Bathing suit drafting and construction- 2020 projects

 Well, where are we?

Oh yes, lets look at the next bathing suit I drafted. I had one successful pattern and contruction under my belt, so I felt this next one was worth using some fabric I had purchased but didn't want to waste on a trial garment.

I had an existing tankini suit that had seen better days, and I liked the design of the top, but I felt that it never really fit me that well. You know, it was good enough but better is better, right?

The top was a halter style with ties and a ring detail at the centre front bust. The ring was in great shape, so I took the old bodice apart- which is always an interesting and informative process. You can see the order that the garment was constructed and the techniques that were used.

I had been poking around at my local fabric store and I found some lightweight power net in a pale blue colour. It was onsale too! I decided, since I am experimenting, that I would try that as a lining in this suit. I think I also bought some flat rubber elastic for this one as well. I hadn't worked with it before, so why not now?

Stuart had a tutorial on his website for this process. I have since discovered that these lessons are now under a paywall. I think if you are interested in making bathing suits, or stretch wear it is well worth the cost.

My first draft, and then the altered pattern. I basically made the same pattern alterations here as I did in the first bathing suit in the previous post. (I added length over the bust)

I started again from scratch though, partially for the practice, and also to make sure that I wasn't making changes based on fabric characteristics.  

The second photo is the altered pattern. 

At the bottom you can see the idea of the design pinned up on the stand.

We will have a more detailed look at it next...

    

Keeping busy?

      In March of 2020, when everything shut down,  I was up to my eyeballs in work. It was quite astonishing how in the previous year and a half we had gone from worry about not having enough work being available, to way too much work, and then absolutely no work at all.

At the time of shut down, I had a large ongoing project for the new Swan Lake for the National Ballet of Canada, I had a project for a suit and overcoat for a tv show, and I had started back at the Festival. (once those projects get onstage or onscreen I will share, but for now I cannot)

On paper, and in our most positive outlook, it was all scheduled to pan out properly but of course it didn't. Unexpected delays, fabrics or fittings unavailable pushed all these projects upon each other. It is exactly the kind of situation that I try to avoid.  

When we were sent home from the theatre two weeks before the tech dress, I frantically used the strange gift of time we had been given to get everything back in order. Ballet costumes done as far as possible, check! Overcoat and three piece suit finished?Check!

Then what? If you work in this business you get used to deadlines and gearing up to the finish line, but the finish line became a distance blur.

We made masks, yes, many masks. When the call came from the local hospice, we were a well oiled machine of co-operation, organizers, cutters and sewers.

then what?

Well, we (myself and Lela- with whom I share the studio space) started creating projects with deadlines for ourselves! Honestly! Old habits die hard.

The first project was stretch wear- specifically bathing suit drafting and construction. Luckily for us, Pattern School Online run by the amazing Stuart Anderson had resurfaced from the depths of neglect on the internet, and it proved to be a valuable learning experience.

I made three bathing suits, and not only did I finish them, but I am very happy with them. The first was the trial run and mock up of a basic rather modest pattern. Cheap and cheery too. 

I went on a shopping expedition. I found this basic floral print fabric and I found something to use as lining- not marked as bathing suit lining per se, but something I felt would perform well as a lining. Since I was making a trial garment that I hoped would be wearable, I went old school and hand basted in the lining, and left a fair bit of seam allowance for alteration purposes. It was zigged together and tried on, then serged using a domestic four thread serger for the main seams and an industrial three thread serger and domestic zig for elastic application. I think I found patience to be a virtue in this endeavour especially with the elastic and how the machines handles the fabrics.

I think the calculation for elastic was the most challenging and most interesting part of the process. I really appreciated delving into the why and how of it all. Stuart does an excellent job of examining and explaining how stretch works (or doesn't). 

By the time I was ready to hit the beach, there were shutdowns at the lake due to overcrowding, so this piece had its debut at a friend's pool! My daughter thinks it is matronly looking but I don't care. The next one has a lot more flair!

That will be next.

 

Cutting an "old fashioned" bathing suit

Tucked in amongst the suits and trousers we are making, is a little project that was a lot of fun to do.
We needed to make an old fashioned bathing suit for the character of "the lifeguard".
Sort of like the gentleman second from the left in this photo.

First the material- we used a wool/Lycra blend from Whaleys which for some reason I cannot find listed on their website- I hope it has not been discontinued! It is really fabulous fabric. Pricey- yes, at $78/ yard  (2008 pricing from our stock tag) but for specific projects like period tights or period bathing suits, nothing else that I have used compares to it. Anyhow, being wool it does shrink too, so a wash and dry to preshrink it was necessary.
For the red stripes, we used a lightweight poly cotton colourfast knit that was cut into 3" strips and laid on top of the wool/Lycra base.
It is important to make sure the red was not going to run and turn the whole thing pink!

I had to make a few pattern decisions right off the bat. There are a few options for making this pattern.
Breaking it down- where do we want the seaming to be?
It could be an all in one unitard pattern- no waist seam. These unitards often have no CF seam at all. Sometimes they have a side seam, but many do not. In that case the pattern would have to have a CB seam from the neck down through the CB of the seat. All the body shaping happens through that one seam.
I didn't think that a CB seam in the bodice area would look right. Plus I am applying stripes, and that didn't seem like a good shape for this.

