Fashion has a reputation for being a bit vapid and arbitrary. I mean how can something I wore last week become outdated this week? I will never understand that but I now have some understand of how difficult it is to make some of the things that come down the runway. I learned my lesson through practice. This past summer I worked for a Renaissance festival and had to create my own pirate garb. It cost me much in the way of money and emotional turmoil. I was given a basic outline of what I’d need to do so that my costume looked period and was held responsible for its creation.
I have been involved in many different art disciplines including metal working, ceramics,and drawing, but I have never been so distraught as when I attempt to sew. Proportionally I have realized that when putting together clothing very little of your time is actually the sewing part. The better part of my time was spent in cutting my upholstery grade fabric. The fabric I was using cost $15 a yard, meaning any kind of mistake that ruined the fabric would be a costly one. I, of course, had a very slippery fabric which made every moment of cutting anxiety inducing as the fabric would try to slither away from my shears. This also required a lot of space, meaning I was laying on the floor with yards of fabric unrolled as I attempted to cut straight lines and not cut the carpet. The whole process didn’t get any easier once I’d finish cutting my pieces.
Then I got to the actual sewing part. Which took a lot of machine prep in treading the machine with the proper color while making sure the machine was clean and ready to use. Then came the actual sewing. Sewing is more a balancing act than I imagined. I had to guide the fabric I was sewing through the machine with my right hand, careful to keep everything even, while holding the weight of the fabric in my left hand. Because my project was so big the weight of the fabric would try to pull the fabric away from the needle making uneven edges. All while controlling the speed of the machine with my foot. On occasion I would have to rip out entire lines of work and redo them due to attaching the wrong sides, running out of thread, or just plane old sloppy lines that I wouldn’t be able to live with. What you might not know is that not all sewing can be done on a machine. I didn’t know this either. I had a few boarders of color that required me to hand sew all the finishing touches.
Now that I had the majority of the work done, I still had more finishings to do. For my bodice I had grommet the front so I would have a way to lace it closed. This involved cutting tiny holes in the fabric to then hammer down metal circles that would be used for lacing. Relatively speaking it didn’t take very long to do, but by that time I was so ready to be done with the project.
At the end of a very long few weeks I had completed my bodice for renaissance festival. The sad part was after all those hours of sewing, and poking myself with pins (I literally bled for this) my garb was a size too small. Somehow I had miscalculated my size creating a bodice that wouldn’t close. I tried for several times to wear it but ended up pulling the grommets out. I wanted to cry. Thankfully, my mother was able to salvage the piece by adding an extra panel to the front to finish it.
After creating a relatively simple outfit from scratch I have a new found understanding and respect for fashion. It is not easy to get pieces to line up and execute a vision, I couldn’t even manage to make the right size, yet designers somehow do it time and time again.
