Four brown suits

This post is a bit overdue, as I finished these things at the beginning of the month.
Some time ago I was hired (by my teacher, who does a lot of theatre commissions but doesn't sew) to make 4 brown suits for Satellite Theatre.
They were for a play called Grum, and I don't know much at all about it besides the fact that it's about a guy named Grum, and it's all miming with no dialogue.

Grum wearing one of the suits. (Source)

The theatre had been rehearsing with this worn out and icky old suit, and they wanted a really close copy of it.

The old suit from the outside. Both buttons are missing and there's a hole in the collar.

The nasty old lining with stretchy patch pockets added at some point by someone who can't sew.

The matching pants, which were quite literally coming apart at the seams.

I took a pattern from the old suit, and was very lucky to get a fairly similar brown striped polyester suiting. (Apparently it's a really bad year to look for anything menswear related and brown.)

The character starts seeing multiple versions of himself at some point in the play, so they needed a suit for him, and 3 more for the other cast members. They also needed an extra pair of pants for the main suit.

The 2 actors and 2 actresses are all different sizes, and I've never met any of these people in person because they live in a different city. I had to adjust the patterns by referencing their measurement sheets (which weren't even complete! No shoulder measurements!!!) and a photo of each person in tight fitting clothes so I had an idea of their proportions.

"Shit, shit, uhhh I think this'll fit??"

Thankfully the suits all ended up fitting reasonably well.

I sewed them at the college on one of the industrial machines, which was nice. I like the industrial sewing machines very much.

Here are a few of my patterns. I had to cut the last 3 suits all in one weekend
because the fashion room with the big cutting tables was about to be renovated.

They aren't the most high quality of suits, as I was working on a budget, and to a very strict deadline. But all 6 pockets in each jacket are functional, and 2 pockets in the 3 duplicate pairs of pants, and 5 pockets in each of the main characters 2 pairs of pants.
The shoulders are a tad droopy, because there's only fusible interfacing and no shoulder pads, but that's ok.

Original suit in front, 3 of my 4 copies in back.

I didn't take any photos of the first suit, for it was sent off as soon as I finished it, but I got some photos of the 3 duplicates.

Original suit on the left, 3 of my 4 copies on the right, plus the extra pair of pants.

I made some dumb mistakes on a few occasions, but it was a learning experience, and good practice.

Original on the left, duplicate on the right.

A couple more photos of the actors, taken from here.

I made this night cap too. Another student made the 4 other hats.

After I was done the suits I also had to make a pillowcase, a night cap, hem a sheet, and make a tiny hat and jacket for a puppet version of Grum.
I don't have any photos of the puppet, but it was really good. My teacher made the puppet, and did the curtains & wallpaper for the set, and made the ridiculous latex noses, and a lot of other stuff.

And here is a shitty dinosaur gif I made of me frantically sewing these suits.

I am very glad to have finished these darn things, and will post some good old historical sewing very soon, I promise!

A few smallish things

I haven't got any newly completed garments at the moment, but I have some other things that I haven't blogged about. A few days ago I finished this box. 

I started it a couple years ago in bookbinding class, and now I've finally gotten around to covering it and gluing it together. I think I had originally intended it to be a sewing box with a more elaborate interior, but I just wanted to get it off the Unfinished Things pile, so the inside is plain striped quilting cotton. The outside is covered in black cotton twill.
I didn't cut my pieces as accurately as I should have, but the lid fits pretty well.

Not sure what I'll use it for. It still could be a sewing box.

I made this green hat in felt class, shortly before I made my tricorn. I didn't make my pattern big enough so it came out really, really small, and barely fits this foam head.

I think it's still at school, and I don't have any use for it.

I carved a linoleum block a couple days ago! It was a commission for a heart & stroke event.

Speaking of commissions, two people are going to buy these shitty dinosaur prints from me, and I am amazed.

Two humans got me to print these and will pay me real actual money for them.

I posted about the fish I block printed, but I never posted this other block I did for class, so here are some pictures of it.

I did some prints on a piece of paper.

And some on fabric.

I haven't done anything with these 3 bits of cotton yet, but they were fun to print. Though I wish the edges hadn't printed darker than the middle of the block.

It's a half drop repeat, with swirliboops based on the ones I embroidered on my waistcoat.

I will hopefully have some finished sewing things soon!

Loki: Agent Of Asgard Commission

Or, as I've been calling it, The Bullshit Bodice.

Not happy with the way the front gapes, but hopefully more hooks & bars will fix that.

It's another commission from Naxius! Thankfully I only had to make one piece of the costume, which still isn't completely done but it was wearable for the con.

The reference picture he sent me.
I don't know what the original source is.

It's from the Loki: Agent of Asgard comics, which I have not read but I am certain they were illustrated by someone who knows nothing at all about how clothes work. Either that or they just didn't care about anyone who'd be attempting to sew this thing.

I call it the Bullshit Bodice because the design makes NO sense! There's no way to make that neckline smooth all the way around. It has to fasten somewhere! And the scaly panel in the front looks like it's overlapping the other pieces, but on the bottom edge the side bits are clearly overlapping it. That kind of Escher stuff just doesn't work in real life.

Consequently the construction was mostly made up as I went along.

The crossed out thing says "attached to trousers".
How is he supposed to sit down if that bulky scale panel is attached?

I forgot to take a picture of the pattern I drafted, but it has a lot of weirdly shaped and annoying pieces.

