewn tabs

bagged out corset

bagged out corset

Although it sounds easy, this was a tricky step. I had to pin and tack the layers right sides together, making absolutely sure that all the seams matched. The I machine-sewed around the finished edges (forgetting to leave my boning channels open – d’oh!), very carefully going around the points where the tabs separate. I didn’t realise this, but you don’t cut out the fabric in the shape of the tabs – you cut it whole, and then cut a sigle line into it, sewing around it much the same way you sew a gusset, or a placket (start about 1/4 inch from the line, sew diagonally toward the point, take two stitches across the point, and back down again about 1/4 inch away from the line). It took about half an hour to do on the machine, and by the time I had gotten around all the tabs I wondered if I wouldn’t have been better off hand-sewing it after all.

Bagging it out was a job and a half. It got a bit hairy in the middle, very much looking like the monster from an It Came from the Sea 50’s B movie:

There’s no elegant way to do this.

But after about an hour and a half, I got there! This is where it gets fuzzy – I can’t remember if I started stab-stitching at the end of Tuesday or Wednesday. I think it was Wednesday – again I tacked all the seams to make sure they lined up exactly, stab-stitched the seams, and then stab-stitched around the edges (leaving the centre fronts open). Thursday morning I finished the stab-stitching, and then started on the boning channels. These were tricky because I wanted them to be EXACTLY STRAIGHT which I found really hard to do. Back-stitching itself is quick, easy work – evenly back-stitching in a beautiful straight line is not. As such I had eight of ten channels done by the end of Thursday, and by Friday morning was worried I wouldn’t finish the damn thing by the end of the day.

 

But I DID IT!! I finished my last hand-worked eyelet at 5.30 on Friday afternoon, and after a bit of faff and help from Dot I got my lacing in.

pardon the boobs (and uneven front)

stab-stitched tabs

the whole gang!

If I were to do it again (which I totally can, cuz I have plenty of fabric left over), I wouldn’t change much – but I would definitely do something about that seemingly GIANT tab on the side back piece (and try harder to make my centre fronts match). I think I’ll also go back and back-stitch directly down the boning at the centre front, rather than follow the parallel line as I have done.

I’m bummed I didn’t have time to make a second corset, as most of the girls did this week, but Jill will offer corsetry again sometime later in the year. Anyway, I’m glad I gave these linen jumps the love and attention they deserved!

Next week: millinery.

MA Week 3: Britches ‘n Hose

Teehee, I love a good pun. Sorry guys – I didn’t even make any hose (though some of the other girls did and the results were fantastic), but I really couldn’t help myself. Anyway, yes, britches (or breeches) and hose! Or as this week was actually titled, men’s pattern cutting. We worked from a book called Pattern Cutting for Men’s Costume by Elizabeth Friendship, and it’s a similar method to how I drafted Ben’s tailcoat pattern at NCC. Instead of drafting straight to a specific pattern, though, we started with basic blocks and adapted those to different period patterns throughout the week.

We started on Monday by drafting blocks for bodices, sleeves, and trousers:

On Tuesday we all adapted our basic two-piece sleeve into a period two-piece sleeve (which is just wider at the top, really), and then each chose three patterns to start drafting. Karen wanted us to get through as many periods and styles as possible, so we all chose a different doublet, coat, and trousers or breeches to draft and then make up into toiles by the end of the week. It doesn’t sound like a lot but oh man, after two days of pattern drafting my brain had pretty much turned into mush.

I chose to draft a high-waisted doublet, Henry VIII-style gown, and Venetian breeches, like so:

Charles I in high-waisted doublet, 1631. Painting by Daniel Mytens.

Henry VIII, 1536. Painting by Hans Holbein the Younger

Francis Drake in Venetians, ca 1580s

I’ve always had a thing for Cavalier fashion and so HAD to do the Charles I doublet, and wanted to make the gown since it was so different from anything I’ve made before. The Venetians I bagsied by mid-week because they were super-simple (like, one pattern piece simple) and I was worried about falling behind – the gown kind of took over for a day and a half.

