pleat pleat pleat away

This morning is the last morning I have to work on my shirt. However this being said i am not as stressed as i was during the week. My pleats have finally gone in my favour and look identical to the eye. This i am very happy over.  I  feel i have accomplished something and proud that i have achieved the goal i set.  However this being said, every up has a down.  Once the pleats were done and we started to construct the collar the team I was working with and I found that our collars were to large for the neckline. Dexter has agreed to help us resolve this problem once he has had a chance to assess the pattern.

This has been a valuable lesson to learn: ALWAYS check patterns before use, especially if you were not the person to draft the work.

Overall for this garment I must admit it has been a rollercoaster. Some areas I have done well in and others I have found took extra effort and time to complete. The stains on the shirt still upset me as I worked hard to keep it pristine however it was a learning experience and on my next garment I will not let anyone else touch it or near it with pens paint ect. It was wonderful to work in a team with the other two girls and experience what it would be like in a professional workroom. Im still debating if this is the right road for me within costume, however I am hoping that once ive got my hands on a female garment my mind will be made up. After working on male garments all year so far it would be beneficiary to study a female one. 

a promising conclusion........... and then the pleating begins

After a shaky week last week I entered my second week on costume store with a few reservations, however once I had examined my work against the shirt example I found i wasn't far behind at all. Sewing and over locking the side seams became natural and once Dexter had approved of the work, I became much happier. Once the garment had a good press from the iron, it started to resemble the shirt. my next problem I had to face was pleating the pie crust collar. Each pleat had to be identical, a 1mm out and it became obvious. I have spent the past 2 days trying to make the perfect collar, however it has so far taken me two attempts to try. My first collar attempt was rejected as the pleats were to large and needed to be shrunk by 1cm and the second attempt again was turned down as the pleats were not even. I have found that once again i was rushing and needed to slow down.  I spoke to Dexter about my concerns and he has agreed to allow me to finish off any parts of the shirt I don't get done in late night study due to still working on Battle for the Winds. So in reflection of this my task is to create the pleats however taking my time, I have learnt a lot about myself through this part of the project. I am always on the go and need to learn how to slow my pace down, quality not quantity. This evening i have started my measuring out each pleat and marking the distances using a pencil (this will be hidden by the collar stand). Tomorrow I shall use the industrial iron and pins to secure the pleats in place.

So just a bit of stress later

As the end of the week has drawn to a close, I have found myself getting more and more stressed about not getting my work correct. I am rushing (due to also having to do Battle for the Winds) which i feel is my downfall and am hoping next week and a fresh pair of eyes will do the job. It started out on Wednesday morning trying to work the pleats out on the sleeves, I ended up doing this twice as the team I was in found our example shirt to be wrong. If done the way the shirt was showing us it would have been very bulbous and not historically accurate . once this was found we spoke to Dexter who informed us to gather at the head of the sleeve only with precise pleating. If we thought about this sooner it would have taken us less time and also would have allowed us to progress further into our garments during the day. This is something I feel I must improve on as in order to become a professional maker you need to spot mistakes early on to avoid time delays. After this mistake was cleared up i pinned the gussets to the sides on the shirt (where marked from pattern) and come Thursday morning i found that i had accidently pin tucked a corner. i had to remove all my pinning and redo it.  However today i started to calm down and found with a bit more concentration i could complete the parts needed. This afternoon i ironed the pieces and prepared everything for Monday. 


For next week my mantra shall be slow and steady wins the race.

time to get stitching

For the afternoon session of costume store, I decided to follow my original plan by going over the entire garment again for construction techniques I may have missed and then write down in order the best way to go about making the garment. once this was cleared by Dexter I made a start on the garment. The first stage was to attach the yoke to the shirt, this i found simple as i have previously made a shirt with a yoke before, however im still unsure about my top stitching. After this i needed to attach the placket to the front of the shirt. This was quite fiddly to do as i had to cut the opening just right so that the fabric did not stretch. I was able to make the correct snip on one side of the placket opening however I was 1mm out on the other side and this unfortunetly meant that the fabric stretched a bit to far. I rectified this by using a bit of my seam allowance to accommodate the additional length and pressed the placket securely down so it would not fray.  Within the next couple of days I am planning on completing the pleating on the sleeves, placing the gussets  and hopefully pressing and over locking the relevant seams.

Below is the shirt I am creating, along with relevant seams and garment parts

Team work

Today I have found team work is essential within a costume workroom. Working together I found that we cut down on a lot of the time consuming jobs and pulled on our strengths and weaknesses. We were able to complete all of our transfer of patterns to fabric, cutting out and ironing the material flat ready to start work tomorrow on construction. I feel this project shall really challenge me as this is something I have never attempted before. looking at our example garment I feel the trickiest parts shall be placing the gussets into the arm pits and pleating the pie crust for the collar. Tomorrow before I leave, I think its a must that I give the garment example an inspection to see what seams lay where and techniques used to build the garment and take note of more problem areas.

The Beginning

Today was the first day of my Self Directed Project and if I'm honest I think this is going to be my toughest project yet, but a welcomed challenge.

For this project I have decided to work with the costume store, making garments from patterns lent to us by the National Theatre. I and 11 others will be working under the supervision of our lecturer Mark Dexter and our costume supervisor Amy Yates. It has been decided that whilst we are on this project we shall be within a professional working environment that is usually stated in a costume workroom. This includes taking set breaks, meeting deadlines and evening finishing times.

Throughout the next 8 weeks I shall be following a specific work plan which will allow me to create the following garments:

• Week 1-2: Historical Male Shirt
• Week 3-5: 18th Century Breeches or Waistcoat
• Week 6-8: Victorian Female Blouse 

By the end of this project I hope to gain a greater understanding of historical garments and the theory/work behind how each garment is made. 

The next two weeks running up to Easter will be very intense as not only do I have SDP to work on I also have my costume from my previous project "Battle for the Winds" which is due in on the 23rd of March. I am going to have to make sure I plan ahead and keep to a very tight schedule in order to complete all the work.