Over the past month we have started a new project in costume construction. We have to design make and document the costumes for a school production! As we are not doing a school production we have decided to make the costumes for Rock Challenge, an annual dance and drama competition that our school competes in. The theme for this years Rock challenge is A Midsummer Nights Dream. We are making the costumes for Titanias fairies. This includes building on a net tutu and decorating it as well as decorating a matching leotard and tights. Each costume is individual so each person in the group has a different dancers costume.
As these costumes are being worn on stage we have to ensure that they are produced well and are durable. This had to be done to enable ourselves to gain a distinction in this module.
To begin with we made the decoration that would go on the skirts, we firstly learn how to make roses. Firstly you cut out a wide strip of matterial and fold it in half, tacking with a needle and tread all the way down the open side of the fold. Once at the end slightly scrunch up the matterial. Fold the edge of the material down where you finished sewing, make sure it is tight at the bottom and tack until secure. Twist the matterial around so that the bottom of the rose will be in a spiral shape. Every so often tack the bottom of the rose tightly. Once at the end of the material, fold the edge down as you did at the begining and hide the open seem. tack securely and tie a knot at the end. Secondly we learnt how to make the leaves. Firstly you cut a strip of material, half the size of the material you cut for the roses, place the leaf template ontop and cut around it. Once you have many leaves cut of of material pair them up, pin them back to back. Tack round the edge leaving a small gap at the end. Turn the leave inside out using the hole left. Finally tack neatly along the open edge. Your leaf is complete.
Once we had all the decoration done we could continue with making the skirt. As we didnt have much time we used a basic net tutu as the base for our costume. We ripped many different colour strips that corresponded with our colour scheme. We then grouped the strips together and folded them in half. After this we pinned all the groups onto the skirt to ensure we had enough material satin strips. Once this was completed we tacked the grouped satin strips onto the elasticated waist band. This had to be done over and over again for each group so that they would be secure on the skirt. A way to test if the strips are securely attached was to tug lightly on them, if they came away the tacking was too loose if they didnt it was now considered secure. Once tacked tie a knot at the end of thread for safety. Once the stain strips had be securely attatched to the elasticated waist band we had to go round and cut the ends of the material into a point. This gave it a more fairy-like look which fits the theme and design criteria. After all the satin strips had been attached and cut it was now time to attach the decoration-ie the roses and leaves we made previously. We attacked the leaves first to the waistband and tacked repeatedly until secure like we did for the satin strips. To attach the roses you had to tack as before but through the centre of the rose so that the shape was still kept. Here is a picture of the finished skirt:
This is the finished skirt. My colour scheme is purple, yellows, and sparkly strips. I enjoyed making the skirt and found most of the techniques simple and easy to understand. I will continue this enjoyment when customising the leotard to go with the skirt. So that the skirt stands out on stage it will have fairy lights underneath it.We have also help construct parts such as the roses and leaves for the main parts cotumes. here are some images of them.
<-Titanias costume left
Cobwebs costume right ->
All costumes right->
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