Day of the Pompoms

I have managed to turn a skirt and a top into...a skirt and a top and a very boring top at that. So the bottom of the top is now rolled up and turned into a crop top and it drapes really nicely around our models body. Since we had purple feathers put onto the bottom of the skirt we decided that we needed a splash of purple in the top as well. We used tassels and pompoms to brighten up the crop top. We put white tassels around in a circle and then smaller purple ones in a circle placed on top on the white ones then to top it all off a purple and white pompom in the middle.

We then fixed the whole motif onto the left shoulder of the top by stitching the whole thing down. This is a replacement for the leaf that we were once going to put onto the shoulder. Still keeping the theme of the feathers going throughout the outfit we then inserted the leftover feathers into the tassel and pompom motif.

This looks great on our model, when she walks the pompom has great movement to it and will look fab going down the runway. I have to say I am very impressed about how this whole outfit finally came together and how are collection looks together.

Day...I lost count

So we made a mistake, a skirt that was once perfectly good we destroyed. Well i suppose our model couldn't walk in it, so we un-gathered all the stitching from the bottom (which was once the top) The skirt now has no shape what so ever.

However it does look like a collection of skirts by (I forgot sorry). So we decided since there is nothing we can do now that we have took out all the stitching, but now it is noticeably too short for our very tall model. To remedy this problem we decided that we needed to add something to the bottom.
We have decided on a theme now, apart from the crop tops we will incorporate the same jewelry in all outfits and now we will all add feathers of various colours depending on our outfits. This idea came in handy. To add length to our skirt we stitched purple feathers around the bottom to give it and extra 3inch. We chose purple because we thought that our very plain black and white outfit needed a splash of colour.

Day 3: Time consuming leaf

So today hasn't been as productive as the others have been but hey give me a break I have 2 broken wrists! Anyway the objective of today was to try and make a weave into the shape of a leaf that would be placed on the shoulder of the garment...this is much harder than it sounds, especially when your casts get in the way.
The leaf is hard to do because the wave gets thinner towards the bottom/side of the leaf which means i have to make this weave in sections...very time consuming. On the plus side I found a gorgeous green tribal print in my sewing area, such a shame I don't have more of it.

Half the leaf made

Beautiful Tribal Print

Day 2: I hate the ruffle maker

I understand that running into problems at every corner is the whole idea of this project but i just wish everything went smoothly. Firstly we had no idea what to do with the skirt, should we make it into harem pants, skinny pants or play it save and keep it a skirt. If we were to make it into any sort of pant our first obstacle would be the stupid ruffle about 3/4 of the way down the skirt, i hate whoever put forward the idea for this ruffle. We could solve the problem by doing a bad job and cutting off the ruffle, unstitch this bit of material from the rest of the skirt and re-attach without the ruffle or have stupid looking pants.

This stupid ruffle sticks out and ruins the pattern

Ok so the ruffle was getting on our nerves so we decided to play it safe and keep the skirt, so were turning a skirt and a top into, a skirt and a top...did Vivienne Westwood ever have this problem?!
Brainwaves suddenly hit! We turned the skirt upside down and put about a billion pleats into it to make a new waistline. Although its starting to look like a genies outfit were proud to have changed it in a good way, but there is still time for us to go daring and change the skirt into pants, especially since turning it upside down means the skirt looks a lot fuller.

The pleats that took me forever to do!

What use to be the top of the skirt...transformed!

Now onto the top half of our outfit... so were sticking with the crop top theme throughout or collection but we don't just want to cut the bottom off and be done with it, so just as a trial run we've pinned up the bottom half and scooped it around the back and because of the size of it, it should flow nicely down the catwalk if kept the way it is now. I pinned the sides in so it has more shape to it. The best bit is we've taken the theme of pleats from the bottom half of the outfit and used it in the top half, putting 3 pleats on the neck line so it looks more interesting and a pleat on each of the straps.

scooped back of the cropped top

Pleated neckline and pleated straps

 The next thing were thinking of is that it needs a splash of colour, tribal is suppose to have bold prints mismatched but so far all we have is a black and white outfit with animal print. Disappointing. We were thinking weaving green fabric together to make leaves and putting them on the shoulders, or fringing in the same place, maybe even both! We also have a thick gold chain to use as a belt, or we could use a coloured belt of feathers...I'm stuck!!

The outfit...so far

The Designs

Charity Bin Rejects

All tops to be turned into crop tops as a theme

I love the print on this shirt, it just screams african safari

Making the skirt into Hareem pants and the top tino a crop top

Safari/Tribal: Day 1 of many

The pile of discarded clothes, supposedly fitting the safari trend, throw in our groups direction today appeared to be no help whatsoever! Every garment we received, linked in no way to any of the others. Making a collection worth putting your name on with a mismatch of fabric colours and patterns is going to be a struggle...should have picked colour shock.
Despite this as a group we decided with each other to have the garments themselves match so crop-tops are our theme so far, although if this changes in the near future i did have a brainwave that could fix our problem.
Looking at Sass and Bide's Autumn/Winter collection 2011 they have a signature piece of jewelry with each garment, tassels on a chain could be the answer to all our problems, how simple.