Happy Organising

We've an unusually large amount of items to make at once at the moment:

13 celtic style tunics,

4 viking style tunics,

1 pair of trousers,

1 hooded cloak,

And finally 1 pair of leg bindings.

Thats lots to co-ordinate, especially with all the tunics involving two different fabrics and various embroideries. So I set up a system with labels and charts, which so far appears to be working. Everything is cut and we're ready to start the next stage.

The Floral Fifties

I just finished this little commission. Its a copy of an 1953 vintage shirtwaist, the original was a plain dark grey and the fabric had worn a bit too thin to be wearable.

I found the fabric in a lovely little shop called the cloth shop just off Portobello Road in London, the people inside were unbelievably friendly, i've never had my fabric cut with such a genuine smile before.

[link http://www.theclothshop.net/]

Leather Leaves

These are some leaves made out of veggitan leather we made at The Custom Costume Company. We traced the shape, cut it out with a craft knife, dampened the leather then added the details with scouring and stamping. I've never worked with leather before and I really enjoyed it, though it doesman have kill your hands, I had little in the way of fingers left after doing it and poor Denise got SRI. After doing the details we shaped them with our hands to make them more realistic and painted with leather dye.

Beaded Flowers

Just testing out this new fangled (well, to me anyway) blog from your phone app, lets see if it works...

The Creation of 6 Giants, Part 2

Obviously we couldn’t just leave the giants as bright blue body suits, so we covered the bodies in large vests of flesh tone lyrca. I can’t say it is one of my favourite fabrics to work with, but however awkward it makes the sewing, we definitely needed the stretch to cover the bodies properly.

And with a little pinning and tucking, it is vastly improved. Everything was covered in labels right from the beginning, with 6 giants that were similar but not identical, it was important we could easily see what went with what.

Then we added arms (sewing the arms in was my main job for about a week), which took ages because I had to do it after the lycra was on the foam body, which made it pretty tricky to get under the sewing machine.

These are the prototypes for the arms and head, made of plastazote.

After all the sewing we added loin cloths and they were all airbrushed. I am always surprised by the amazing difference that airbrushing makes, everything suddenly becomes more 3D than it was before.