The assembled sides, which are 6 pieces each.
30 each if you count the interfacing and little cutouts.

The solid green bits are a cotton knit, which isn't ideal but it was the best shade of green we could find. (This is the second time he's done this! Whyyyyy.) I fused 2 layers of interfacing to them to keep them from stretching.

The front edge has a series of little cutout thingies, which I made by sewing a small piece of plain green woven cotton to the corner, cutting it and turning it in, then stitching another bit of the interfaced knit behind it.

The scales were a nightmare. Thankfully I didn't have too much to do with them. Nax spent forever cutting them out of craft foam, painting them, and hand stitching them to the front and back panels, which I had cut out of heavy cotton twill.

He stuck the rows on with tiny bits of double sided tape so they'd stay in place, then made big hand stitches in between the scales to hold them down.

All the gold bits on the bodice are made of a silk that was labeled as dupioni, but it has so few lumps I think it's closer to taffeta.
We agreed double lines of machine quilting would be a good choice for the lines on the shoulder piece, but the stuff wrinkled in places, so I ended up having to cut away sections of the cotton backing.

It turned out looking okay though!

I trimmed the edge very close and stitched it down right next to the scales on the top back with a zipper foot. Then I covered up the seam with a bias strip of the silk.

The binding is hand stitched on both edges because I didn't want to wrinkle the quilting.

The side panels are attached in the same way.

One side of those binding pieces was machine done with the ziper foot, and the scale side was hand sewn.

Hand stitching things to craft foam scales is not fun, and the binding looks a little rumply because of the texture of the scales.

Once the main seams were done I lined it in rayon bemberg and bound the bottom edge in a strip of the green knit.

The front edges were THE WORST!
The only way I could interpret the front meant that part of the shoulder strap thing had to be extremely narrow, and also sit nicely over the edge of the scale panel underneath it. It's fastened somewhat like an 18th century gown front with a scaly stomacher, but with extra ridiculous edges.

I connected the shoulder strap bit and the corner of the side/front piece with a tiny rectangle of buckram. I then cut a curved strip of buckram to the shape of the edge of the scale panel, and stitched it to the overlapping edge to stiffen it.

(It was at this point I realized that my little corner cutout thingies were too close to the edge because I didn't take the gold binding into consideration when I measured them, but it was too late to turn back. They're still visible, just shorter than they should be.)

The long strip didn't line up at the bottom, so I trimmed it and cut separate reinforcements for the bottom corners.

Blergghhhhh.

After binding the armholes I cut 2 very wide bias strips with a large chunk of fabric at one end, and carefully stitched them to the front edges. I did it partly by machine and partly by hand. When I got to the bottom where I had left the chunk of fabric I trimmed it down so that I could bind the corner without any folds.

One edge bound.
On the other side you can see part of the buckram sewn to the inside of the edge.

The neckhole section of this bit is also bound in a wide piece of the silk.

Adding reinforcement, with the corner binding half sewn on.

The front panel needed to be bound all around, and it needed that little shaped thing on the middle of the top edge.

I machine sewed 2 layers of buckram together (the buckram I have is fairly thin) in the shape of the top edge, and hand stitched it on.

I machine sewed bias strips of heavy cotton to the sides and hand sewed it down. It could have been neater, but at this point it was about 8:30 am after having stayed up all night, and I needed to get it done.

Not an enjoyable thing to do.

I made another double layered buckram piece for the little decorative front thingy, and wrapped it in silk so that it looked very neat on the front and rather awful from behind.

I bound the 2 shorter edges with more large bias strips and attached the little thingy with lots of careful stabbing.

I'm really proud of how smooth I got this part.

I bound the bottom edge of this piece in the same gold silk.

Nax helped sew some of these on too.

I attached a bunch of hooks & bars to the ridiculous and horrible front edges.

Who designed this terrible nonsense?

And we ran out of scales and time, so didn't end up making the scaly leg panels.

I was disappointed in how the front edge didn't lie flat, but I'm going to add smaller hooks & bars in between the bigger ones and see if that helps.
Nax was happy with it and it was wearable, which was the important thing.

I'm glad the front edges aren't wrinkling at least. And I know I complain a lot in this post, but I do enjoy sewing new and challenging things!

The front doesn't look too bad from this angle.

The leg panels here are quick and terrible quilted ones made from the green knit, but we're going to replace them with scale ones eventually.

There wasn't a green binding on the bottom in the reference picture,
but I don't know how else you'd finish that edge.

I had been awake for about 26 hours by the time I finished, which is a bit worse than the robe, but I finished in time. Nax very kindly brought me plenty of coffee, and apologized for the awful sleep deprivation even though it's not his fault I'm terrible with deadlines.

The costume still needs leg bracers, and he has to add buckles to the gloves and make proper belts.
He bought the shirt and pants, and made the crown out of worbla. The gold paint he used matches the silk extremely well!

I haven't seen the outfit all together in person, but here are some pictures from the con that other people took. Apologies to the people I cropped out of some of them!

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All in all I'm amazed this mess came together as well as it did! Hopefully the next thing he commissions will be less impossible.

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Update: I stitched down the end bits of the hooks, which I should have done in the first place, and moved some of the bars more towards the centre front. It's gaping less now.

It's looking a bit rumpled after a weekend of wear, but hopefully we can stiffen the bit at the top of the stomacher so it doesn't do that anymore.

(source)