Sewing class

As you may know, I am taking a sewing class at Andover High School this year. I just recently finished our first project in that which was a bag. We didn't have a pattern, our teacher just told us each step. It was pretty fun even though it was sort of easy. It was more relaxing than stressful. I love my bag! Here is what it looks like.

It was loads of fun to make and I use it every day. I like to sew stuff that is useful. As you can see the inside is blue and the outside is purple with a yellow pocket. I also got to use an embroidery machine for my pocket design. I put my initials on the pocket front just for fun. I did something I had never done before with this project, the corners of the bag. It was interesting how we did them. We folded the corners so the seams lined up and the just stitched across them. I was sort of scared to do that because I thought it would ruin the corners, but I guess not. It ended up giving the corners a sturdy edge and look more professional. So in the end I had a bag, a nice bag that I was proud of.

Something new!

I decided one day that I wanted to design and sew something new, something different. So I took an old skirt pattern and altered it a bit and made a smaller sized pattern. I cut out the fabric with my new little pattern pieces and started to sew. I really didn't know what i was doing to tell the truth. In the end it looked like a little doll sized skirt! I went and got my American girl doll to try it on, but it was to big. I was disappointed. I had wanted it to work. So I tried it one her in a different way, as a dress! It ended up working perfectly as a strapless dress!

I went out into the garden and took some pictures of her in it, and here they are.

Divine

It has been a long while since my last post, but that is because I have been ever so busy with costume design and writing a book about fairy fashion. I now have a scrap of time to write. I will soon start my next journey to the sewing machine. My hope is to create a dress from the 1200s time and also sew a cape. I want to finish it before winter so that I can use the velvet cape on cold nights.

Isn't it lovely? I am saving up for the fabric because I want it to be nice and expensive. I will spend lots of thought thinking about the right color. I don't want white because that gets dirty quickly. I would love to know what color you think will look good with this dress.

Costume Designing

I have discovered a love for costume designing. I love to sew, AND I love to design my own styles and fashions, (e.g. fairy fashion :) so being a costume designer for a movie would be a dream for me. Next year when I go to the high school, I will take all their sewing classes and all their fashion classes, so I can learn everything I can about that wonderful career.
One of the things that helped me discover this was the behind the scenes of The Lord of the Rings DVD. I know it sounds silly at first. The behind the scenes had a section about the costume that were needed to bring it off the ground.

In the Lord of the Rings there were:
*19,000 costumes all sewn just for the movie
*40 seamstresses
*billions of hand linked links for chain mail
*tons of hand embroidered costumes
*and too many other amazing things to be able to mention them all

This is why I want to be a costume designer. If you don't understand why I am excited about 19,000 hand designed costumes, then I guess you weren't made to be a costume designer:)

Future Wedding Dress?

Ahhh. Look at that dress. I found this dress while searching for Fairy Fashion on the Internet. I wish I could sew like that. I am resolved to sew my own wedding dress and I will make it look like this one as much as I can. But that is a ways up the road from now so I had better learn to sew that well.

I think that drawing dresses might help me in the long run of being a costume designer, so to figure out how to tweak the dress to my liking, I drew it up in different ways. I drew a spring-like sleeveless dress

and a more old styled dress with small puffed sleeves.

Renaissance Costume

Last year I went to a renaissance festival with my family for a day, and we dressed up for it. I wore a dress that looked sort of like a Cinderella dress and my sister wore a cape she had made. At the festival there were lots of shops that sold fabulous dresses and outfits and there were people like us who wore fabulous outfits. I got so many sewing project ideas there I had trouble keeping them all in my head, but I managed to remember some of them.

My favorite dress that I saw there was a fitted dress with a thin cord around the waistline and a full skirt below it. I drew it up as best I could but it is nothing like the real dress.

The hair of this girl is in two parts as you can see, and has a ribbon wrapped around each part. This is not a braid, but long rolls of hair that are held together by the ribbons. I found this very interesting.

If you have a dress or outfit that caught your eye, you can post as a comment and I would love to see it.

Fairy Fashion

Something that has grabbed my interest is Fairy Fashion and Fairies. I design Fairy like dresses and outfits and then draw fairies wearing them. Here are some of my favorites:

A fancy ball gown for Royalty

Desert Fairy Tunic

Commoner's ball gown

Fancy party dress

Fairy ballet leotard