We used a size chart provided in the book and had to do everything in METRIC, which was a bit weird at first but annoyingly quite simple when it came to halving measurements and getting down to the millimeter (as opposed to the 1/16th inch). My head agrees that metric is easier, but I’m all imperial at heart.

drafting the doublet pattern

cutting the gown – that’s not even all of it!

I had my doublet pattern drafted by the end of Tuesday, and started on the gown pattern first thing Wednesday. It took until about 2.30 that afternoon, at which point I drafted the Venetians. I stayed late, started early, and only took half a lunch break nearly every day this week, because I know my own pace and wasn’t confident I’d get it all done by Friday afternoon. But lucky me, Ben was coming to visit at the weekend, and of COURSE I’d drafted everything to fit him (I brought his measurement sheet that I’d used at NCC – useful!), so I HAD to finish.

I had everything cut out by mid-morning on Thursday (which was no mean feat – the gown pattern pieces are HUGE), and got the gown mostly made up by Thursday evening. I say mostly because I was stumped by the hanging sleeve and decided to leave it til the next day, so I started on the Venetians.

The gown’s construction is really quite simple, although I had to add some extra seams because the pieces were too big to cut out on the straight grain all in one go. The tricky bit is figuring out the overlseeve, which is just a rectangle pleated up to fit 2/3 armhole measurment at the top, and then pleated at the bottom to fit the slash on the hanging sleeve that arm goes through. Confused? So was I!

Hanging sleeve with oversleeve detail

pleated gown oversleeve

gown toile with hanging sleeve

I spent about an hour experimenting with different types and sizes of pleats to get it down the required amount, but it was so worth it in the end! You can see on the form that I made it a bit long – I didn’t have an exact neck-t0-knee measurment for Ben, so I went with my usual method of overestimating. You can always chop it off, but you can’t add it on again…

Anyway, time for the fun part!

Frills, glorious frills

Venetians toile

Venetians side view

Venetians back view

high-waisted doublet

high-waisted doublet back

the GOWN…!

gown side view

gown back view

I feel obliged to mention that I’m least happy with the high-waisted doublet. It didn’t come out with the flamboyance I had hoped for, which I realised today was the result of re-shaping the top of the shirt. I got confused when reading the pattern as it seemed to imply I should cut off the front corner so the shape matched the bottom edge of the bodice, but all that did was give the doublet a rather boring straight edge at the bottom instead of the dramatic pointy bit, as rocked by Charlie I.

Also, I set my sleeves in crooked as I got the idea into my head that the shoulder seams and the overarm sleeve seams should match. I don’t know where that came from, since I have set a few sleeves in my time and should have known better! Never mind, it was one of the last things I sewed and frankly was I thrilled to have both sleeves attached the right way round – and it looks alright from the back I think (though perhaps the skirt could be longer).

But oh, the GOWN. It’s only half a toile that’s too long with one sleeve and no facing on the collar, but gee whiz I am pleased as punch with the result. I wore it on Friday (we all wore what we made) when we went through them all, but it just came to life on Ben – which makes sense, since it’s a men’s pattern for a man with a man shape. I mean, we all know that Henry VIII was a hefty bloke, but that toile just proves that with the right cut you can make anyone look massive (in the best possible way).

Coming up: corsetry!

Absolutely Frilling (& Pants-tastic)

The shirt is FINISHED! The final button-loop got sewn on Friday afternoon, halfway through making up a pair of ethnic trousers (we’ll get to those in a minute). Day two and three of shirt construction went much smoother than day one – getting over my cold and having slept better probably had a lot to do with it. And you know what? The gussets really weren’t so bad the second time round. Behold!

underarm gusset

shoulder gusset

seriously it’s like working on a giant pillowcase

frill and collar

gathered sleeve

sleeve frill

inside gathered frill on gathered sleeve

sleeve frills

When I started this project a week ago, I figured I’d be very happy to see the back of it and let it go into the college’s costume stock to maybe be worn on stage someday (an exciting idea); however, I’ve grown rather attached to it and Ben said he wants it so I’m paying a fiver to keep it.

