This project has been made possible by donors to the College of Fine Arts Fund for Excellence, the University of Arizona's School of Theatre Film & Television, and the individuals who have generously donated to the Medici Scholarship Foundation (specifically Ms. Robyn Kessler and Robyn and Jeff Timan) . Thank you for all your support!
Updated my budget this morning, and yikes did I go through that quickly....
Here is a screenshot for you of what it looks like. I may end up eating some of the shipping costs to preserve some money for contingency. We will see though, I don't need much more if anything at all.
Yesterday was focused on the male ensemble, specifically the pants. I spent all morning trying to figure out how to balloon out the top without seam lines. It's not something that can happen, I explored a few different patterning methods and it just seems like no matter what, it needs to have a few seam lines.
I put my mock up together from the previous day, and it turned out the way I expected:
Really this mock-up was to prove to myself that it wasn't going to work, and to see how these adjustments would sit on the mannequin. It's obviously not what the final product needs, so we went back to the drawing board.
I began to slash and spread the original pattern to expand it to the length I needed, like this:
I didn't want to expand the pant past the knee, so I cut it off and only planned to work with the top portion. The vertical lines are drawn down awkwardly like that because I aligned my ruler with the waist line. I attempted to slash and spread this way, and it seemed to work, but it still looked like it needed something else I was missing. I was also avoiding messing with the inseam line, waistline, and crotchline, because that would have given me a whole other mess of problems.
I ended up calling some friends for their suggestions, and they helped me figure that I actually needed to slash and spread horizontally as well as vertically to give that ballooning shape off the body.
Here is the diagram we came up with:
A friend suggested that we find the fullest part (which we determined to be 2" above the crotchline), mark that point, and spread above and below this point horizontally. This would give me more to work with as well as lend ease to this portion of the pant. Then it was time to slash and spread the piece vertically.
Wooh cutting so much!!
Traced these pieces, and my friend and I were convinced for a minute that we needed to create a seam at the fullest part, but I really wanted to see what other options we had.
I traced everything out and let my gut guide me at this point. We talked about these pieces being seams, and I think that might be the way it has to go. It would be good though, because that would give the lines that the original costume has as well.
You can see how the new pieces came together. I think they will actually become seams.
This took me ALL DAY. I was enormously frustrated at the end, and I only completed the front panel pattern. Today we are going to focus on the back panel and the new mock-up, which will hopefully be loads better than the first attempt.
Now time for a little fun.
I have made a total mess of the shop with this project!
Yikes. Hopefully the fabric will be here soon so I can start constructing the actual pieces and clean some of this mess up.
Thanks for reading!