Bridesmaid Dresses

Being on placement year I was able to make the bridesmaid dresses for my brother's wedding to his fantastic wife (fantastic for many reasons including having a great taste in dress styles making them much more fun for me to make)

Here are some photos of the processes I went through, not including the white mock-ups or 'Victorian Dresses' as the bridesmaids liked to call them! 

To make the bodices I cut out the Satin and then laid the Georgette over the top and gathered it with gathering stitches at the bottom, top and middle. Then pinned to secure before cutting off any excess fabric before stitching with my machine.

I was worried with the dresses only having one strap that the neckline needed to be firm so that they did not stretch out of shape, especially important so that no accidental slippage happened! To prevent this I used tape and then top stitched to pull the lining down behind the outer fabrics.

(No pictures of the skirts as they were just plainly gathered rectangles.)

In total around thirty fabric roses were made (with the help of some willing elves from work and me getting some very strange looks on the train) and then broach pins were sewn onto the backs of them.
I thought that as the bride wanted all the dresses to be slightly different that this would allow the girls to put the flowers where they wanted, putting some in their hair as well, and be able to move them around if they wanted to wear the dresses again. Some of the flowers also had beading added to them for a little bit of sparkle which is always required on a special occasion.

Thankyou to my fab sister in law and the beautiful bridesmaids.

Lizzie x

Regency-Frankenstein Bonnet

Last summer I was on placement with the lovely Jema Hewitt where we ate lots of cake, drank lots of tea but most importantly created lots of exciting things.

Jema gave me the project of designing a Frankenstein inspired Regency outfit, so I did all the usual research and decided to have the silhouette relatively historical and then to embellish and distort the fabric to display the Frankenstein theme.

Above are my illustrations...below the bonnet made by me with the help and guidence of Jema. (dress Jema's own creation)

More coming soon,

Lizzie x

September Wedding Guest Outfit

Being a student teaches you to be resourceful...

I collect lots of bits and bobs and although this means having to have lots of storage it also means I can be creative. Using my Great Aunt's old dress, an antique broach and some beads I made my wedding guest outfit. Scissors and thread were also used alot to alter the dress.

(Please excuse the unsteamed dress and various kitchen products in the background.)

Hope you all like it 

Lizzie x

Placement at Pauline Forster Bridal Wear Design

Bridal designer Pauline Forster took me on for a couple of months in her lovely shop. She works with her customers to design individual bridal gowns, bridesmaid and flower girl dresses. 

These are two of the flower girl dresses I made with her technical advice and nudges on trying to get me to add my own design ideas.

See some of her beautiful dresses at 

www.paulineforster.com

Costume Design with Textiles 2nd Year Final Piece

For my second year project the brief was to design for James and the Giant Peach. As I love the 50's I designed the costumes around the 50's silhoutte with my textiles based on fibres. Thankyou to my model Karen who made a lovely Mrs Ladybird.

Hope you like the photos...more of my work coming soon...when I can figure out this blog, hmmm