West End Nights

My friend Ali, modeling the costume I made

West End Nights

West End Nights was the theme for our next brief at uni. We were asked to recreate the costume's seen from a West End show. Our group decided to choose 'Mamma Mia', as we loved the show and thought it would be really good to have a go making the 'super trooper costumes'; not to mention the fun we would have wearing them.

I was to make the yellow jumpsuit which my friend Alison would be modelling and Alison was to make the orange outfit, that I would be modelling for her. Our friend Donna was going to make the pink costume and had a reluctant volunteer from our class to model it. (Reluctant because we had to wear the finished costumes at our end of year catwalk show and 'perform' or rather try not to fall off the catwalk whilst shaking what our mother gave us, in our platform heels!).

This was my mission, should I choose to accept it?

Little did we know what we would be letting ourselves in for, we thought they would be quite easy to make.

Having made my pattern, it was just a case of making the toile. We wanted to use a stretch satin for this as we thought the jumpsuits were too shiny to be made of Lycra.

This is my model Alison trying on the toile. Overall I was pretty pleased with the fit and stretch, it just needed some minor alterations here and there.

Now for the real thing, the hardest part was creating the pleated flounce that hangs from the elbow to wrist. First I had trouble getting the shape right, then the next problem was getting the foil fabric to pleat neatly, as I had to do it all by hand, no fancy pleating machines for me! After several trial runs and many tears shed, I finally managed to do it with the help of an industrial iron; one down another one to go!

Next I had to make the sleeve's for the flounces to go into. I made the sleeve in two sections, joining at the elbow. To cover the join I made a pattern in some silver lame, cut it out and used a double sided fusible web to iron it in place.

Now I could begin stitching the flounce into the sleeve and make a start putting on the embellishments. The real costumes are covered in crystals, which unfortunately are out of the question on a students budget, so instead we opted for metal studs and iron-on fake crystals.

It was now time to get down to the making of the jumpsuit in the real fabric, quite a scary moment I always find, as I'm so scared of making a mistake. The picture does not do the colour of the fabric justice, it was brighter than the sun, it was extremely difficult to look directly at it without getting a migraine.

Just to make matter's worse, we had to embellish our costumes in each of the individual areas before stitching it together, because it was being fully lined and therefore we would not be able to poke the studs through without them going through all layers. The other problem we encountered with the studs, was that they didn't hold into the fabric very well and kept falling out, I often left a trail of studs behind me on the cutting room floor.

This bad boy is finally starting to take shape, just a collar to attach, more studs to add, powernet to be inserted in the front, iron-on diamante to go down the sides, shoulder pads, silver lace, etc etc; oh so not as far on as I thought!

Here's my model Alison wearing the finished costume, it took a very long time, but it was well worth it in the end; and we had a really good laugh strutting our stuff to 'Super Trooper' on the catwalk.

www.alitoner.blogspot.co.uk

And here's me wearing the costume that Alison made, unfortunately these mobile phone snaps do not do the costumes justice but you get the gist! Should you like to see how Ali made this costume, click on the above link to take you to her blog site.

Ali in the costume I made and Me modelling Ali's