So I decided that the bodice should like a tank top, with only side and shoulder seams.

That leaves the lower section to think about.

Normally a pair of shorts has a waistline, CF, side and CB seams to shape around the body. I decided to not have a CF seam in the shorts, allowing the stripes to be applied flat across the front.
I decided to keep the waist seam, which would allow me to fit and adjust the garment length very easily.
Since we were applying stripes, I figured that a stripe could be used to disguise the waist join.
That meant that the back of the shorts would have a CB seam and all the length required through the fork or crotch extensions would be on the back piece.

This is the first fitting, cut right into the fabric and zigged together.You can see that I have pinned some length out of the bodice section. This was just at the back waist not in the front.The designer did not want this fit very tightly to the body, so I left the overall fit around the body as is, and honestly the waist seam allows a good fit without it being stretched to the limits.

I basted on a few stripes to confirm their width. I thread marked the neckline and armhole lines but did not insert any elastic at this point as I wanted to confirm the design lines.

The next step was to mark the alterations, take it apart, cut the stripes and start sewing them to the base. We used a coverstitch machine to apply the stripes. The only tricky part was that we worked from the inside as we wanted the covering threads to cover the raw edge of the red stripes. The usual double line stitch of the coverstitch was now on the inside.

You can see the inside of the fronts more clearly here with the stripes applied.
At the waist we joined the bodice to the shorts with a flat overlapped seam rather than a regular seam so the join would not be noticeable. Again we used the coverstitch for this.
The same technique was used to put the shoulders together. This is much less bulky overall. The only seams that had regular four thread serging were CB of the shorts, inseam and the side seams.

The stripes on the front of the shorts section will determine how we place the stripes in the back section. If this were pre-striped fabric I would not be able to control the look of the stripes overall, and would likely have to cut this quite differently.


On the back of the shorts section, the CB seam was joined first, then it was attached to the back bodice. Then the stripes were applied.

You can see here that the third stripe down from the waist takes a drastic turn from the side seam under the seat, then over to the inseam. The stripes will match at the side seam, and will also match to the corresponding stripe on the front inseam.
This is where a pre-striped fabric will be a problem visually! It would never match up to the front at the inseam. Here we can manipulate things to be as we want them. Very tricky, don't you think?

Once all the stripes had been applied, the shoulders were sewn, and then the sides and inseam.

The final process was to finish the neckline and armholes. We wanted to install elastic in those edges but not in the usual manner of zigging or serging the elastic in. This seemed too thick to do that successfully. So we serged those seam allowances down to a scant 1.5cm, turned them to the inside  and stitched a half inch away to form casings, then fed elastic into the armholes and neckline. We could then adjust the length of the elastic as needed at the next and final fitting as seen below.

How much fun is that? 

It was a good project to stretch (haha) my pattern making and our sewing techniques.

cheers!

a man in wolf's clothing?

It has been quite hectic here with all that is going on. I think I say this a lot don't I?
I mentioned in a reply to a comment that everything is happening April 30th!
We need to assist our daughter to move out of her university digs and into a sublet in the city she is in, and I have a tech dress rehearsal on the 30th too. I guess my studio is moving on May 1st, and therefore my dear husband is on his own for the big city/daughter move. Whew!

I believe that I have been able to secure a new spot for my studio -knock on wood- but I am waiting for confirmation and a few more small details to be worked out. It is a relief, and just in time because I have more than enough stress with work and life in general.
I still need to hire a truck and finish packing up in preparation. I will also need to do some painting and flooring work before I can set things up, so I don't think I will be set up and functioning right away. Oh well, at least there is a light on the horizon.

So I actually have two shows going into tech in three weeks, one on the 28th and the other on the 30th. Then I have a small window to get a show together for the mid May period. The pace is not going to get slower for a while yet.

Here's one of two costumes that I fit yesterday, which I am quite happy with. This is an example of what I term "there is no formula" for doing the work we do. Trial and error  experience and adaptation. Or flying by the seat of your pants way of working!

This is the wolf.

This has been in limbo for a few weeks while we were backed up with other priorities. The tail was ready though! There was a lot of pattern making to do for this costume.

The base layer to this costume is a stretch legging and a long sleeved stretch top that zips up the front.
I think it should have been a unitard and it may still get joined together but for now it is two pieces.
Pattern number one and two- actually, I had to redo the patterns as I was given a fabric to use that had a different stretch factor, but there wasn't enough of it in the end to make the whole costume. So ditch those patterns, get new fabric, recalculate the stretch and make new patterns!

We also needed a pattern for the basque that supports the tail. That pattern I developed from a skirt draft. ( I am not actually following a specific draft, merely the concept of it here).

The next set of pattern making involved the fur layer.
The fur does not stretch. We have a few hanging stands in the wardrobe, but the one with a good size for the torso has legs only to above the knee, and the stands with full legs have short stocky bodies.  I decided to trust my flat pattern making skills to figure it out rather than draping something on a stand.

I then needed to draft for the fur layer and figure out how it could be manipulated to fit closely in the body and allow the actor full movement. He demonstrated some of the fight choreography (full lunges in armour) in the first fitting, so that informed my subsequent thinking.

The fur on the wolf's tail was applied in sections to allow movement, and I applied the same principle to the leg area.
I drafted up a trouser pattern outline, and then modified it to be closer fitting, then I figured out the areas of overlap.

My actual pattern is so marked up with thinking lines that I drew a little diagram of what I did.

I didn't need to cover the areas of the body that are covered with armour, such as the lower legs which have greaves, and a knee piece - what are they called?   Poleyns, I believe.

The thigh area fur is cut in four pieces. It is seamed up the back of the leg and shaped to follow the contours of the thigh and buttocks. It has an inseam and outseam, and a seam up the front of the leg where I left adjustment room- extra seam allowance.

The over layer is like a pair of short shorts.
I reduced the girth a bit as I am working off a trouser draft, which is too roomy in general. I also darted out from the CF and CB lines to the hem of the shorts in order to get a closer fit there.

The basque was made of duck and corseting and is heavily boned with spiral steels in order to support the escutcheon for the tail.

We found out that we need to shorten the spring inside the tail as you can see! Move the escutcheon piece upwards as well.
The escutcheon piece has holes drilled in it so it can be sewn on. It needs to have some kind of keeper as well, because the tail is very bouncy and popped out of the holder. Well that is what the fittings are for- figuring stuff out- what works and what doesn't.
We will then cover the basque with fur.

In the course of talking this through with Susy- who put it all together, we found that we could sew an elastic to the edge of the fur, and use that elastic as a means to attach the fur to the leggings. That means the thigh piece can be a little bigger than the thigh measurement, we can ease the fur to the elastic, and when it is attached there is still some give for muscle expansion.

The same principle with the shorts- the lowered waist can be eased onto elastic then attached to the stretch legging. This leaves the fur shorts free to move independently from the fur on the thigh. and also still be a pull on garment.
I had a lucky guess in how nicely the pieces worked together. The fur is bulky so the over layer needs to be bigger than you might think, and all our layers worked well together. you couldn't tell they were actually two pieces.

We did a similar process with the chest and armhole and sleeves. The fur elbow to upper bicep in one piece, the fur upper sleeve attached to the fur armhole facings/chest area, but left loose over the upper arm piece.
We will leave the armholes and sleeve of the stretch and fur separate so the fur pieces just float over the stretch. That should allow the most freedom of movement-  I hope it does anyway. Seemed good on the day anyway.

The other fitting was for a suit- which I guess i will talk about later as this post has gone on and taken me most of the day to get together.

Later....




also
Goodbye to our friend, Paul "eggs" Benedict, sound engineer extraordinaire, and all around lovely person.
2016 has been difficult- losing so many people we have had in our lives.

Radio silence has ended! plus cool stuff

Hello one and all,

I realized today that I have not had much to say on the blog recently.
I am trying to figure out why that is.

I do have a lot of thoughts, but the topics are either so complicated that I give up trying to write about them or so fleeting in nature that they don't prod me to write.

For the moment though, you may may be interested in the fact that as a tailor- cutter in a theatre, I am called on to make all sorts of garments, and this year I do have some suits, yes, but I have a bit more of things like this.

yes, unitards or variations on the theme!

I often joke with people as I am taking their measurements, that I need to take some certain specific ones, in case we have to make them a unitard! Sometimes that happens.

We actually don't take the detailed type of measurements that a place like cirque will take for their costumes, so when unitards or other stretch wear arises, it can be a bit of hit or miss.

These types of garments and the patterns required for them depend greatly on the fabric chosen.

Can I put a public service announcement here for all designers? Please, please, buy good all way stretch. Spend the money for it. Fabric that stretches in both directions makes for easier pattern making and for wearing. 

In this case, I have basically a one way stretch fabric. I had to cut it with the stretch around the body and the non-stretch vertically. The upper body will not be seen, so I have worked around the lack of stretch in the crushed velvet legs by adding a very stretchy fabric above the waist. In this manner I hope to have given the actor some comfort in being able to sit down easily at least.

This was a first fit, all zigged together with somewhat incorrect (old) measurements, so I have some work to do, tweaking the pattern.

Oh, what is that thing he is attached to you ask?

It is a wire frame body of an animal. You will have to wait for a bit for more details, but it also is a first trial fit on the actor. Our prop maker Kenny (a mastermind of an artist, sculptor and maker of cool things)  has built these frames for the show we are working on. The bands around the actor's thighs are attached to wires that connect to the back legs of the sculpture, so when the actor walks, the animal legs walk as well. Very cool.

Strange co-incidence, Kenny and I trained in the same fine arts program but he graduated just before I started. We have been working together for 25+ years and only found this out last month! We had the same instructors and had a moment reminiscing about that time. Isn't it funny how these things happen?

I think this season will feature structure quite prominently as I look around the wardrobe these days, so I will endeavour to get some postings up about that and rekindle my blogging spirit.

Cheers

here's a little video link to a bit more of Kenny's work....please watch it, it gives me goosebumps.