The Sweet Tutu

I think it's safe to say that the past 6 months has been the busiest time of my life over 1 single project. For anyone who has been following my progress on facebook, I thank you for putting up with my posts, photo splurging and for taking interest.

Model- Leigh Cookson
Photographer- Sarah French

So why the tutu? Well cleshay answer number 1, The tutu was something I wanted to cover on my course. Looking back to when I went to the Costume graduate exhibition before I left school (that was a very long time ago!), the tutu's in the exhibition blew me away just as much as the 19th century period costumes. So when the opportunity arose at the start of the academic year, I jumped straight on it. Answer number 2, For anyone who knows me, or has read my introduction, my background is dancing, having a mum with a dancing school and a big wardrobe full of costumes!!! If it wasn't for my mum dragging me to the costume store every school half term and putting me in the dressing room for every production she supplied dancers for, I don't think I would have developed the strong passion and love for costumes and theatre that I have now. I wanted to pay homage for that background but add a little bit of Lucy Bell craziness into the mixture.

So how did this crazy idea start? So back in November the costumes girls and I went to see The Nutcracker at our theatre in Bournemouth. At this point I was definitely wanted to do the tutu project, I just didn't know which character. Whilst watching the Sugar Plum Fairy suite I remembered that the last time I watched the ballet, in London,I was extremely disappointed with the Sugar plum Fairy's costume. From their I went on a slight mission to remember every single version of Nutcracker I had seen. The one that stuck out the most was Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker with a line in the programme I own “Everything is edible in Sweetieland and its inhabitants are judged not by how they look but how they taste!” 

So from this quote I had the new question of could I make you judge my work by looking but make your taste buds very aware of what you can see? So from here I changed the extremes. I decided to create my own version of the Sugar Plum Fairy, with the intention to make her the brightest, sweetest, most artificial (remember the artifical part!) character on the planet. With this decision came the second decision and advisory from my tutor that because of the amount of extreme detail and textiles that would be done, the tutu would be better as an exhibition piece where you could look close up at the sweets. Rather than see them from a distance and half the detail would lost.... not to mention that half of the decoration would possibly fly off the minute the dancer did pirouettes. 

The parts that should have made me insane (and probably did) 

The one challenge that went through many trials and errors in the entire project. How the bloody hell am I going to make these sweets look real? Thanks to our uni having an amazing workshop department, the technicians there gave me a helping hand where they introduced me into silicone and resin. 

 All the sweets in the boxes were covered in silicone where they made maulds for resin. For the more squidgy guelliton sweets the same process was made but use liquid latex instead of resin. Other sweet processes were made but i'm not telling you everything ;)

Model- Leigh Cookson
Photographer- Sarah French 

 Disolvable fabric. A textile technique I wanted to try so this was a good excuse to experiment. In my samples I could create caramel baskets and sugary treats. But what made it to the tutu was layers of various pinks, purples, blues, and green thread machined in different patterns created the look of candyfloss stretched out. On a small scale it was fun. On a bigger scale...

... I went a little mad. In total I think I spent 19 hours machining like crazy but once the water runs through you get this cool effect.

The last insane idea was to make edible rose petals. Another textile technique I found that I wanted to try. The process was easy. However...

Photo courtesy of Becki Fisher  
                                                                             

                                              .... there are over 100 petals!.....

                               ....and I was mad enough to bead every single one of them too!

Model- Leigh Cookson
Photographer- Sarah French 

Well that showcases all the mad things I have done in this project. I hope you have enjoyed this post. Sorry it has taken me so long to get round to writing it. 

List of thank yous 

Dexter- thank you for teaching me the art form I always wanted to learn. It has been an amazing journey and I would easily do it all again. Also thank you for believing that I could do this and pushing my boundaries further than my limit.  

Heather, Mikala and Sophie- We did it guys! We can all make tutu's and they all look amazing! 

Sarah French- Thank you for stepping in as photographer last minute. 

Emma Rae Hart- Thank you for doing the hair and make up. It adds to the final touch perfectly. 

Leigh Cookson- My beautiful model

Becki, Hanah, Emma, Danae, Helen and Jess- In the last 2 weeks of the project, at some point these guys all helped me: bead, sew petals, forced fed me chocolate, injected caffine into my bloodstream (okay they got me caramel lattes) and have pulled me back on my feet when I wanted to breakdown. Thank you guys for keeping me alive!!!! 

And lastly (and cheesey thank you but its needed) Mum- This project would never have existed if I had never gone to dancing, never seen a ballet and had never played dress up in dressing room 8 or the costume store. Thank you for giving me all of this. 

In Extremis

A post I've been meaning to do for a while. Gonna keep this one short as it was a while ago.

So for my Specialist Practice unit I made a costume for the medieval play In Extremis. Designed by Emma Peters (a fellow student on my course). Medieval period was something on my "to do list" in the making department and supporting a student designer seemed like a good idea for the hope of future work. So what the hell.... lets make a Medieval costume.

My character was King Louis VI AKA Louis the Fat/Gross. Challenge 1: Making my character look big as the actor is skinny and is multirolling. Solution: Make a fat suit that can survive a quick change.

Challenge 2: Imply textile skills somewhere in the project. Solution: The design for the cloak had an autumn leafy pattern to it. This was something I wanted to interpret from scratch. However due to time and money this wasn't possible. So I was given a pre-printed fabric as a base and I was to work on top of it. I simply copied the original leaf motif and intended on printing it in a bolder colour.

Happy Accident time!

A simple accident where I had more binder than metallic dust created a see through silhouette that the Designer just so happened to love. Enhanced with a little gold paint edging this print went on the fabric.

The Final Product (this is not my photo!)

So there you have in In Extremis told in a nutshell. Sorry it took me so long to post!

Candide

Candide. A uni project that has taken over my life for the past 2 months. Originally written by Voltaire the story of Candide takes the Catholic philosophy that "despite all the evil in this world this is the best out of all possible worlds", throws a lot of horrific stories and adventures upon one man who takes this view optimistically and questions if this view is really true. Written in the 18th century and then turned into an operetta in the 1950's. So this was the show that was given to us for our Concept in Context project. Costume Designer Johanna Muessig was inspired with black and sepia colours as well as the obscene decorations the 18th century was crazed with.

My character is one of the women of Venice that Candide meets on his travels. They are essentially prostitutes but the Venusians have a little more class about them compared to other prostitutes Candide comes across.

Creating this character wasn't the easiest of makes I have had but then again I wasn't expecting it to be either. For starters the main dress is a sackback dress. This already makes my dress being a big make with the amount of fabric I had to pleat. This also came with the financial realization that my costume was going to cost a lot and that doesn't even include the designer's expensive taste in fabrics. But possibly taking Candide's optimistic view it was a challenge I was willing to overcome.

Next crazy task. There was a subtle pattern with the design. I tried to find fabrics with a subtle pattern that looked 18th century pattern style. i did find one perfect sample.... except from the slight problem that the fabric was white and it wouldn't dye so easily. So what crazy idea do I come up with? How about screen printing the pattern onto 6 metres of black silk dupion. What idea did the designer that I even more crazy to do? Stitching round all the screen printing. All I can say is thank God for Radio 1 and a fellow student doing screen printing for keeping me company in the dye room for 3 and a half days and a big thank you to my box sets of Family Guy for getting me through 2 days of manic sewing. Although i must say I do enjoy making crazy fabrics and doing this kind of textily costume stuff has made me think that I may want to go with this element of costume, whilst doing the odd freelance makes on the side.

Snood. First ever head piece I have made. Surprisingly a quick make too. :)
The back view of my costume. Told you there was a lot of fabric.
So there you have it. the 18th century in a nutshell. i have learnt that the 18th century is extremely time consuming as well as money consuming. I feel I have turned into the box pleating and the screen printing queen. The most iomportant thing I have learnt that if you want to save the environment the sackback dress is not the best way to go. I may be held responsible for a few trees after the amount of pattern paper I have consumed over this project.

Introduction

Lucy. AKA Tinkerbell. Also known as Lulu, but further known as Chugapug.

Giving this a second go as my first blog had nothing more than an introduction and I fogot my adress. Also having a blog is now part of a uni unit. So hear goes take two! XD

I'm a costume student at the AUCB. I'm currently making a sackback dress from the 18th century so if your that lucky and worth it I may put some pics of the final piece on here.
What else can you expect? Well apart from my Self Directed Project stuff I make a lot of random and crazy fancy dress outfits for parties and events so I will get round to posting pics up. I have also designed and made ballet costumes for kids between the ages of 3-8 years. For child safety reasons (and because I just don't want to get into trouble) I'm not posting pics of these costumes up.... but I will hunt around for the designs at least. What else.... hmmm.... be warned for some crazy and purely bizzare posts of costume thoughts and.... well just random thoughts altogether.

Right I'm off. Got a costume to sort out! Hope I haven't made you bored already XD

Tinks