Last year, our costumes for OM, as our group had decided, we wanted to use a medium other than wire as using wire was not only tedious, we got many cuts from it :( We then started to develop our ideas for our costumes and the idea of using cloth to sew our costumes was much more appealing than other ideas which could have involved more troublesome methods. Having greater experience in sewing, I was then appointed to start planning the costumes for the individual characters. I started off by randomly playing around with cloth on the mannequin. As we were going for the theme of fairytale characters, I had to make the outfits look almost princessy. As you can see in the image of the blue skirt below (meant for Snow White initially), I experimented with a simple draping style, and it turned out really beautifully,
although it did remind me more of Sleeping Beauty... But it still looked really pretty because of the shade of blue as well, along with the shine it has in the photo. As for the second photo, it is a closer look at the skirt from the front (the drapery was at the back), in which I also tried to do some pleating, but I found that that sort of detail also would not be easily appreciated by the judges in OM. I mean, it's understandable since what they look for is things on a bigger scale, and tiny details are cool but it wouldn't be helpful in scoring us points.
For the rest of the designs, I was not using the actual cloth for the costumes, only for experimentation.
As for the next skirt which was for the Fairy Godmother, she was supposed to be a serious character, so I created a less playful design for her - one that seemed more analytical and serious.
The geometric design of the skirt, as I would have liked to think, brought out that concept rather well. The geometric elements would make the character seem more calculative and more solemn in a way, maybe a little more uptight as well? However, this rigidness just wasn't my style and I didn't really like it, but then again, this design was for the sake of the character, not for my own satisfaction.
The next costume I planned for was the Cheshire Cat.
This time, I did something I usually wouldn't have. I did a poofy skirt :O
I just did more of the same drapery I did before, except in a repeated pattern, and unexpectedly, I had created something I found really pretty and I was really really satisfied with it. However, I took it out after a few days, wanting to experiment more with other designs, but nothing else came close to this and I tried doing it again.
However, in my second attempt, the skirt become more rounded, and I tried to figure out why, but I could never find out :( Anyway, later on we changed our script a lot and so did our characters. Nonetheless, I was able to employ this last design to use for a new character, Alice from Wonderland. Back then, my sister was doing this project and I learnt from her (she is taking a Fashion Design course) how to do these poufy sleeves and I started to use the sewing machine again, as well as doing hand-sewing as she needed much help doing this project. It from here that I really started on real sewing of whole outfits (previously I only sewed clothes on a miniature scale). I started to take measurements of each of my friends and I used cloth chalk to draw lines on the cloth and it was a self-learnign experience. I had no help in learning how to do the costumes, but I just relied on God and my imagination to do so. Well, but thank God! I managed to pull it all off and the costumes were all sewn nicely and they looked really good as well! We didn't take pictures in our first performance at the national OM competition but we did during our school's Festival of Arts performance, so here are photos of us backstage...
As you can see in the photo, Alice's costume consists of actually two pieces, a top and a skirt (the same design from earlier). For the top I put in poufy sleeves and it actually had long sleeves before, but as I had miscalculated and since the material was unstretchable ,my friend's hand could not fit into it :( So I had to cut it off, leaving only the sleeves.
As for Tweedledee and dum's characters, I only had to sew the pants so not much work needed to be done for it. The top was from old pajamas and our OM tees (worn inside). As you will be able to see later in the following pictures, Tweedledee (the one with the shiny green pants) has other random accessories like the red "tie" and the purple ribbons but those weren't sewed on by me but by my friend :) and those were from the scrap cloth from the Queen of hearts' costume, so that we would not be wasting material.
For the White Rabbit's costume, it consisted of a vest (made and recycled from our old school uniform) and a top belonging to my friend and more scrap cloth to form a tie, as well as purple pants, which were initially similar to Dee and Dum's but it was later altered :)
As for the Queen of Hearts' costume (below), her skirt is very special as it is 360 degrees around and can be opened up, which was the whole idea of having such a skirt for her during the performance. As for her top, I sewed her a cloth corset and she wore it over a white long sleeved top.
When opened up, it looked like this:
I know it can be a little hard to see but the each panel of her skirt was supposed to be a heart shape. We used the iconic colours of red and white in her costume to carry across the message that she was the Queen of Hearts.
In this picture above, you can see the Cheshire Cat's costume clearly, and it consists of a skirt, top and a jacket. The skirt was also sewn from scratch and the idea was to have it translucent so that the character would be more playful (of course wearing shorts and tights underneath), but that idea wasn't very obvious as you can see... But the details were more important. To show that she represented the Cheshire Cat, I sewed stripes onto her skirt, though not all the way from bottom to top or the design would be too boring, and added pleats in it so that it would flare out. Also ,the "jacket" had feathers in purple and pink being glue-gunned onto a black long-sleeved top in stripes which was then cut to form a jacket.
For the Mad Hatter, I only did the gold jacket which was initially meant for the White Rabbit but it was changed for the better when the Mad Hatter wore it. It also used poufy sleeves and was meant to take after a tailcoat where the front was short and the back was long, like this:
In conclusion, getting to sew most of the costumes, enabled me to gain experience in sewing. Before this, I didn't care about planning for the things I was going to sew or taking measurements or being accurate, but now I am certainly more confident of my sewing skills and it is going to be an essential part of my Coursework this year. It really was the process of this that mattered so much, learning rom my mistakes and I really thank God that the costumes came out with such success and almost no difficulties!
:)
Things I can take credit for: Alice outfit, Cheshire Cat skirt, White Rabbit pants and vest, Queen of Hearts outfit, Dee and Dum's pants, Mad Hatter's golden coat
Experiential Learning: January to April 2011
Experiential Learning: January to April 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment