Breathe

I have realised I have been mentioning Breathe a lot as I have helped them, without explaining on here what Breathe actually is.

Breathe is the integrated dance company performing as part of the Battle For the Winds performance at the Weymouth Olympic opening ceremony - as part of the cultural Olympiad. For our Concepts in Contet unit (for my designs see the post label CIC) myself and the other AUCB level 5 costume designers were responsible for designing the breather costumes.

The collection of designs was taken and formed into cohesive, overall designs by costume designer Kate McStraw -  and now they are almost finished being made for the performance. Every week the level 6 breathe supervisors and level 5 makers have been running the Breathe Together club at the AUCB to allow others on our course and members of the public to come and make parts of the costumes - this also helps to get the costumes finished sooner.

Today I was helping with the last Breathe of the term. Rather then the drawstring bags and barnacle making that I have been doing the last few sessions, today I was finishing the decoration on one of the 'Jesters' collars. This meant forming braids and bows out of strips of leftover fabric to compliment the colours of the collar and stitching them onto the pre-prepared collar.

The Collar I was working on - the added braids and bow are my handiwork

My Moving Tides sketchbook is almost done now, with two days left to hand in. It is strange going back through my work and realising just how much I have actually done! It has been such a rollercoaster, but a fun and incredibly rewarding experience.

Keeping momentum

Between sorting out and refining my sketchbook for hand in this friday, this last week has been a hive of helping people on projects, both for University deadlines and external projects - due to deadlines everyone has sent out a call for aid, and as I have finished my sessions and my sketchbook is very nearly done, with a lot of time remaining for my dance leader costumes, I lent a hand. Asside from being able to help out with a lot of different projects to make sure the work was finished on time, while I am a designer this has given me a chance to keep up my making skills.

This last week I have altered two shirts and made multiple patches from a glossy chequed fabric for Tanya Pye ( http://tanyamariepye.blogspot.co.uk/ )for her Mad Hatters Charity Tea Party (being held in Portsmouth), hot-stoned rhinestones onto the replica Queens corronation dress for exhibition that was made by Heather Coad, and helping Andrew Layton - a fellow Moving Tides young designer - by cutting out and overlocking his 'wings' for the seahorse costume's to be worn by Westfield School while he was away for the first year costume students 'vampyr' filming shoot.

Here are a couple of photographs of the hot-stoning work I have done;

For the thistles, the placement of the rhinestones was well plotted out, the points clearly defined but where they needed to be placed outside the embroidery was a case of laying them out carefully judging the placement by eye, based on the origional photographs of the pattern. While a very fiddly job it was nonetheless theraputic and an interesting, simple technique to learn that creates a great effect.

I have also put my name down to be a dresser and helper for the Battle For The Winds performance in Weymouth that I designed for as part of the Concepts in Context unit earlier on this year.

In the mean time we have had our summer briefing (a timeline of the twentieth century), and a clue into the opportunities on offer for the Specialist Practice unit that shall be starting in the Autumn Term directly after the end of the summer holidays which have made me incredibly excited about the coming year!

Moving Tides Moves On

Another task - making the Dance Leader costumes. These are the large headresses from my final design of the giant slug - and one will act as the head of the giant slug.

For this I already have the plastazote, but I have the added difficulty that when I have made headresses in the past it has been from elastic measured to the wearers head. This time however the dance leaders for the ten schools have not yet been separated into which schools they will be working with so I am going to have to make them without measurements.

For this I am going to start by drawing out the height and shape on pattern paper to get them to a good size that is supportable by the elastic. I am going to use the same heat form method as we used in the mask workshop, at the begining of the project.

Final School session

Today was my final teaching session in the school, and it was just as I hoped. By the end of the session we had everything finished, bar the velcro-ing of the capes onto the T-shirts which we have decided would be better done on the week of the procession.

Todays tasks were;

Finishing sticking the circles on the end of the cable ties and glittering them.

Cutting the slug trail

Attatching the cable tie bases to the capes

Having the children try on the costumes

Having seen how the Giant Slug costume behaved once we put it on the children, we decided it would be better to see what the weather will be like on the day as it is a very quick and easy job to attach (with a stapler) - if it isn't windy, the trail would hang down and be a tripping hazard, as well as being not very visible and not adding anything to the costume, and if it is too windy then it would blow about and potentially destroy the look of the costume as well as potentially hitting the children in the procession behind it.

So without further ado - here are some photo's from todays session and of the finished costumes!

The back of the sea slug where, mirroring the real life sea slug, we have a cluster of 'tentacles'. As a design decision I decided that it would be more effective to put them on the headpiece of the last child in the slug as this would add height and also be more like the real life sea slugs.


Evaluation;

Looking back on the last month since my first session, so much has happened it seems like its been far longer, and sometimes it seems like its only been a few days. It has been an amazing experience. I have learned to use a variety of materials and skills that I may otherwise never have learnt. Also, I have had the incredible, unique opportunity to work with a group of people that has been a wonderful experience and a wonderful adventure, and I will miss working with them.

In hindsight, if I had to change anything, I would have waited a few more days before my sessions started in the schools to give me more time to start my preparatory work, preventing some of the rush. Asside from that, I think on the whole it has gone really well. We haven't had any real hiccups, and everything has been finished in time and looking as intended, with the children happy and enthusiastic about their costumes.

With the costumes stacked together they created a vivid and striking effect, I am incredibly looking forward to seeing them all on together, as I believe the effect will be truly brilliant.

Having not heard anything back about my dance leaders, I am going to make a prototype of the dance leader headress while waiting for confirmation on whether they will be making theirs or whether I will be making them.

Progressing - slow and steady

Prep work began well on wednesday but has taken a serious hit thanks to the massive cold that has developed since yesterday morning. However I am persevering and well on my way to finishing the hand sewing.

Yesterday morning - before the cold had fully developed - I helped with the set for the Costume and Performance Design's first year showing as they needed help and I like to gain experience where I can. This years first years have been given the theme 'Vampyre' and the costumes from the costume designs they were given are nearly brought to fruition, with the shooting starting next week.

(top tiles, glazed and dulled, bottom tiles not yet glazed and dulled)

The tasks I was set was, selecting floor 'tiles' made from plywood painted by the first years several months ago, and taping them to the floor of the set. Then we painted them, first with glaze to protect them and make them shine, then with a light sheen of black over the wet glaze to dull the brightness of the colours of the tiles.

Back to Hand Sewing - Final Session Prep

Today's task - sewing the elastic wristbands onto the individual capes. This meant hand sewing for the first time in ages. I had forgotten how theraputic it is!

I have sewn each band of elastic on in two places to make it more stable and secure, using pink thread so that it will be camouflaged on the cape.

Breathe:



Tonight I was helping the 'Breathe' club with making barnacles, for costumes for the Battle For the Winds performance. I made 4 barnacles in different colours with different wools. To make the barnacles, we cut a circle from acetate, cut into the centre of the circle and cut another circle inside. Then we overlap the edges of the acetate to make a conical shape, and tape it into place using masking tape. Then, taking a piece of wool, the end taped into place on the inside, you create a loop at the base of the cone, pass the end of the wool up through the centre hole and back down the outside, and through the loop, pulling tight, a lot like a buttonhole stitch. Repeat this until the entire of the acetate is covered, then tie off the ends and you have a finished barnacle.



Tomorrow morning I am assisting with the making of the Vampyr filming set that is being used for the filming of the costumes the first years on my course are making. I have some previous experience with set building, as I helped on the set for In Extremis (3rd year BA Acting show) Road (3rd year Acting show) and have built a set myself for a commercial photography shoot (written about in previous blog entry) and it is always good experience as everytime I help I learn something new.

It is something that I enjoy doing and though I have specialised more in costume design, I would like to try some more ambitious set design projects in future alongside that.

In the afternoon is the Moving Tides Young Artists (my yearmates and myself who are working on Moving Tides) Presentation to the rest of our year group, so in effect I am losing the majority of the day to work on this project but I am confident that tomorrow evening, friday and the weekend is more then enough time to get everything finished for the next session.

Yesterdays Session

We had a lot to accomplish in the session yesterday and the children took to the tasks really well. At the start of the session we split the children into 3 activities. The 8 children not in the giant slug who had yet to do cable ties were with me to get those attached to the bases, the remaining children were on 'spot repair duty' as when the capes had been hung up for the glue to dry some of the spots had fallen off.

The 7 in the giant slug were laying out the giant slug and, after having the 2 selected designs presented to them and to the class, tasked with laying out the spots on the giant slug and taping them down. I had them taping the giant spots rather then gluing them as I needed to transport it back to bournemouth after the session to get the neck holes done during the week for the next session.

The 23 not in the giant slug finished their cable ties just in time for lunch so it was easy to pack away and in the afternoon session after a demonstration of their task in covering the ends of the cable ties settled down to do that.

The 7 in the giant slug I had come up one at a time while the rest were finishing laying out the spot pattern, to attach cable tie tentacles to a large base for the giant slug. this holds 30 cable ties, with 23 of the thinner cable ties used on the individual slug capes and 7 thicker ones (a totally coincidental distribution but one I feel that works well). This base will be attached onto the skull cap of the child at the back of the giant slug which has now been decided. This will give the costume extra height, and with the glittered circles on the end will create quite an impressive effect as it travels down the street.

When they had finished the spots, they joined the rest of the class in cutting out circles for their cable ties. By the end of the session 2 children had finished the entire task, a few others had started putting on glue, while the majority hadn't gotten to gluing the circles on, so there is still some making to be done next week but this is the last task.

After the session, I stayed behind to gluegun the flourescent yellow 'frills', finished in the previous session, onto the horns of the masks.

TASKS TO BE ACOMPLISHED THIS WEEK!

1.Neckholes for the giant slug.

2. Gluing the spots down on the giant slug.

3. Attaching the elastic 'handles' onto the underside of the giant slug for the children to hold onto.

4. Attaching the wrist straps onto the slug capes.

Session Prep Completed

Session preparation is now complete for the third session. I got far more spots out of the high viz fabric then anticipated so there will be far more of the pattern on the giant slug, and spares for if anything goes wrong.
I had anticipated 20-25 large spots and I got 80, and instead of 60 small spots I got 128.

During the last session, the seven children in the giant slug each designed a pattern for half of the giant slug and gave them to me to choose between and select 2 designs - one to cover each half of the 7.5m long giant slug. I have selected 2 that I feel had a lot of thought put into them, and that work well together.

Tomorrow in session we will be finishing off the slug capes and the cable ties, and also I have been having concerns about the pointed ends of the cable ties and that they could be a potential hazard, being as they are sticking out at eye height. Because of this I am going to get the children to cut out 2 circles of paper for each of the 9 cable ties they have for their cape - which have for half already been attached into their plastazote base in the last session - and glue them together around the end, then put glitter on the circles.

I feel that as well as negating the hazard of the cable tie ends this will also add another point of interest to the costumes.

The T-Shirts - Back to the Dye Room

Todays task - to dye 30 childs T-shirts pink. Thankfully after dying the capes I knew the shade of dye I needed, so it was a relatively easy, if time consuming task.

I used Kemtex procion dye, with soda ash as a colour fixative to the proportions of 3 tablespoons of soda ash for the Vat replenished every 1 and a half hours, and 6 teaspoons of dye, mixed in a jug, with a portion poured in with every batch of t-shirts.

I have now finished all the dying for this project!

Tasks for the weekend are edging the giant slug cape with Ridgilene, and cutting out the remaining spots from the high viz jackets. I anticipate getting in the range of 20 large spots and 40-60 small spots out of them.

Commercial Photography Shoot - Incredible news!

In the winter of last year I designed and made the set for a commercial photography shoot, in collabouration with photography student Min Seok Kim and costume student Shiro Araki. I have just been informed by our photographer that the project is going to be published soon in Extrastic Magasine! Which issue is as yet unconfirmed but it is definitely going to be published.

See below some of the photo's for the shoot.

Assisting Mad Hatter

Today, in a break from session prep I assisted coursemate and good friend Tanya Pye in her outside project, the Charity Mad Hatters Tea Party, for which she is costuming. Unfortunately a few weeks ago she broke her arm, so today I assisted her in cutting out some of her pattern pieces from the top fabric for the White Queen and Alice.

I have had the priveledge of seeing some of her designs, which are beautiful, and her fabric selection is brilliant! I hope to help her with some of the sewing, and some of the embroidery for the White Queen.

Second Session

Today was my second session teaching in the school in Weymouth and since the weather was appalling, we had lots of different activities to keep the children occupied.

Before the session started I spent my prep time sorting out and separating the strips of paper the children had painted with fluorescent yellow paint to be concertina'd - as many of them were stuck together or to the newspaper they had been left on.

At the start of the session I introduced the children to their capes for the first time, and told them a bit about sea slugs - mainly about the similarities between the sea slugs and slugs that they find in their gardens. This was met with very positive results.

I had the idea that rather then letting the children loose with spots and glue on there capes we should get them to draw out a design first on a piece of paper, using photographs for inspiration of real sea slugs. This worked out quite well and got them to try their hand at designing a part of their costumes and to really look at the sea slugs.

While they did this, with their teachers handing out pink and yellow highlighters for the kids to colour their designs in with, I supervised the 7 in the giant slug in popping their balloons and releasing their papier mache skull caps, marking them, trimming them and beginning to paint them. They finished this activity just before lunch and had just enough time to tidy up before the lunch break started so that worked out well.

For the children who finished their designs very quickly, we handed out the yellow strips for the children to concertina.While some were very quick to blitz through this activity, others were still finishing their designs and colouring them in.

Over the lunch break myself and the teacher discussed the best way to set out the afternoon activites, and we thought it best to have the 7 doing the giant slug design where to put the spots with 4 designing one side, and the other 3 designing the other side.

During their quiet reading, between the lunch break and afternoon session, I separated out the spots and myself and the TA who was with us in the afternoon laid out the Giant Slug on the long fable in the forum.

The afternoon session was split into 3 sections. 

1. The teacher I am working with primarilly supervised the bulk of the class in setting out the capes in pairs for those that had finished their designs and sticking them on with the fabric glue I had bought.
2. The TA we had with us supervised the 7 in the giant slug seeing the slug for the first time and their designing.
3. Myself taking small groups of 3 to 5 to demonstrate the cable ties.

I found out at the end of the session that the giant slug children had decided they each wanted to do a design for half the slug rather then 3 designing one side and 4 designing the other. The teacher has asked me to select the 2 designs for them to use, annonymously, so that they know it was fair.

This worked out well except some of the children tend to get very excited and rush through the activities but they are working really hard their is always next session to sort out any tasks that have perhaps not been quite finished propperly.

In evaluation, I am glad that I made sure the majority of the putting together of the costumes could be done by the children themselves. It is unfortunate that they can't handle the sharper scissors to cut out their spots themselves and that - because of the schools health and safety regulations - they couldn't take part in any of the dying, but I have tried to make sure that everything else is all things that they are able to do themselves so that they can genuinely say they made their costumes. 

Second Session Eve and Last of the prep

Today was constant activity, starting at 9 with

• overlocking all of the individual capes, then on to
• cutting out the base circles of plastazote for the cable ties

• puncturing the bases for 9 cable ties to go through (after testing on the smaller capes I have decided that 9 is the right amount of cable ties to use - any less and it looks sparse, any more and the button hole is too crowded)
• cutting to shape and overlocking the giant slug
• collecting the elastic to take in for the masks
• marking out and cutting out the high viz spots
• packing up the box of all of my materials to take tomorrow

and my last activity of the day - packing up my lunch to take tomorrow!

For the bulk of the class tomorrow's session will focus on getting the spots arranged and stuck on, then getting the cable ties through the bases, while I staple the elastic for each mask (finished after the previous session) into place.

The 7 in the giant slug will be finishing off their skull caps and if they finish in time starting to place the spots on the giant slug. I will have to bring back all the capes tomorrow night to get the wrist ties sewn on, and to sew on the ridgelene around the giant slug.

Prep Prep Prep - and the pain of Bank Holidays

Todays task - ironing, cutting out the capes to shape and button holes!

I have discovered that rather then giving me a day off, Bank Holiday Monday just means a day of working on whatever I can without access to the studio's and the equiptment and space I want to use.

The ironing took an extreme amount of time, due to the fact that silk is surprisingly difficult to handle, with a tendency to crease far too easilly.

I used a pattern piece for the capes to make sure I got them all to the same shape and size. It helped to make sure that I got all the button holes marked out in the centre. The button holes are for the cable ties to stick out through from their plastazote base.
Thanks to a digital sewing machine with a button hole preset the button holes were swift and easy to do. I backed them with some donated stayflex to make sure that the fabric wouldn't ruckle.

Now I have to overlock them all at uni, and cut down and overlock the edges of the giant slug. I also have to finish cutting the plastazote circles for the bases of the cable ties, and puncture them so that the children can put the cable ties through. I also need to cut out the spots from the high vis jackets as I have found that the childrens scissors are too blunt to cut the fabric propperly.

This is a lot to do in one day.
Next update - tomorrow and second session eve.

Something a Little Different - Happilly Never After

In my (limited) spare time, the last couple of weeks, I have been preparing to be in a small production put on by the AUCB Arts and Events Management team called 'Happilly Never After' a collabourative project between the Arts and Events Management and Digital Media students at the AUCB, to a script written by BU scriptwriting student Holly Bartolo. I played Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood Today was the day of the performance, and it was brilliant. It was held in Scaplens Court Museum in Poole, right by the quay, which was a beautiful setting and perfect for the project.

