Self Directed Project Final Evaluation

Erica Rupp

BA (Hons) Costume with Performance Design

Level 5

Self Directed Project

Final Evaluation

I feel like I have learned more working on Self Directed Project than any other unit we have had this far, not just about costumes, but about myself as well, which I really appreciate. I have produced one 18th Century men’s peasant shirt, one pair of 18th Century men’s peasant breeches, and one Victorian ladies’ blouse for the Costume Store portion of the project, and two finished wigs for figures five and six and some dyed netting  for figure three for the Rebels dance group for Breathe, accompanied by the blog http://sdpericar.blogspot.co.uk/, to include this evaluation. 

The first thing I worked on was the 18th Century peasant shirt, which was the simplest shirt and I expected to be fairly easy, but I ran into several issues. First, I had trouble with getting the placket straight and I found out how bad the fabric snagged. Then I accidentally got some green dye from a shirt I had screen printed from Battle for the Winds on the shirt and had to re-cut the shirt front, placket and cuffs. Then I was behind in construction, and ran into yet another problem when it came time to gathering the material for the cuffs and collar, but particularly had problems with the collar. I took hours out of a few weeks during making breeches and again with the blouse, first trying to get the pleats to look right, then getting them to stay in while I attached the collar, then top-stitching the collar down, but even on my final attempt it still wasn’t looking as good as I wanted. 

The breeches were also quite difficult, mainly because they were made out of a very thick wool which was hard to fold, and the main decorative element of the breeches was a pointed strap on the edge of the flap, so trying to get it to actually look pointed was difficult. I also had a bit of a problem with making the pockets, especially the welt, due to the thickness of the wool, and I didn’t notice until the welt was finished that the stayflex i had lined it with to help keep the shape wasn’t actually cut straight along the top so the welt isn’t straight either.

The Victorian blouse has been an absolute nightmare. It is exceptionally more difficult than the other two pieces, and the tiny 1/8” pleats nearly killed me. With the original tacking, pinning, sewing, pressing, then unpicking, removing all threads, untacking,  pressing out all the pleats, re-tacking much more careful and small, carefully pressing, pinning, sewing and re-pressing all the pleats, I spent at the very least a total of 20 hours on that alone. I’m only now working on smocking when the entire piece should have been finished. 

For Breathe, it was extremely late in the project - the fifth out of only eight weeks - before I actually officially knew what I was to be making; at the beginning we didn’t have designs, then after we got the designs, it was a while before we decided which designs Emma and I would be working on, so until then, we worked on hoods and ideas for knee pads which ended up getting sourced, and then there were a couple other weeks before it was officially decided that I would be making the headdresses for fig.5 (blue dreadlocks) and fig. 6 (mixed-media multi-coloured dreadlocks), along with the net I dyed for one of Emma’s skirts, which only left me 3 weeks to do everything, and each part of this took so much longer than i could’ve anticipated.

What I learned about myself is that apparently I’m still not terribly effective yet at directing myself - because I wrote my work plan I sort of didn’t pay attention to it, and when I kept running into problems with my work I kept procrastinating dealing with the problems, falling further out of schedule with my work plan and causing an impossible amount of catch-up work at the end. I usually do procrastinate, but have never had it catch up on me like this before and I seriously need to work on time management. I grossly miscalculated the amount of time it would take to finish literally every piece I’ve worked on for SDP.  

The Victorian Blouse - Pleats

Here is the finished front pleats:

And here are the back pleats, with one of the sets of eight finished, starting the second set;

that was one of the straightest pleats I made -

close up

pressed down pleat, full 

But then I did the pleat next to it and realized it wasn't nearly as straight as I thought, as you can see below:

 The finished back pleats:

I think it is important that the pleats are pressed straight, before they are even pinned and sewn; maybe spray starch would've helped me to get a straight line. Also, I think because the presser foot is sitting on the pleats before it, it creates wavy lines because its trying to balance on the bunch of pleats before.

The next step will be smocking;  here's the smocking grid I drafted:

and the information i copied on a book i borrowed about smocking

Eighth Week Breathe Review

Wednesday, 16 May: Breathe Together Club
I finished sewing down the dreads that were too small to stay down on their own and added a braid to the fig. 5 wig, finishing it.

And got some first years to help me prepare some mixed-media dreads for the fig. 6 wig with materials from the "Rebels" box while I painted the base of the second wig green to match the felt as well, then made a few dreads myself:

Thursday, 17 May: We only had a short amount of time to work Thursday, because Thursday afternoon was completely occupied with student presentations where all Level 5 got together to do powerpoint presentations of what they had done for SDP, so I just spent the morning organizing all my materials to bring home to work on after presentations.

I first started by sewing a row of feathers on as a sort of fringe in the front, then added beaded fringe along the back of the neck to fill some space. Then I sort of organized the dreads from the colour organization I had done earlier into a left/right/back style instead.

 I finished the right side first,

 then worked on the left side on Sunday,

 and had these pieces left for the back, which I finished Monday night,

 and photographed this morning:

Front

Right Profile

Back

Left Profile

And got this picture of the two wigs together:

Eighth Week (14-18 May) Costume Store Review

 Monday, 14 May: I finally got to talk to Dexter about my pleats, and he told me that the tacking I had done was much too large because the tacking is so small that the tacking has to also be small, and extremely precise, whereas my tacking had originally been quite large and didn't follow the line particularly well, so he told me I should carefully unpick the pleats (there were about 20 of them sewn up already), remove all loose threads and tacking, press them really well, and finally re-tack it all with small, straight stitches all along the line.

Then when doing the actual pleats, it helps to be sure to very carefully press and pin before sewing. Also, you can measure the distance between the needle and find out what is an 1/8" away, because it is very difficult to keep the pleat straight when it is that small, so I measured on my machine at home the distance from the needle to the inside of the leg that sticks out on my presser foot is an 1/8", and it has helped tremendously in keeping my pleats straighter this time around. They are still certainly not perfect, but they are looking much better!

I also continued working on my breeches, and got them to the point of just needing slip-stitching and buttons and button holes.
First, I tacked down button placement flap.

Then, I sewed the calf strap point

and adjusted one of the points to make them match,

and trimmed the seam allowance.

Then I turned the points around and pressed them.

Next, the strap is pinned on like a cuff:

and sewn in place.

After that, I trimmed the seam allowance

And pressed the seam down

then flipped the strap up,

tucked the seam allowance under and tacked and pressed it.

the pressed and tacked straps

Then I moved on to the little money welt pocket on the waistband.

attach welt right sides to right sides along the bottom tacked design line

sew back of pocket to top of welt, press and pull through

press welt up

push top out of way and secure down seam allowance

pull welt through back

trim pocketing

tack welt, sew pocketing together

Then the rest of the waistband was attached

seam allowance trimmed

seams pressed up, trimmed

waistband attached from outside

waistband attached from inside

Then I sewed up the back

and pressed open the seam allowance:

then sewed the waistband backing together through centre back:

and pressed it open:

Then I sewed the waistband backing to the waistband along the centre front and top:

trimmed the seam allowance:

and pressed, flipped, and tacked in place, hiding all seam allowance.

Tacked front of breeches with flap up:

Tacked front of breeches with flap down:

Back of tacked breeches: