Sunday 7 February 2010

Tiger tiger (or, actually: leopard!)

So, two of my friends now owe me big time! I just spent 12 hours making two dresses for the dancers at their club, and all I got in return was free entrance to the club for me, my three friends had to pay (which might have to do with the fact that we got there waaaay too late since we had been busy sipping champagne in the compnay of five gentlemen in smoking, overlooked by a few centuries of family portraits, sometimes life takes you unexpected places). The place they do the club thing at is notoriously famous to have impossible bouncers, so I'll put the blame on them instead of me or my friends ;-).
Anyway, I'm never sewing for other people for free again, but I did learn a bit or two, although it's a shame I stayed at the club too short to actually see the girls wear them (blimey!).


But here they are without the girls in them. You can probably tell the girls had quite different figures, although they had about the same measurements (I might just say one of them was suspiciously curvy).

Process: Intend to make a bathing-suit-like costume similar to the one in the post before this one. Discover it’s impossible to find a suitable pattern. Find out the dancers are quite a lot bigger than me (not that surprising I guess) which meant winging it would be impossible. No pattern to be found. Realise I might have a vintage dress-pattern that could work for the top part. Make a simple waist/hip-length toile based on the dress and a bottom part toile based on the Alison bathing suit with approxiamtely the right measurements and a LOAD of ease. Find out at the fitting that they have found another dancer = two costumes (which WAS the initial plan but I had thought I’d get away with just one…). Try the toiles on the girls only to discover that the first dancer had gotten the measurements mixed up and the bottom toile in fact was almost 10 cm’s too small (I had been given a hip-measurement of 96cm’s and it was more like 106…). Bottom part useless. Scprap initial costume-idea and decide on making mini-dresses (very fortunate because of lack of time). Make two dress patterns based on their measurements and the toile from the fitting, sew until the eyes bleed but get finsihed JUST in time!
Lucky me the girls refused to wear hoods with little ears, so I didn't have to make any...


It was easier to place the pieces for the front than the back, so the back panel stands out a little bit, but I think it turned out ok!


The fabric is really quite gorgeous... fortunately I have quite a lot of scraps left, I do plan to put them to good use (if I can bear cutting in them!).























After a tough week of sewing and thoroughly cleaning and organising my apartment I had a great weekend with two nice dinners, two parties, visits at two clubs and a guided tour at an interesting museum that was topped off with skating on a lake today (sunday), in the sun followed by coffe at a cosy café at an old castle (Ulriksdal), just my cup of tea (sorry about the contradiction)!

I'll confess I'm a bit tired now... (the Kreativ-post will have to wait for a day!)

5 comments:

  1. Wow. Sounds like a ton of work! But they do look gorgeous... :)

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  2. I understand that you wouldn't want to do this again. It really sounds like it was a lot of work. But you should definitely make something nice out of the left-over leopard fabric!

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  3. Hehehe you did a great job! The fabric is really gorgeous! hehe but it's never worth the effort is it! It takes you hours and hours to make them and then they're on stage for how long? 5 minutes? Even if you get paid, it's never worth the effort. People are only willing to pay $50ish for something like that, takes you 12 hours (at least) to make, so it only works out to be $4/hour!

    Anyway, you did a brilliant job and I'm glad you have fabric left over for something for you :)

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  4. Beautiful job of the dresses, and you're right, its barely worth it sewing for other people as do they really appreciate it? Probably not, and you deserve to sew just for the best, yourself!
    Can't wait to see what you make of the leftover, its gorgeous fabric!

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  5. Nice job! Even people who do appreciate the hard work don't always appreciate quite how hard it was. Such a shame you didn't get to see them in use.

    I just posted about a tiger suit which uses what looks like a very similar fabric. Unfortunately I have hardly any scraps left but saved them anyway and hope to use them in something for myself one day.

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