Elizabethan Dress Completed

My final fitting and crit for the Poppea Elizabethan dress was on Monday and i finally had chance to sort through the photographs and pick out the best ones.
Here they are;

Unfortunatley the corridoor was pretty small so it wasnt really easy to get full length photographs, but they will definatley be taken during the fashion show in may once i have the shoes as well...

Elizabethan Collar

For my 1600 Poppea Costume i wanted to make a standing collar, it took a loooooong time and was very fiddly but i am very happy with the result...

Summer Project

As always when i have a lot of work I always end up thinking about the projects that i want to do in the summer, i really want to try making this dress from Marie Antoinette;

 I found this fabric on ebay which is a pale blue silk dupion fabric that i think will work well for this dress. I will also probably need to buy some blue chiffon and i red ribbon. Luckily i already own a oval buckle just like the one she is wearing so that should be perfect :)

Poppea Costume

Sorry i havent really been keeping this up to date recently, college has been very busy this year and there are quite a few deadlines coming up. I am currently working on a costume that will be completed and displayed in the final fashion show at the end of the year. Its quite an interesting project as we were all given the same character from the Opera The Corranation of Poppea, but given different eras to design it it. We then had to design a costume all in red that had a sheer outer layer so that all the underwear (corsets, drawers etc) are visible. I was given the earliest time which was the 1600's, so its late Elizabethan. Here is a picture of the toile of the costume;

There will also be a standing collar, but i havent quite worked out how to make it work... I have begun the real thing, with the jacket being made of a red lace fabric, with braid latticework sleeves and chiffon skirt.
The underwear is all made from linen and cotton fabrics. This is a close up photograph of the jacket by itself on my mannequin;

There is a fitting of the costume tomorrow with my model so hopefully i will get some good photographs of the progress.

Finished all my projects just in time...

So i am slightly in disbelief that i actually managed to finish the Tangled Dress commission and made myself a medieval style dress. All in one week! Madness! When i say its a medieval style dress i use that term loosely, its just got the long panels with no waistline effect that medieval dresses have, its not particularly historically accurate. Just pretty :) Anyway, without further a do, here's a photograph of the finished Tangled dress,

And here are a few shots of the medieval-y style dress

For more pictures, go to my deviant art gallery here xxx

Tangled Commission

So i have been working on the 'Tangled' Dress the last few days and have got a fair bit done :) Excuse the crappy Dummy that its on, shes so tiny (only 25" waist!) that it didn't fit on my good dummy, in fact it still barely fits this one! I used this dummy for an art project that involved newspaper dresses so that's strips of newspaper that i couldn't get off it that's showing at the top.

The Bodice just needs the eyelets up the front for the lacing up the front, and then i am going to remake the stomacher so its a bit longer because currently if it really doesn't lace up that much the stomacher bit will be pretty low.

I am pretty happy with the shape of the skirt from the back. I found the front a bit difficult because on the tangled dress the back is quite flared and full but its quite straight and doesnt fold much, but i think i have got it just about right. It would look good if it was worn with petticoats underneath i reckon.

Instead of the stripes of pink that are on the original costume ( i did think about stitching down stripes of ribbon but it didnt really work) i sewed stripes of decoative stitching which i think works quite well, if it is a bit more subtle than the one in the film.

A closeup of the braid that i have used on the skirt. This goes all the way down the skirt and then all the way around the hem of the skirt. I think the braid works really niccely :) The front panel is made from a patterned cotton. I wanted the front to be a more similar colour to the rest of the skirt like it is in 'Tangled' but there wasnt any available that matched it well enough. Instead i went for this fabric which contasts with it and has a nice flowery pattern which i think works on Rapunzels Dress. Not much else to do, just the underskirt mainly and then a few finishing touches here and there. Yay :) Rachael xxx P.S, as a fan of Disney, if anyone else would like a disney characters dress made for them i would be happy to. Especially Merida from the new Brave film, i fancy making one of them :)

'Tangled' Toile

So i have started on the commission to make a 'Tangled' inspired dress, making the pattern and the toile.

Now the skirt on the real thing will be more flared and have more volume but this shows the basic idea. I am going to buy the fabric today i think and will get started on it mid week. I will keep updated on progress :) I also kind of fancy making a medievally kind of dress for myself, but not sure if that will be a go-er, probably dont have time :( boo I go back to uni in a week and a bit. Even just typing it i reailse how unrealistic it is to think i will get 2 costumes finished in the next week and a half... ah well, i can but dream :) Rachael xxx