elizabeth

Presenting my final look for an 1890s inspired tailored coat!

Click below to read more about my tailored look and final critique!

Tags: tailoring | final | wool | sewing | construction | critique | final product | coat | tailored | collar | gray | 1890s

LaurenLovesFashion

I have two more weeks of school left. The last week is dedicated to finals. For the past couple days, I have been hyperventilating and stressing on how I'm going to get all my work done before time runs out. 

Things I need to do: 

1. Fashion Business Journal (Watching news related to fashion, analyze how/why people dress, etc.) It's worth 400 points, Oh joy.

2. Make a "Mood Board" and come up with a 12 piece collection. Oh! I need to write business plan as well. Worth half of my grade.

3. I need to finish my weaving project (We're making a tapestry).

4. I need to memorize 24562394876378 (OK, maybe not that many) types of weaves and finishes.

5. I need to prep for ALL my finals.

6. I need to revise my portfolio and prep for class interview.

7. Do ALL my math homework, See a tutor (since I'm terrible at math), Prep for math test and final (AHHHHHH!)

8. Do my final Flat Pattern Design project (I'm making a skirt). 

9. Finish sewing my jacket and blouse. 

10. Eat a lot of chocolate and freak out! :)

Tags: weaving | flat pattern design | sewing | chocolate | stress | textiles

Whisper

So as you can probably guess from the title, this week I've mostly been ploughing ahead with my corset. I've done a fair bit of work on the skirt too, though mostly that has been halted by the fact that the second batch of ping-pong balls I ordered were an ever-so-slightly different colour. Ack! Both sets are white-ish, but one is a pearly, gloss white, whereas the others are a matte, greenish shade. I like the former ones more, but the seller stopped selling them. :(

My plan is to make it up as usual, then spraypaint the whole skirt matte-white and decorate it with glue gun glue, in the long, pretty spider-web strings it's so good at making. Then I need to think about the net part, and ohh.. so much to do!

Tags: corsetry | theatre design | costume design | Corsets | sewing

elizabeth

Our tailoring class time (4 hour class, 3 days a week) is now just work time until the end of the quarter critique. I think that's December 2 or 4. Then, on December 7, we have a final crit with all the faculty. The public is invited to this crit.. it's not advertised or anything, but our families, friends, and other students are all welcome to sit in on it. Anyway, the purpose of the final crit is to be scored by the faculty on a scale of 1-5. If we receive an average of 3-5, our designs will be entered into our hugely popular end of year fashion show.

The point is - we're not doing a whole lot of new stuff in tailoring right now. We're just working on our final designs in the fashion fabric, and applying the tailoring techniques we learned from the practice jacket, such as pad stitching, lining with wool canvas, etc.

I do have new work to show you, though. I decided since I was already halfway there, that I would finish my mock-up design to sell in my Etsy shop. I've put out so much money on supplies this quarter, it would be worth putting in an extra few days of work to get some return. I went back and fixed some of the mistakes I had made, put in the pockets, worked out my collar issues, lined it, and added some pretty metal clasps. I was absolutely in love with the final product, and I'm quite happy to report that it sold from my shop within three days of posting! Needless to say, it was a really exciting weekend for me, haha. With no further ado, here is my final mock-up!

Click below to see more photos!

Tags: tailoring | mock-up | sample | sewing | design | final | stylized | 1890s | woohoo

elizabeth

So, in brainstorming how I was going to make my big ruffled collar, I considered getting a ruffle foot attachment for my sewing machine. For some reason I decided I wouldn't, and then a few weeks later I found one at the sewing store on sale.  I ended up getting it this week, and BOY am I in love! It helped so much in producing the ruffled collar (which I will post pictures of soon!).

The foot essentially gathers your fabric for you. The difference between this and more manual forms of gathering (also known as shirring, running a loose stitch through the fabric, then pulling the ends) is that the ruffle foot allows you to set how many stitches you want between each gather and how deep you want it to be. The downside is that many ruffle foot manufacturers don't seem to include instructions with their feet! So here are a few photos to help anyone who wants to figure this out!

First is just a shot of the ruffle foot attached to the machine. As you can see, the foot is screwed into the shank of the machine, not attached to the foot attacher piece. That's taken off.

Click below to read more!

Tags: tutorial | sewing accessories | feet | shirring | gathering | ruffling | ruffle foot | instruction | sewing

elizabeth

This has been one of the busiest weeks of the quarter. My drawing teacher wanted us to have 80% of our final project finished, which no one actually achieved, because we had our mid quarter critique for tailoring on Wednesday, as well as our practice jackets due today.

I have some pictures of my final design mock up coat for you. The crit Wednesday went well, I think. It was pretty informal.. another faculty member came in to give us advice. It's always helpful to have someone with "fresh eyes" take a look at your design. If you've been working on something intensely for a long period of time, it's hard to step back, look it over, and objectively judge all that hard work.

Click below to read more about my crit and see more photos!

Tags: critique | design | sewing | sample | mock-up | tailoring | coat | collar | wool | sleeves