While She Sleeps Band Patch

Just to practise my textiles skills, I made a custom 'While She Sleeps' band patch to blend in with the back of a denim jacket. I used several techniques such as broken needle, reverse appliqué and appliqué using bondaweb which I improvised with no design as I went along. Overall, I am very happy with the outcome as my first attempt at band merchandise. My boyfriend loves wearing it :) These are some pictures of the process and the final product...

Beauty and the Beast Costumes

For my colleges production of Beauty and the Beast this year, I designed the costumes for the main characters of Lumiere, Cogsworth and Babette. I also constructed the textiles elements mainly from upcycling old garments, and with an extremely tight budget...

Costume Design Board:

 Babette:

For Babette, the feather duster's costume, I merged the idea of traditional Victorian maid and modern French romance/attraction, so the garment included tempting cuts and hemlines but with traditional trims of frills and inclusion of an apron, etc... As she is quite a sexual, seductive character, I used quite a provocative pleather fabric for the skirt with a thigh-high slit. As the enchanted objects have to transform back to their original human state, I created a Velcroed waist belt of feather boas which sat of her hip as this is where the actresses main movement came from in characterisation.

Lumiere:

After designing Lumiere's costume for the suave man he is, I was able to create the god suit-like garment, one of my favourite aspects being that the actor would be able to use their hands still as a lot of other costume designs for this character don't allow. I created flame ruffles in the cuffs but decided to have the main frame of the candelabra going across the shoulders. However, there were a lot  technical difficulties rigging this up and I ended up deciding to have it lower down on the back. The transformable parts of this costume were the candles.

Cogsworth:

 Originally, I was set to play Cogsworth in this production but I had to pull out, so I initially started designing a costume for myself and my characterisation of the enchanted object. But when someone else took over my role, I had to rethink aspects of the design. Without using a sandwich-board-like structure, I tried to create the shape of a clock, using a grandfather clock as inspiration with the pendulum the length of the body and face as the actual clock. In the transformation, the entire bodice comes off, head pieces and key for back... This was a more quirky costumes with elements such as clock handles as a moustache.