Facebook Page

As well as my etsy shop(which can be found here) I have also started a business page for myself Facebook.
I will be trying to keep this page updated with all my current work and commissions, so if any of you would like to follow me on there and maybe even share my page to your own followers I would really appreciate it.
My Facebook page can be found HERE

Thanks
Rachael

New Etsy Shop

I have opened up an etsy shop with a number of listings, mainly for custom made items.

www.Rachaelscostumes.etsy.com

Have a look and let me know what you think :)

Costume Photoshoot

So I am currently quite busy with a number of things. Firstly, I am picking up my new puppy tomorrow so madness is soon going to ensue! I have also been working on some commissions and setting up some new stuff on my etsy shop. Alongside this I am also doing a part time photography course, its always been a secondary hobby of mine but I am interested in learning a bit more about it.

Last week I did a photoshoot with a great friend of mine to document some older and some new costumes that will shortly be up on my etsy shop and I thought I would show you the results.

      

    

                                                    
       

    

                              
     

There are many more images, most of which I have started to upload onto my deviant account here
All of the things shown here will soon be for sale on my etsy shop, I will post here once that is all up and running.
I hope you like them...

New Website...

I have been working on making a website for myself, separate from this blog, as more of an online portfolio. Its finally finished and I thought I would share it on here for you guys to see.

www.Rachaelfraser.com

Let me know what you think! I hope you like it...

Its been A while...

Sorry its been so Long since I last posted, I have had a pretty busy summer and I have been working on a new website, which I will post a link to here as soon as it is completely finished.
So far this summer, since graduating in June, I have worked on a production at the Edinburgh Lyceum Theatre as joint Costume Designer for their Summer on Stage production of 'Oh What a Lovely War', as well as working on a few commissions on the side (a new disney dress and some dapper 1940s suits) . I will post about all of them individually at some point. But firstly, I want to show you some photographs that were taken this weekend by a photographer friend of mine. They are old costumes that you will probably have seen before, but I decided I wanted to have some better quality images of them. It was a lot of fun anyway, gallivanting around the moors near my house, I am very lucky to have such beautiful scenery around where I live!

So these are the 18th century stays, modelled by my beautiful cousin Charlotte...

And then the Sleepy Hollow dress. Despite having made this so many years ago now, it still remains one my favourite costumes that I have made, and it fit beautifully in with the heather and vast landscape...

So I hope you will hear more from me soon, I plan to start updating this a bit more frequently. 

Costume : Dr Gable

I didn't really post about this costume at the time, because I got really frustrated with it and the main part of the costume (the silver leather bodice) turned out just horrible! However, there were elements of it that I was happy with, the green leather jacket that was worn on top for example came out much better than expected. Anyway, I took a couple of photos during the fashion show when she was in full makeup so I might aswell put them here seen as I havent posted anything else much recently. Dr Gable is a character from my first project 'Uglies' which is a science fiction novel set 300 years in the future. I have made another costume from this project, Tally's costume, which was a knitted jumper and dress. The two characters show the opposing sides in the story; one naturalistic and free,  the other heavily altered, structured and unnatural.

Shes the Evil character of the story, in case its not obvious...

 The offending silver bodice :( I made the toile and it fit perfectly on the model but for some reason when I made it out of the silver leather it just wouldn't go into shape the same way, it buckles and gathered and also seemed to have masses of excess fabric around the chest and neckline, no matter how much i took out of those seams it seemed to always gape.
 Lesson learned, never try to make complex shapes with leather...
She is wearing the Bodice on top of a corset with extremely padded hips to try and create quite an extreme shape, I also don't think this worked that well. Basically the whole costume doesn't have the same structured/armoured look that I was going for. Ah well, you win some you lose some eyy

Anyhoo there it is, my fourth and final costume of my final year at Edinburgh College of Art, the costume I kind of wish I hadn't bothered making...

In other news, I have begun work on a new commission. Another Disney Dress! This time based on the dress worn by Anna to the Coronation in Frozen. Its exciting, I will do a separate post on that though when I start working on it properly :)
Xxx

Aurora Dress Completed

The fashion show was last week, and I will post some of those photos later, for now here are some photographs that I took of my Sleeping Beauty Costume.

Sleeping Beauty Photoshoot

For publicity for the Edinburgh College of Art Fashion Show, and to go in the program, a professional Phtographer  Laurence Winram took photographs of our Costumes. This is the Prince and Aurora. I will also have my Tally Costume, that i posted about earlier, in the show and a 4th costume that I am currently working on. Only 3 weeks to go untill the show aaaahhhh

 

The Prince: completed costume

I have just about completley finished the costume for The Prince from my sleeping beauty project.

 Underneath the blue suede jacket is a top made from fake tooled leather with front hook and eye fastening and also a back lacing to make it fitted.

 I have been working on distressing the jacket, as the character has been travelling and battling. I used my dirty down sprays that I have posted about before, aswell as a cheese grater and a mud crayon, to give the dirtied appearance.

 I have done a lot of decorative stitching on the seams to give it the look of handmade and repaired by the Prince. In some sections Ii unpicked the seam and brought some of the fur through the seam to look like its almost burst open a bit.

