I dag skriver jeg på engelsk jeg..
It’s taken me a while to manage to write this post, it’s just been a really busy week, but better late than never!
Last episode was a good one for me! I was not in the dangerzone, which was nice 🙂
It sounds a bit stupid and pretentious maybe, but I did feel like I did better and better the harder it got. I think it was partly due to me just getting better at time management as time went by, but I also think it was partly because I tried to sew difficult things or use techniques that were time consuming and just not necessary earlier on in the program, which made it hard to finish on time, while in this episode and episode 4, those kind of techniques were necessary, and since I knew how to do it from before it was easier for me because we were given the time to do it, but for those who had less practice with it it was more difficult to get a neat finish in the time given.
Symesterskapet 2015
First we made the skirt. I really enjoyed this, as I said on the show it was nice to get a task where the main thing we had to do was be picky about everything! I was really really confused in the beginning though because I wanted to make it so that each pleat was the same at the top, in the same way that kilts are. I was doing a lot of math trying to figure out how to do this and still get the right fit on the skirt. The moment I decided it was a lost battle was when I realised that the pleats were not the same size all the way around, which meant that it was simply impossible. The pattern would have had to be made for the plaid from the very beginning, so I just had to get on with it.
I did two mistakes on the skirt, the first one was that I didn’t match up the vertical lines in the side seams to make trangles, I was so focused on the horizontal stripes matching that I didn’t even think about the vertical ones, so when the judges started looking like that I knew it would be wrong cause it hadn’t entered my mind while sewing.
The second thing I did wrong was the waistband. I didn’t forget to center one of the squares which is what my critique was, I simply placed it on the middle of the skirt, which of course became the side since the zipper was in the side…. I did realise this but didn’t want to unpick and then get a bad finish, or not finish, so I just had to leave it like that.
There were only two of us who got the pleats to be exactly the correct size by the mm. (for those who haven’t watched to show the judges brought out a measuring tape and measured the pleats very carefully, which was also quite scary since we were NOT anticipating that!) The reason I think mine worked out was that I
Marked the notches with scissors in the seam allowance which gave a very sharp line that was easy to follow when I folded
Pressed the pleats a lot before sewing
Tacked each pleat down (with the sewing machine) and used tweezers while doing it to feed the fabric through properly
Did a row of machine basting stitches below the seam line before attatching the wasteband that I removed afterwards, to ensure the pleats wouldn’t shift as I sewed.
All those last three steps are the kind of things that would make me do badly in previous challenges but here they actually helped and I ended up with 2nd place 🙂
In the redesign task we made “something a punker would wear” out of two men’s vests, and extra fabric, but with as much of the vests as possible. I pretty much used all of both of the vests except some lining, and only added the knitted copper fabric. (Even though the judge said I added two fabrics, I didn’t..
Symesterskapet 2015
Symesterskapet 2015
I really liked my composition, it was fun to play around that way. I was, like Marius, inspired by Vivienne Westwood type punk, instead of sraight forward street punk. I knew from previous challenges the judges would want some added stuff on there, like chains, spikes and stuff, and I was going to add some big eyelets around the neck and weave a chain through it, but didn’t have time in the end. Ended up third, which wasn’t too bad, but I wonder what I might have gotten had I had 5-10 more minutes to add spikes etc. Personally I would have preferred it without spikes and left it up to the wearer to style it with their own boots, piercings, crazy hair, ripped stockings, bracelets etc.
“Fun Fact” I forgot to bring an elastic that day and no one had any to spare, but they had elastic bands for clothes of course, so that’s what I used in my hair that day 🙂
In the last challenge we had to make a men’s shirt using THREE different patterned fabrics. That was quite daunting, I mean men’s shirts don’t usually have that much pattern in the first place, so three in one was a bit much 😛
I decided to buy fabrics from Liberty’s because at least I needed to have some nice quality prints, and they have a big varyety of prints so I hoped I would be able to find enough that were similar enough to match. I tried to use some different scale and density on the patterns, but similar colour pallettes and strokes. I was really happy with the result 🙂
I had never made a shirt before we were given the challenges before the show, so I practiced by making a shirt for my husband. I didn’t know how to make collars or cuffs or anything. It took me about 8 hours to sew my husbands shirt, and we had 4,5 hours on this one… Only reason I managed is because I practiced… and because I made it short sleeved so I didn’t have to spend time on cuffs, which can be quite time consuming.. When planning for the show my husband convinced me to skip the long sleeves, and I’m very glad he did. ( I still wanted to make them though.. because I wanted to “show that I could” and I was kind of annoyed last year when they made shirts and no one had long sleeves with cuffs, so I wanted to be “better”)
It was fun that Simen Staalnacke was a guest judge! I’ve been following Moods of Norway since they started up quite small went to their 10 year anniversary fashion show. It was one of the places I applied for a job after my studies (they required 2-3 years experience though, which I didn’t have at the time). I think some of the things they do are a bit weird, but some are absolutely great, and I love that they dare to play with prints and colours, something I feel is largely lacking in RTW fashion today.
It was very sad to see Viktoriya leave the show, I thought from quite early on that she would at least make it to the semi finals 🙁
There’s a new episode tomorrow! Hopefully it won’t take me as long to write a post about that one 🙂
