Costuming: Sound of Drums, aka Skanky Jungle Girl

[hazliya]

I desperately wanted to do something creative today, so I ran to Savers to pick up some costuming bits for SLAW. I'm playing in Sound of Drums, and my costuming hint was tribal, jungle-like, with furs and animal prints and leathers. Also, my character is young and has a penchant for collecting green baubles and things.

I found a cringe-worthy leopard print size 24 two-piece jersey dress for $4, then a few green scarf-things and shiny green ornament. The rest I had at home.

I also use a dressform, and if you don't have one but want one without the cost, here's a nifty walkthrough on making a dressform out of duct tape.

On to the skanky dress.


Materials used:
-Jersey Dress
-Black thread, needle
-Safety pins (temporary)
-Two silver O-rings
-Black ribbon
-Black elastic, a few feet
-A lighter (I'll explain this, I promise.)


Here's the original dress. It's a big, shapeless dress with a big, shapeless T-shirt style top to go over it. There's a seam under the (enormous) bust, so I ripped my fabric there and took a look at what I had.

So, some notes about jersey. It's slinky, stretchy, and fairly heavy, which makes it an ideal fabric for styles that use draping. I love fabric draping and the feeling of slinky fabric, so this was nice, comfy ground for me.

Before you start stitching anything involving jersey, you'll need to know a few things. One, jersey loves to fray, two, it's difficult to measure since it stretches so easily, and three, any hemlines you make will require elastic thread.

I hate elastic thread. So I replaced it with SCIENCE!

Now, synthetic fabrics are wearable plastic at their core. What happens to plastic when you expose it to fire?

Yeah, that's right. I finish my edges with a lighter.

This works on synths, most poly blends, and different kinds of ribbons. And saves you a whole ton of time. So either light a candle or grab a lighter, then bring the edge of the fabric closer to the heat. It'll start to curl and meld, which is awesome and so totally useful. I would have taken photos, but it takes two hands to do and that leaves no hands to operate the camera.

INSTANT EDGING! Store this knowledge for later.

Moving on.


(hehe. The shoulderpads would make great kitty ears.)

I took a look at the asymmetrical tube of fabric I now had, and made a few sketches, settling on a drop-elastic-waist dress like something out of a nightclub. I forgot to photograph the sketch, but it's very simple to do.

First step: create the drop waist.



Fold the skirt, pattern-out, where you want to make the low waistline. Loosely sew a line about an inch from the fold, leaving a small hole to thread the elastic band through. When threading, I like to put a safety pin on one end to grip better.



Threaded! Sew the two ends together and even out the scrunching.



On the dressform, the top draping loosely over your brand-new elastic drop waist. Silhouette starting to look familiar?

You will notice the top making this very pretty open-backed drape. We want to keep that, but swishy jersey and moving around a lot means that with this kind of looseness, it's very likely that someone will end up seeing the back of your lady business. So let's safeguard that, shall we?

Measure out a length of elastic a few inches shorter than your underbust.



Fold about an 18" long segment in the center of the back over, about an inch and a half thick. Like we did for the drop waist, sew a line an inch down (leave the ends open!) and thread your underbust elastic through.



Sew it together in front. It should be fairly snug and sit right across your underbust. This should hold the back fairly shut and keep your bits out of sight. =)



I grabbed two O-rings from Elsa's collarmaking supplies, stitching them to where I wanted the straps to connect to the top. I then threaded black ribbon through them and tied them behind the neck. You can even take extra fabric and make a set of halter straps, or use chain, or whatever you want. I like ribbon. It's comfy and pretty.



I cut the sleeves off of the secondary overshirt and put elastic in them, too. They made cute leaf-shaped arm/leg things.



Using half the center material from the overshirt, I made some draping on the skirt for fun to give it more of a flutter and edge. Again, fire evened out the fraying edges here.



Pinned on some green accessories for my character!



With some other potential accessories.


So, there you have it!

If anyone else is playing in SoD and wants my extra fabric/arm or leg thingies/kitty ear shoulderpads/vest from the original dress top, let me know and you're welcome to 'em.

So what do y'all think? Questions? Should I make more tutorials like these?