Unlock your dream wardrobe!
- Details
- Written by Cathy Hay
- Unlock your dream wardrobe!
- Key 1: Use quality fabrics
- Key 2: Use appropriate fabrics
- Key 3: Use interlinings and interfacings
- Key 4: Learn to visualise
- Key 5: Make your projects manageable
- Key 6: Slow down!
- Key 7: Don't skip steps
- Key 8: Get a good sewing machine and take care of it!
- Key 9: Press thoroughly
- Key 10: Fitting your costumes
- Key 11: Be willing to re-do
- Key 12: Hand sew
- Key 13: Keep on practicing
- Key 14: Attention to detail
- In conclusion
- All Pages
Fourteen keys to success from eight costuming experts
Within these pages you will find the best top tips from a cross-section of today’s top costuming experts. Some specialise; some are skilled in many historical periods. Some make whole outfits; some specialise in corsetry or millinery. Some are professional, working on individual bespoke outfits for private customers or on whole theatrical, TV or film productions; some are dedicated, experienced amateurs. Although they all have prior experience of teaching or answering questions from less experienced designers, makers and seamstresses, none can ever remember having been directly asked to cut to the chase.
I know making that leap took forever for me, and it made all the difference when I did.
Kendra Van Cleave
None of them have ever been asked the most probing questions: What is the one thing that sets your work apart from the average costuming effort? What do you wish someone had told you when you were just off the starting blocks, trying to improve, trying to find a way to make professional-quality costumes?
Well, this article dares to ask those most challenging, most basic, most cheeky of questions, knowing that we were all there once, struggling to escape the “home-made” look. Our writer Kendra Van Cleave says it best: “I know making that leap took forever for me, and it made all the difference when I did.”
Now, for the first time you’ll get to pick all of our brains as we get down to the core of the issue, the brass tacks: in a few pages, you will know the most important things that a budding costume designer or seamstress must know in order to make the leap from amateur-quality, home made results to stunning, couture-quality work.
Even if you should leave YWU in the future, you're free to download and keep this Masterclass in full by clicking here.
Congratulations: you are about to take your favourite pastime to a new level!
Before you begin
Costuming is not a precise science. Every expert has her own way of doing things, and you must remember, when reading the following collection of keys to your success, that these are not commandments, handed down from on high for you to ignore at your peril.
These tips are the product of years of experience; they demonstrate not what "must" be done but what works for these costumers every day, and we invite you not only to try them and use them, but to vary and improve upon them.
I have collated the contributions of all the other experts into fourteen overall keys to costuming success, and then added my own comments and interpretations below.
I invite you to read these steps, print them out, try them, use them, work with them, and see what works for you.
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Nice article! I only slightly disagree with the authors regarding the use of quality fabrics. It is true that the use of the highest quality fabrics makes the difference between a regular costumer and a very good costumer, and a good costumer should always use the best materials he can afford. Making stunning gowns from stunning materials is not so difficult, but I think the real master is the person who can make a stunning gown out of a plain, inexpensive fabric.
Zuzana from http://www.sartor.cz
Wow! My grandmother certainly taught me how to sew the right way. What she didn't teach me directly, I went on to learn based on what she had taught me. And most of it is here in your article. The only things I hadn't seen before were to iron the seams flat before pressing them open, and the use of a specially shaped board to press seams. This is ALL excellent advice. I'm thankful my grandmother taught me everything she knew.
