Light and Whimsical

Whimsical is the theme for today.

The idea behind this costume was to creating something that looked light, draped nicely, and also showed some motion within the leotard. So the question is, how am I going to achieve these three outcomes?

I could just say HAND SEWING! And leave it at that, however there is definitely a lot more going on that just hand sewing! Every element of motion on this costume is hand sewn together to ensure that the drapes and curls all keep in shape and don’t move too much. Yes there are some elements that can be sewn by machine, however even though it’s more time consuming I just feel that you what more control with hand sewing.

The next element would be materials. Now there are a couple of different materials one could use to for the draping effect, it just depends on what type of look you are going for. I probably would have use a mixture of fabrics to create the look; however I hit a road block due to the Lycra colour. Don’t get me wrong…. The colour is to die for, and one of the reasons I wanted to make a costume like this, however there isn’t many other materials that I could find to match.

SO the one material I could use was stretch mesh.

There are many positives to mesh!

• You don’t have to finish the hems as they don’t fray

• The material has some density but the sheerness makes it look light

• It has 2 way stretch

Creating the whimsical look through embellishments

Something different, that I don’t do a lot was use two different colour laces. For a lot of costumes I usually stay with the basic colours for embellishments: white, black, silver and gold. However, for this costume I used pink and purple combination and no glitter what so ever. The reason why these colours work is because it is in the same tonal range as the blue. All three of these colours are pastel and if you were to work with the colour theory method the pink and blue would be used to create the purple. Thus on the colour wheel all three of these colours would sit side by side, this is known as Analogous colours.

When it came to adding stones I primarily use the same colours of pink and purple with three different colours types of diamantes: Crystal, Siam and AB Crystal.

To keep with the no glitter theme I have hand sewn some stretch diamante trim around the edges that didn’t have lace. Now the thought of using the stretch diamantes across the back did come to mind. However, when I had a little play I wasn’t a fan of how the stretch diamantes looked, and thus didn’t attach them.

Hope you all enjoy this pastel, whimsical costume.