Magpie outfits part 1

I won't be giving away too many details of the overall collection but I promised details of the outfits I made for the shoot last week. The theme for the collection was Magpies, which I was quite excited about as it offers many options for shapes, colours and textures. The era of inspiration was Victorian Gothic which gave additional possibilities. 

I quickly sketched out six designs before meeting Andreea for a drink to decide on the styles and colours for each outfit. This was a very useful meeting as Andreea already had the hair styles in mind and knew which colour would suit which model. Each model would be predominantly in black with highlights of one particular colour - blue, purple or green. By the end of the evening I had three styles that were a mix of the six I started off with. 

I knew from the start that I wanted to draft the patterns myself and used my block throughout. This would give me the push I needed to put into practice what I had learnt in the spring on my pattern drafting course and to learn more techniques. The other, probably more important, reason was to avoid any potential IP or copyright issues as the photos will be professional ones. 

So onto the individual outfits. I'll share one today (as the original post was loooong) and the other two later to save you going crossed eyed or just getting bored!  

Outfit one

The first outfit I started was the blue one, as it was the one I was most excited by. The model would have long hair which meant the neckline needed to be low, ideally to show of the collar bone to make sure the outfit did not compete with the hair. This outfit is the one where Victorian gothic is shown in full force. 

The bodice has princess seams at the front and the back. Drafting them was a new experience for me and I used this wonderful tutorial by Sunni. The pattern extends by a few inches around the shoulders and the seam line is on the outside of the arm. It has an invisible zip on the side which I put in by hand. The bodice is made from poly satin and the seam allowance has been overlocked as this stuff frays like you will not believe. 

The sleeves are wide and represent the wings of the magpie. They are made from a poly chiffon. If you look carefully enough you can see how they join the bodice rather awkwardly in places. This is because I had trouble drafting a sleeve - it is much harder than I imagined it to be and I have a lot to learn. The cuffs are two standard rectangles, one from white poly satin and one from cobalt silk, folded in half and then stitched together. The sleeves are gathered at the cuffs. 

The finishing touch to the bodice was this beautiful cobalt lace that I found on Etsy and had shipped all the way from California. I can recommend Suzi from MaryNotMartha, she answered my question about the colour and then processed my order quickly so it arrived in time. I tacked the lace by hand as stitching by machine would have hit several sequins and ruined the flowers. 

A bodice like this one could only have a particular partner. It was screaming out for a full circle skirt that hit the floor. Drafting the pattern for this was the quickest part in creating the skirt even though I was fighting with tracing paper as my table isn't big enough to fit the pattern piece on. Ideally I would have cut the skirt on the fold but that just wasn't going to happen. If I couldn't fit the piece on my table, there was no way the fabric would be wide enough to be on the fold. I had to cut out the four pieces in the hall. 

It is finished with a rectangular waist band and closed with an invisible zip. The seams are overlocked and this is the main reason why all three outfits ate over 500m of black thread! The bottom hem was overlocked twice to give a false rolled hem. I knew that this hem would be problematic on set and it was. There was an inch and half difference in some places which led to a re-hem before the shoot started. I tried on the skirt prior to the shoot and realised at once that it needed some support. A friend came to the rescue with a knee length petticoat. It worked very well.

The outfit was finished off with a black beaded necklace and a large glossy blue ring but unfortunately I didn't get photos of the accessories.