Last minute costuming

I am tired.
Exhausted actually, but I finished a very last minute project tonight after "work". A pair of jeans, a shirt and modifications for a bought shirt to do in a week cause Andrew and Kaitlyn are off to Sochi.


Strangely enough, I have been working on jeans at "work" and this project happened to include a pair of jeans. Very serendipitous
It was very nice fabric to work with as far as velvet goes, and is a deep rich black that gets washed out in hasty photo sessions.

Stretch black velvet jeans. With red top stitching. A happy combination!

I got the fabric Friday morning, took the afternoon off my regular job, washed and dried and pressed the fabrics, made a shirt pattern and had the shirt cut out, with instructions for making to be handed off to Silvia by 5pm, jeans patterned and cut out by 9:30 pm. Made them up to the waistband point on Sunday afternoon, and managed to get the last bits done tonight.
You don't have to be crazy to be in this business but it helps!

 Faked front pockets.

 Inserting the zip and edge stitching the fly.
There is a nice trick to doing this that I discovered while figuring out the jeans for work. I will follow up with it later, I promise!

Fly done and top stitched.

I stopped taking pictures after this because I just lost documentation motivation!

Sorry for the sideways view.


I think they turned out quite well, I just hope they fit perfectly, because there isn't time for a fitting which is really nerve wracking because even though I have my patterns for the last few things I made for reference, it is a style change- lower waist, closer fit through the legs and a stretch fabric- and I prefer to fit and know for sure than hope for the best, but at this late date hoping for the best is all I can do.

trimmed child's coat

Making trim for the coat was the final touch before I packed it up and sent it off. I was using the drapery fabric that we had used on some of the other costumes.

I had to make a "furry" cuff as well as trim the the collar and make some small pompom like puffs.

For the cuffs, I started with a bias tube of the plain white fabric, pressed flat, to act as a base to sew on. I cut a wide piece of the drapery fabric and folded it accordion style then cut into the edges randomly.... Folded it in half, offsetting the edges a bit, and then gathered it along the folded edge.

I laid a piece of this on the bias tube and stitched it down. Next I laid another gathered piece on the first, with the folded edges just overlapping. To fill in the middle I took a single layer of the cut edge drapery fabric and gathered it down the middle. This was laid in the middle and stitched down to the bias strip.

All that was left was to stitch the bias tube onto the end of the sleeve carefully by hand.

I made a little belt for the back and some pom poms and it was done.......... Here's before and after ( I kind of like the simplicity of the untrimmed version, but the design was otherwise)

coat collar continued

I cut the collar on the bias in one piece- without a CB seam because of the bulk (and extra work) a seam would add. You would usually have a CB seam in a bias cut collar - such as the under collar on a suit -because you can ensure that the bias is the same on both halves. The 2 biases in a fabric stretch differently.

Onwards..

I check the collar one more time by pinning it to the neckline, then I bound the outside edge with bias binding and serged the neckline edge.This collar will only be one layer of fabric thick. This was only being worn a few times so a serged edge was ok.

I proceeded to hand stitch the collar to the neckline of the coat. I am using a heavy button/craft thread to do this and whipping evenly over the serged edge

All done- here's the finished collar installed and the coat is now ready for trimming which I will show you next. You will notice that with the one piece bias collar, the quilting pattern is not the same on the right and left, since I was covering the collar with "fur" it did not matter. If it didn't get trim it would have been a better choice to put a seam in the CB and have a symmetrical look.

collar for child's coat

I had to make a child's floor length coat that was similar to the men's coats that I showed earlier. One difference was that the child's coat zipped up to the neck and thus required a differently shaped collar.

I started here with the coat on the stand with the neckline machine stitched to compress the batting.

I could have drafted a collar but I often find when I get to this stage, it is just as easy and quick for me to cut a rough shape out in the fabric by eye (I have been at this a while and I kind of knew what the collar shape should be) and drape a collar.

One advantage is that I can see right way what this fabric is doing rather than make a paper draft and try it twice.

Here's my rough shape cut on the bias. Just half the collar to drape with. I have to make sure that the CB does not pull out of alignment when I pin the collar shape on.

Here it is pinned to the neckline, and then as it looks when it is turned down.

I measured the neck sewing line to get the proper measurement to check against what I have draped and then this is my corrected pattern on paper.

Next: cutting it out and sewing it on.

tabard with wings

One of the groupings of costumes was called the "First Nations Family" This particular piece was worn by the elder male of the group (sorry , I can't name names here) who is, in real life, a First Nations chief from the west.

This costume began with simple hip length, long sleeved quilted tunic that zipped up the front.

Worn over that was a quilted tabard that I manipulated the quilted design to be rectangular zig-zag blocks rather than stripes.

Worn over the tabard was a cowl with "wings" (for want of a better word), at the back.

In the case of multiple layers such as these being worn, you need to be able to ensure that the clothes stay in the position you want them to, while they are being worn. I also wanted the performer to be able to remove layers, or leave layers off until the last minute because you can imagine the heat of wearing all this in an indoor arena while waiting to go onstage.

The tunic was closed CF with a zipper. The tabard closed on one shoulder and I snapped and velcroed it it to the tunic so it would stay in position. The cowl and wings attached to the tabard so the whole unit would work as one.

The cowl was built on a yoke structure of cotton duck that covered the upper chest and had a CB opening under the "wings".

I draped the fashion fabric cowl on the duck and stitched in the folds here and there by hand to hold it in place. The "wings" were 2 separate pieces of sun-ray pleated fabric that I attached to the base piece at the back neck and shoulder, folding them over on themselves to give a double layer. These were then hand stitched to the base, and then caught along the CB line which closed with snaps. I finished the back of the cowl shoulders with a narrow binding that was then stitched down over the back shoulder of the wings.

The front of the cowl was decorated with a row of bias tube "fringe" that went through small slits in squares of another decorative fabric. This technique was a take-off of original details on historic native clothing.

I wish I had taken photos of the wings being held out because it was a very dramatic and effective look.

I also wish they had shown more close ups of these during the ceremonies.

The look was topped off by an elaborate pleated head dress that was made by the very talented milliner-Kaz. I'll ask her if she has any photos to show.

floor length quilted coats

One of the designs I cut was a set of floor length coats for three different men, all with different quilting patterns. (the coats, not the men!)They had a bit of an early 19th century feel in some of the seam detailing as well as the shapes of the sleeves.

I wanted to get a nice flare in the skirt of the coat, and I achieved that by cutting a separate front skirt panel, and at the back, continuing below the curved back seams I put in an inverted box pleat. If I remember correctly, that pleat was seamed in behind so the rest of the back skirt panel provided even more flare.

The skirts needed to be divided into sections like this to keep the quilted square design matching. What I mean is, if I had cut the skirts in one piece as a large flared panel with pleats, matched the quilting design at the front, the pattern would look like it was dipping down as the skirt travelled around the body- does that make sense to you?

I cut the sleeves like period coat sleeves, with more arm shape than modern drafts will give. They have a shallow depth of crown which means they are a bit wider through the upper arm, and then I added a grown on gusset since I wasn't sure what the person wearing it would be doing. The cuff added a nice detail as well.

I finished these off with some of the drapery fabric made into "fur" that was sewn in behind the cuff and poked out beyond the edge and also was stitched onto the collar.

They turned out quite well, very striking really- but trying to sew the sleeves in with all that fabric in the skirts was a test of my patience at the sewing machine. The other two coats were sewn by Susy and Denise and they didn't seem to have as much of an issue with manipulating it but hey- I usually just make the patterns and cut- that's my excuse!

Next stages

Continuing with the story of the opening ceremony costumes, we needed the green light to go ahead with the rest of the costumes. The designer was flown out and the costume co-ordinator nabbed office staff in Vancouver to try on the prototypes for the producer to see.

We got the call that all went well- our prototypes hit the mark and were a success.. that sent us onto the next stage which was to get going on the rest as we needed to deliver finished goods by the end of November.

One thing that came out of the prototype fittings was the application of textured fabrics on top of the quilting, and using various fabrics to create effects such as fur.

Now in the past I have made "fur" out of tulle, but this fur was mostly made from a drapery fabric.

The process was simple enough- cut long strips of fabric, then accordion fold them up to a thickness that you can still manage to cut through, then start cutting random triangular pieces out of the edges, as well as cutting into the edge with straight cuts. Open the strips out, fold lengthwise, offsetting the cut edges a bit, then put in gathering stitches along the folded edge and gather to the density required. It sounds a bit loose and it was meant to be- the randomness while cutting ensures that when the strips are finished, you will get a good texture happening. You can then trim or cut a bit more after the strips are gathered and stitched by hand to the garment.

This is a sample of the textured fabric and fake fur "pelts" that were put on this item.

This coat had both an applique celtic knot and an edging of "fur " that was made from a layer of the quilted fabric, which had been cut into as described as well as a layer of the drapery fabric to create the texture.

prototypes

We had decided to approach this contract as a group, but in the end one of us had to sign the contract, and that was me. It was my first venture into being responsible for a project like this, and to be honest, a little nervous about signing on the dotted line. There were six cutters, including myself, who worked on it and although 60 costumes is not a lot of work for this many cutters, it ended up working out quite well as the timeline was very short. My nervousness was dispelled pretty quickly as we all got into the project- I have nothing but good things to say about everyone's commitment over the course of the project.

Once we had our meeting with the designer, (the very talented John Pennoyer) the producer chose three sketches to be the prototypes.The designs varied from contemporary looks to ethnic and period interpretations. We had no idea what the overall concept of the event was even though we were working on it. The important thing for them was to keep everything under wraps so the event would be a surprise on the day.

We rented the space to work in and proceeded to almost sequester ourselves due to the confidential nature of the work. This turned out to be a fine balancing act between obviously working in the building but pretending we weren't doing anything special, to papering over the windows in the doors, drawing the blinds and putting up "private rental- keep out" signs.

Three of the six cutters had the prototype sketches to do and since I was the organizer, I got to work purchasing thread and zippers and all the assorted supplies that we needed.

Every costume sketch had a volunteer performer assigned to wear it and we were given a full length photo of the person and maybe five or six really basic measurements. It wasn't a lot of information to cut by! We also wouldn't be the ones fitting or altering the costumes, and the onus was on us to get it right the first time both in fit, and design interpretation because they wouldn't have time to do much correcting after the costumes were shipped.

We shipped our prototypes off just before Thanksgiving and waited for the word to continue.

a lot of quilted fabric

Our costuming journey this fall started in late April with preliminary discussions about the possibility of working on the costuming for the opening ceremonies, and over the course of the summer the possibility began to become a reality.

By the end of September, the reality arrived by transport truck. Five thousand pounds of reality in the form of our fashion fabric pictured here. It seemed to be a double loft in terms of batting and since we had not seen the fabric before we started, we needed to figure out how to work with it.

Well, first we needed to get it out of the boxes which took three or four of us to manoeuvre the stacked boxes, open them, and pull out the 50 metre rolls of fabric where we could unroll it as it was needed.

The loft of the quilt batting made it challenging to deal with. Drawing your pattern out on it and cutting it meant pinning the loft down to control it. Then we found that every stitch line and every serged edge needed to be compressed by machine stitching before sewing the garment or finishing the seam allowances. If this wasn't done, you couldn't sew accurately and in many cases the fabric would pucker and pleat under the presser foot or against the feed dogs of the machine. This meant cutting the pieces beyond the finished seam allowance, and reducing it after compressing it.

We also found that it was easier to work with if we loosened off the presser foot tension on the machines as well as sew with a toe up velvet foot (which is a very narrow machine foot for industrial machines).

We couldn't touch the fabric with the iron either. There was a layer of fusible on both sides of the batting, right underneath the fashion fabric, which would turn to a crispy texture if you put the iron directly on it. We solved some of the issue by using steam, holding the iron just above the fabric, and using our hands or clappers to open up seam allowances.

We also figured out ways of dealing with the hems and bindings. We received unquilted fashion fabric that we cut on the bias for binding. This fabric on its own was quite lightweight and we found that a fusible tricot was needed to give it some body and make it better suited for use as binding. The hems couldn't have machined topstitching on the outside, because it would look odd with the various quilted patterns so we solved that by using a fusible hem tape.

Obviously these costumes were only being worn a few times and the fusible tape worked remarkably well in this situation.

The first priority/deadline: the production of three prototypes that had been selected from our group of costumes, to be delivered one week after the fabric arrived.

Winter Olympics

Well, the project that I took on in the fall will be revealed today, February 12, 2010 at 6 pm P.S.T. in Vancouver British Columbia. That is 9 pm E.S.T for those of us in Ontario, and I think 2 am on the 13th for those in Great Britain, 1 pm on the 13th for those in far away Australia.

The opening ceremonies for the 2010 Olympics will be broadcast on CTV in Canada, and by AP in other countries.

I can't wait to see the final result of all our work. (We did a specific group of designs, not the whole thing by any means.)

Waiting is what I will literally have to do since I will be away on my annual cross-country ski week-end at a place that doesn't have a television!!!

I hope you can take a moment to watch.

Can't say more than this right now, except thanks to everyone involved, and I am proud to have worked on it.

update: it looks like our section will be close to the beginning-maybe the second performance piece after the athlete's parade in, but I cannot totally confirm this.