As I have mentioned before, I have my very own pet burlesque dancer Lady Effulgent, that I occasionally sew for. A big relief in my time of volume, as this means that I can still make huge gowns that are larger than life!
This February Lady Effulgent needed a dress for the "Wicked Waltzes at the Russian Cabaret Verboten", aka Copenhagen Burlesque's winter party. With the theme set as a winter wonderland, I soon came up with a costumedesign, that we both liked: The ice queen ensemble.
As such, we believed this would not be such a hard dress to make. I had already made her both a corset and a pencilskirt before, so nothing new there. So we added a little bit of finesse to the design: For the headdress we wanted to try out lasercutting, and why not cover corset, bra and headdress in rhinestones?
Snow glitters after all.
Yup. This is going to take more than one post to tell you about!
A rough calculation told us that the corset alone would need 5600 stones, that one of us was going to glue on the corset by hand. Oh, and we wanted an iciclepattern on the corset too.
So, I sewed up one of my by now classical single layer underbusts: 1 layer of coutil, same fabric for boning channels, spiralsteels and flatsteels for boning and nice big grommets to make it easy to take off on stage.
As I am a controlfreak, I also ended up doing the rhinestoning. That way I was sure to get the corset exactly as I wanted it.
Now, I am becoming quite fast at adding rhinestones, but 5600 stones are not set in one day. So after a couple of evenings rhinestoning, I ended up rather philosophical on the subject of sewing and rhinestones:
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A lot of people comment on me being creative... I find that somewhat amusing.
Honestly; creativity really isn't the main characteristic you need, when making big bold dresses.
Creativity is good and nice and entertaining. Creativity is what gives you the initial design, and it helps you along the way, when stuff blows up and you have to well, be creative.
But most of the time, what you need is dedication. Dedication, Precision and Patience.
You need to find references for your concept, you need to find the right material at the right price. You need to find a pattern, alter it, test it, and then alter it again, just to be sure you don't fuck up your expensive cloth. You need to sew the dress and then rip up the seams because it wasn't perfect. You need to take your time doing things right, and when you fuck up, you fix them. And when you decide you want to use 5000+ rhinestones, you sit down and glue each and every one of them on, in the right pattern and in the right spot, no matter how long it takes. Because at this point, you just made the dress of your life and god damn it, it's going to be perfect!
So, creativity really isn't that big a thing for me. Nor is the ever elusive 'talent' everybody seems to be obsessing about. Having an inherited talent is absolutely useless, if you do not back it up with hours and hours of hard work to improve yourself. And this is where motivation and inspiration comes in.
Nobody does anything without some sort of motivation, and everything is possible with the right motivation.
Having fun, getting praise or mere inspiration, it doesn't really matter what rocks your boat. If you get it from doing something, you get motivated, you will keep on doing it and you will become good at what you do.
So that is why I am having loads of fun, doing the same menial task 5600+ times.
I am not creative.
I am merely so inspired by the project, that I just HAVE to see it done. And then I'll become good on the way.
Minor rant over, it should be safe to come out now:)
The corset ended up with 6350 stones on it and it is sparkly! We also bought a white bra to match, and covered the cups in matching rhinestones, approximately 1450. So the total of rhinestones is currently 7800 pcs with more to come.
Foto by Pao-Lung Tsai
This February Lady Effulgent needed a dress for the "Wicked Waltzes at the Russian Cabaret Verboten", aka Copenhagen Burlesque's winter party. With the theme set as a winter wonderland, I soon came up with a costumedesign, that we both liked: The ice queen ensemble.
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(yep, that is how my conceptdrawings looks like today, rather random, and often on whatever paper is avaliable. Also: I store them as crappy photos taken with my old smartphone that has a rather poor camera. )
As such, we believed this would not be such a hard dress to make. I had already made her both a corset and a pencilskirt before, so nothing new there. So we added a little bit of finesse to the design: For the headdress we wanted to try out lasercutting, and why not cover corset, bra and headdress in rhinestones?
Snow glitters after all.
Yup. This is going to take more than one post to tell you about!
The Ice corset and bra, and how to become philosophical from too much rhinestoning
A rough calculation told us that the corset alone would need 5600 stones, that one of us was going to glue on the corset by hand. Oh, and we wanted an iciclepattern on the corset too.
So, I sewed up one of my by now classical single layer underbusts: 1 layer of coutil, same fabric for boning channels, spiralsteels and flatsteels for boning and nice big grommets to make it easy to take off on stage.
As I am a controlfreak, I also ended up doing the rhinestoning. That way I was sure to get the corset exactly as I wanted it.
Now, I am becoming quite fast at adding rhinestones, but 5600 stones are not set in one day. So after a couple of evenings rhinestoning, I ended up rather philosophical on the subject of sewing and rhinestones:
Aaaalmost there!
A lot of people comment on me being creative... I find that somewhat amusing.
Honestly; creativity really isn't the main characteristic you need, when making big bold dresses.
Creativity is good and nice and entertaining. Creativity is what gives you the initial design, and it helps you along the way, when stuff blows up and you have to well, be creative.
But most of the time, what you need is dedication. Dedication, Precision and Patience.
You need to find references for your concept, you need to find the right material at the right price. You need to find a pattern, alter it, test it, and then alter it again, just to be sure you don't fuck up your expensive cloth. You need to sew the dress and then rip up the seams because it wasn't perfect. You need to take your time doing things right, and when you fuck up, you fix them. And when you decide you want to use 5000+ rhinestones, you sit down and glue each and every one of them on, in the right pattern and in the right spot, no matter how long it takes. Because at this point, you just made the dress of your life and god damn it, it's going to be perfect!
So, creativity really isn't that big a thing for me. Nor is the ever elusive 'talent' everybody seems to be obsessing about. Having an inherited talent is absolutely useless, if you do not back it up with hours and hours of hard work to improve yourself. And this is where motivation and inspiration comes in.
Nobody does anything without some sort of motivation, and everything is possible with the right motivation.
Having fun, getting praise or mere inspiration, it doesn't really matter what rocks your boat. If you get it from doing something, you get motivated, you will keep on doing it and you will become good at what you do.
So that is why I am having loads of fun, doing the same menial task 5600+ times.
I am not creative.
I am merely so inspired by the project, that I just HAVE to see it done. And then I'll become good on the way.
Minor rant over, it should be safe to come out now:)
The corset ended up with 6350 stones on it and it is sparkly! We also bought a white bra to match, and covered the cups in matching rhinestones, approximately 1450. So the total of rhinestones is currently 7800 pcs with more to come.
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