I wanted to distress the armour aswell so I began by adding a chemical to it that would make it go rusty.

 This step terrified me as it went bright orange and looked really awful. I then covered the rest in black shoe polish and used a blow torch to burn the shoe polish onto the metal. This has give the metal a darker more weathered look, and some of the rust does show through but more subtley than to begin with,

 I made a pair of hand quilted leather gauntlets which the metal shielding will be riveted onto. Wearing these around the studio makes me feel like a superhero...

And finally, I made a pair of structured leg guards. I have taken a lot of photos of these as I made them so I think I will do a seperate post about that to show the process.

I will post about them tomorrow probably

Rachael
x

Sleeping Beauty Making Progress

We have no completley finished the Design part of our second Project, so its onto the making. I have decided to make both Sleeping Beauty and the prince from this project, here are the designs for their costumes;

 

I have mainly been working on the skirts for Sleeping Beauty, which are made out of lace and embroidered tulle, which I have them distressed.

The top half of the dress is going to be digitally printed and embroidered with a design from a collaboration I am doing with an illustration student. As her illustration is not yet finished, I won't be able to proceed any further with that for now, but hopefully it should be done by the end of February and then I can print it and sew it all together.

I have got the Princes costume all toiled out and ready to make out of the real fabric once I have had a fitting with my model on Wednesday. This week I have been spending time down in the metal workshop of my college plasma cutting and welding to create the armour that is worn on his shoulder and wrists. I haven't worked with metal for the last two years ( we did quite a bit in second year) so I wasn't sure how easy it would be, but after a bit of help and re introduction to the machines by Mark the technician it actually wasn't as hard as I was expecting. 

The Gauntlets;

And the Shoulder Pauldrens;

Both still need a tidy up and a bit of a fix up here and there, but they are nearly finished I think. Pretty chuffed with them seen as I had never made anything like this before.

So that's my current progress with those two costumes, hopefully I will have more to show you all soon :)

Finshed Tally Youngblood Costume

For my 4th year design project I have been making costumes based on the Novel 'Uglies' by Scott Westerfeld. I had my final Crit for my first costume, based on the main character Tally Youngblood, at college today so while I had my model in the costume I decided to take a few photos of the finished costume.
She wears an underskirt, a dress, a knitted jumper with detachable scarf/hood and then a long ginger wig that I styled.

Wuthering Heights; Cathy's Dresses

As Cathy had 4 or 5 dresses to herself I thought I would do a separate post just about those first off.

As you can see in my designs, I had planned for them to have accurate 18th century shapes and I had made 18th century bum rolls for all the female characters from the 18th century time period, but because of the physical nature of the play it was decided that they shouldn't be worn, which is why none of the photographs have them in. It was a bit of a shame in terms of the look of the costumes, but when I went to see the play I did understand that it was probably true that it wouldn't have worked, there was a lot of falling over and fighting which would have made the bum rolls shift around probably.

The Photos are all after the Jump...

Wuthering Heights costumes

Nelly;

Nelly works at both wuthering heights and the Grange, and through telling the story of Heathcliffe and Cathy to Lockwood narrates the story. She is on stage for the majority of the play as she narrates and is shown to partake in all the different time periods. While she is in the different times, she couldn't really change between scenes as sometimes she went from talking to Lockwood straight into the reminiscences of the past so because of this  I wanted her costume to seem to fit in all the different times. My main inspiration for her costume was this image of an 18th century maid;

                                     

Young Cathy;
The Daughter of Cathy and the wife of Heathcliffes son Linton. As she is from the later period of the book her dress has the higher waistline heading towards the regency era. However, I am not a huge fan of the dresses of the regency era, so I took inspiration from the 2005 kiera knightly adaption of Pride and Prejudice, with the waistline not quite at the bust line and still with a more corseted look. As with Cathy, young cathy has the purples in her costume that none of the other characters had, but its slightly lighter than Cathy, as she is a more innocent naive character, to begin with at least. I think that this dress was possibly my favourite of the girls costumes and worked really well on stage.

Hindley and Francis;

Like everyone else who lives at Wuthering heights, Hindley and Francis are in browns and greens, all earth colours. Frances is wearing a zone front dress, with a green linen jacket and an embroidered chiffon skirt and stomacher. When Hindley is young he wears just the waistcoat and breeches but when he comes home after his father has died he has brought a wife home with him and he is trying to appear more respectable so he has a jacket and necktie. 

Edgar and Issabella;

For Edgar and Issabella as they are richer and posher than Cathy and her family, I wanted them to stand out in contrast. They are both in much lighter pastel colours of greens and yellows and in fancier styles and fabrics. Issabellas dress has more decoration and lace than any of cathys dresses. Issabella is shown to be pregnant later in the play but instead of making a whole second pregnancy costume for her, like Cathy, I wanted a dress that could be adapted for a pregnancy as well. I used a combination of the chemise de la reine and zone front styles so that when the sash is on, the dress looks like a normal structured 18th century dress, but when the sash is taken off a bump can be put under the dress and the fabric flows out to create a pregnancy shape.

Thats all for today, I think I will show you Heathcliffe next and then wrap up all the other characters.