I don’t actually have a photo of the finished product in its entirety, but I’ll get one on Monday to post and that will be the LAST you’ll hear about it, I promise. At least, the last you’ll hear until I get a photo of Ben wearing it at Christmas!

Moving on to… ethnic trousers!

These were MUCH more fun and so easy to make. Our tutor, Karen, gave us all copies of a few different patterns – they all start as rectangles, then get cut up and flipped around to make up trousers in clever, efficient ways. Seriously, some of these have no wastage at all! We all chose a different pattern so we could see the similarities and differences.

I made the Allacache style trousers – I figure I need to get over my distrust of gussets sooner or later, so of course I picked the pattern with the giant gusset. Again, really not so bad! You can see where the diamond-shaped gusset seams into the trouser legs in the goofy photo of me, above.

I didn’t get round to putting the cuffs on, but I’d like to at some point so I have a properly finished toile. Here they are anyway, nearly finished:

Plus a few more shots for your education/enjoyment.

pre-waist gathering

from left: Afghan, Allacache, Gharara, Churidar on the bias, Shalwar, Churidar on the straight grain

Churidar pattern on the bias

The last exercise of the day was a tiny sample of the Churidar pattern on the bias, where you start with a rectangle of fabric on the straight grain and manipulate it so it ends up on the bias. Karen gave us all the instructions and then let us puzzle it out for ourselves. I’m not ashamed to say I only figured it out cuz I saw what some of the other girls were doing and copied them! Ingenious, really. It was a mind-bending exercise and completely eye-opening to the potential of clever, but simple, pattern-cutting.

Getting Shirty: The Sequel

So when I saw square cutting on the timetable for week 2, I assumed it was something I’d never done before. Turns out I have done it and just never knew that’s what it was called – which is silly in retrospect, as it literally is cutting squares:

This pattern is for the period men’s shirt we’re making this week, from The Cut of Men’s Clothes by Norah Waugh. This is my second foray into men’s shirting, the first time being at Northern College of Costume for Regency menswear – the pattern we used then is actually out of the same book. I really didn’t enjoy it much the first time round, as chronicled in my previous entries Getting Shirty and My Kind-of Shirt. Here’s the result of my previous efforts, from Ben’s toile fitting:

the shirt

Dapper? Me?

But I digress. I’m happy to have another go at a square cut shirt, but I also know the world of faff I am in for with these gussets. Also, this time there are industrial sewing machines to contend with, which I haven’t used since my two-week placement at the Manchester Library Theatre in 2011. What would be a 2-minute sewing job on a domestic machine becomes a 20-minute song and dance, re-learning to thread and wind a bobbin on an industrial machine, plus a few practice runs to get a feel for the pedal and speed.

Gathered sleevehead

It’s not the fiddly sewing I find especially difficult, or even getting to grips with the industrial machine. Instead, it’s the pressure I feel as an MA student – not to mention an MA who’s completed a costume construction course before – to work quickly and to work well. I’m confident my shirt will look fine once it’s finished, but my progress has been slower than I’d have liked (and I feel the stuffy head cold/chesty cough I came down with on Saturday and have yet to shake is only partly to do with it).

On the flipside, working alongside the second-year BA students is a good reminder of how far I’ve actually come. Sure, some of them can still pin and sew faster than me, and are naturals at crochet, but I get a little glow inside when they come to me with questions. Not many, mind, but just enough to make me feel like I know what I’m doing.

…Speaking of the second years, here’s Ellie modelling the (sleeveless) polonaise toile from last week! Jill says I must take her measurements, as she’s the first person she’s come across who fit the pattern so well:

Here’s hoping that by tomorrow I’ll have something resembling shirt to show you all. Until then, goodnight!

