Thursday, July 31, 2014

The majestic

I've been working for a couple months on an Art Deco inspired costume for Ruby Lea, named the majestic (named after the famous hotel the just recently burned down in our hometown and because this shit is majestic). 
Now this was a duo effort with her doing all of the jeweling, making a ostrich feather shawl, altering her dress, jeweling gloves and shoes, and making a lovely headpiece.
But tons of work went into the underthings I fabricated. I guess we'll start with the bra.(it's the only thing I really documented) Ruby ordered a bra with a nice underwire shape. I'm personally new at making all these things so I don't exactly know how to fabricate a bra from scratch at this moment in time. But I used the bra she gave me for a base. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with the bra since we were sticking to a particular shape on her dress. So I traced off on the bra what I wanted to cut away.
Thats when it gets a bit scary. You have to absolutely commit. But since I had just done this for Violets "girl on fire" costume, I wasn't too worried about it. Once you start to cut the bra you'll realize that there is a thin piece of fabric on top of the original bra which could and probably will fuck you up a little bit when cutting. I just kinda trust my instinct. 
Once I got both cups cut out, I had to figure out how to go about putting the stretchy satin spandex on to without using a dart. I'm more of a fan of smooth bras then darted, especially for the cut out style like I did. So I cut and pinned until I got a smooth surface. 
Then to add the center piece to stay as true to the design as possible 
(Yes we did have mustache laughs :))
Then I sewed all the edges together with some fold over elastic.
This is the most time consuming thing for me when it comes to costuming because everything attached to the actual cup has to be hand stiched. But this was the completed on ruby bra (non rhinestoned) 

The skirt, I sadly didn't do any photos of. But it was so very easy. We took a pencil skirt and used it for reference for the girdle pattern. I haven't gotten into boning things yet so it's basically more or a shaper type thing. But we made the pattern from that sewed it all together with fold over elastic (I'm a huge fan of the fold over) and put a separating zipper in the center (cause it's a burly costume. Everything must come off!!) then came the panels. I normally just make half circle panel skirts but this time I doubled it. I wanted to make it have all the material since It was shorter then a normal panel skirt and who doesn't like ALL the chiffon! So I made two panels and made them snap button into the skirt. Once again easy removal. 
I love all the chiffon there was!! We also made a third panel to use for a cape. It was fun to play with all that chiffon and to see it on stage was even better! 
Then the pasties were two layered so the jewels on the top would be higher then the ones on the bottom. It make the tiniest difference but it made it all the better.
The pantie was a simple somewhat strappy g string. With the same design as the bra, pasties, and dress. 
This costume isn't complete quite yet. There is still hours of rhinestoning and a few other little extras that will be going added soon.

I am so lucky to have such beautiful and talented ladies in trust me to make their costumes. I know I love making them and hopefully one day I'll be able to make a mini-career out of it. And a huge thank you to Ruby Lead who let me finally make a deco costume and helping me figure out little details that I couldn't have figured out with out you. The majestic is defiantly one of my favorite costumes I've made to date. And I can't wait to share it with the rest of the world!! 

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