I had a lot of fun doing it, I have acted in a few productions before but up until now they have all been with the performing arts society at uni. I really enjoy exploring other roles in performance, I find it gives me a better understanding of the kinds challenges and demands of the different people I will be working with in future.

Dye Spraying - Day 2

This morning I sprayed and re-sprayed the rest of the capes. They have come out really well, a lovely dark purple that contrasts well with the pink of the capes. They are all washed and drying, ready for ironing, marking out and cutting to shape tomorrow, and putting in the button holes.

Dye Spraying - Day 1

Now that they are finally the right shade and brightness, today I began spraying the top centre's of the capes black.

I wet the capes before hanging them up to make the dye absorb better (upside-down so that the dye would remain isolated to the area I wanted). This is a surprisingly time consuming job despite the application of a spray bottle, as I have to hang the capes up to spray them and - despite the generous donation of the use of my parents garage - I am still limited on space.

Because of this I will be spraying the rest tomorrow morning, and re-spraying them as well to make sure they come out darker. I quite like the idea of them coming out purply in the centre rather then true black as this would incorporate more of the school colour into the costumes, which the teachers were hoping for.

Dye Room - problem solved

Today- thanks to the help of one of our tutors - I have been able to redye all the capes with Kemtex Procion dye and soda ash and they have come out beautifully. While slightly different shades and depth of colour they are all pink and all vibrant. I am pleased with the tonal variations as I feel that together they look very effective!

Once again this has taken me all day, but luckilly I had scheduled myself in extra time for contingencies just in case any problems - such as this - occurred.

Over the weekend I am moving on to spraying the centres of the capes a purply black and putting in the button holes. Thanks to communication with the Wyke Regis teacher I am working with the lesson plan for the next session has changed, and I am preparing a large amount of the activities still left to do - just in case the children are faster then anticipated as it is very hard to tell how long any activity will take.

Interesting sea slug fact - sea slugs, like the slugs you find in the garden, have a 'foot' and so in fact leave a slime trail!

The Dye Room - problems are afoot

Today I spent the entirety of my day in the dye room - and not to the best of results.

My plan has been to use Dylon Dye for the 23 individual capes - from the same mix as the giant slug - only I have hit a snag. After mixing the dye, I did numerous tester samples on spare bits of silk and they came out perfect, so I began to put in my silk meters - and here is where an interesting calamity happened.

The first cape I dyed came out a beautiful, dark, almost purply pink and really vibrant. I then put in a batch of 5, which ALL came out a pale, SALMON pink. I added more of the initial mix (in exact proportion) and put in the next two batches of 5 - and both batches came out a pale salmon pink. This has succeeded in baffling everyone I have consulted, and I plan to re-dye the silk tomorrow using a different dye.

The Giant Slug and preparing for session 2

I spent the morning separating my remaining 23 meters of silk into meter sections in preparation for dying tomorrow.

The spraying of the Giant Slug - in late night study thanks to the generosity of my tutors and the patience of my peers, I commandeered a long table in the studio's and sprayed the centre of the giant slug silk. The black, on washing, has come out purple which I think works really well since purple is one of my accent colours and the Wyke Regis School colour. 

I would have liked to have had enough time to re-spray the centre of the giant slug again just to deepen the colour a bit more, but on the whole I am satisfied with the effect. 

Dye Room - The Giant Slug

Today I started on the silk dying for the giant slug - as tomorrow in late night study is the only opportunity I will have in the next week to spray it as it is 8m long.

This was my first time dying using the vats, and so I called upon the experience of coursemate and dye expert Andrew Layton to assist me. After experimentation with quantities, we found that a mix of Dylon Dyes Flamingo Pink, Cherry Flame and Tulip Red gave a wonderful, deep and vibrant reddish pink.

Initially we tried a mix of just Flamingo pink and tulip red but that gave a pale baby pink. I felt that this didn't have the brightness or vibrancy needed for carnival costumes, and so we added 2 tsps of Cherry Flame to the mix and it gave the deep reddish pink that we settled on for the slug. As the black we shall be spraying it with tomorrow is blue based, it is likely the area around the middle will go a lighter, more purplish pink around the black as I have found often happens with the samples I have tested this method on. I feel this looks very effective and gives it a more graduated look.

On reflection I would have liked it to be a less reddish pink, but that it needed to be that strong to have the boldness and impact needed for carnival.