Adventures in MA Costume Design

I probably should have mentioned earlier, but this year I’m undertaking in MA in Theatre Design at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. I had my interview back in May, and while I had a great time talking about my work, I walked out thinking there was no way they’d take me. My lack of formal art training seemed to be a real sticking point at the time – I guess it didn’t bother them too much since I received an unconditional offer about a month later.

I didn’t ask many questions at the interview (thinking there was no point as I wasn’t getting in), so I’d basically been sh*tting bricks all summer with no idea of what to expect. I thought I’d be completely out of my depth, and the email from our Head of Design saying “the College has a discreet counselling service which is available at all times for your consultation.  This may be of particular use in the first weeks, as the change of location and a new working environment can sometimes prove unsettling” didn’t help matters much either. I got the message loud and clear: THIS COURSE IS INTENSE. WE WILL BREAK YOU.

And guess what? It’s been four days, and I’m not broken. Far from it. Hurrah!

Within the Theatre Design course there are a number of pathways: performance design (set and costume together), set design, set construction, costume design, costume construction, lighting design, and puppetry. I’m on the costume design pathway (0bvs) and was nervous about meeting the other costume designers. Would they intimidate me? Compete with me? Make me feel like a talentless hack? The answer is D, none of the above, because it turns out I’m the only one on the costume design pathway! There are 11 of us on the course, most of whom I haven’t seen much this week. There’s a lovely girl called Dot who’s a fellow costume MA, but her pathway is construction.

So! What have I been doing this week? Well, I’ll try to be brief…

Monday (in three parts)

Principal’s welcome – in which we are told in no uncertain terms that although we all may feel like “the mistake” who slipped through the cracks, we are all in fact meant to be here. Phew!

Registration – in which we queue up for ages so we can have our passports, academic qualifications, and finances checked before being given our student IDs.

Year meeting – in which we finally get to size up the other MA Theatre Designers, meet the tutors, and get timetables according to our specialist pathway. I discover to my great relief that I do not, in fact, need to take part in the paper sculptures project, and have five weeks of costume construction instead. Huzzah!

Tuesday – Wardrobe skills with Dot and five of the BA year 2 students. Alterations and mending: darning, patching, zippers, labels, and embroidery. Though they’re mostly things I’ve done before my samples are far from impressive – fortunately we’re not being assessed on them as Jill (Salen, our construction tutor and legend) just wants us to experience different techniques so they’ll feel familiar if/when we come across them in future.

crochet chain

Darning, labels, and zippers

My pattern-matching needs work…

Wednesday – Crochet and smocking. Jill very nearly strangles me when I fail to understand how to make a granny square. Just about got the hang of it in the end, but I don’t think I’ll be picking up a crochet hook anytime soon…

Thursday – Accessing patterns from Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion books and making a bodice toile; I chose to “explode” (i.e. scale up) a pattern for a late 18th century polonaise. We used the same method I had used at NCC, except this time it was on giant graph paper which was obnoxious at first because the grid was distracting and made my eyes go funny. I soon got used to it though – having exact inch squares on the paper is really helpful! Now I fear I can never go back to scaling up on plain paper…

1770-1785 polonaise

Janet Arnold polonaise pattern

exploded bodice pattern

bodice pattern pieces

polonaise bodice toile

Tomorrow (Friday) is knitting, cartridge pleating, and finishing our toiles. We’re in every day 9am-6pm with an hour for lunch and breaks throughout the day, so it’s really not so different from being at NCC. In fact, it’s way easier – I only have a ten minute walk to the college in the mornings and I don’t have a job to go to on Sundays.

I feel I should also mention that I get along really well with all of my flatmates, AND I actually got my Career & Professional Development loan on the first day of term, something else I had been flapping about all summer. So really, when everyone I spoke to about my fears and stresses told me not to worry, that it’d all be fine, that I’d love it – I should have listened.

Sure, it’s only been four days and it could all go to pot, but for now I’m confident it’s going to be a great year. Stay tuned!