#finishedgarment

Initially I decided to do Museum Make for this project but I did not have a solid idea for it, so I was offered a place on the National Theatre Hire Store making project to make two 18th century decorative skirts. I felt this was a task quite well suited to me as it had elements in that I already had skills in such as draping on the stand, applying plackets and waistbands. The designing, creating and applying decoration was new to me so I was excited for the challenge.

I enjoy draping on the stand to create a pattern, and in this case I was able to drape over some 18th century panniers provided by the National Theatre. I learnt that when draping over something with such a large, wide shape, you have to make the pleats on the inside of the skirt are deep so there is enough fabric at the bottom of the skirt for fullness. Transferring this pattern to top fabric was time consuming because I wanted to make sure the pleats were accurate so I took the time to tack each line I marked to avoid them moving out of place.

A challenging element to this project was finding ways of manipulating fabric I had not done before. This was challenging because it meant I went through the process of designing, creating samples and then applying the samples to large amount of fabric. It was difficult working out how much fabric to use for each piece of decorations, as I had not anticipated quite how much fabric was needed when pleating or smocking. For the pleats decorating the bottom of the pink skirt I had to create a template and work out how much fabric was needed so that enough pleating could be put around the skirt. The alternating single box pleat and double box pleat pattern that I created challenged me because I struggled to get my head around how it needed to be done. I had to leave this to another week as it caused a lot of frustration. This meant I came back to it with a fresh attitude, with the ability to complete it without feeling stressed. This taught me how important it is to take a break from something if you struggle with it, because you can come back to it and have a more positive outlook on how to tackle it.