Royal Patterns and Hearts

I didn't finish my costume during holiday. And now I'm back in school. And what do I blame for all this? Textile printing. I spent most of the holiday printing about 5 metres of fabric for my dress. As always while working with something time consuming and somewhat boring, I watched Friends while working. 
I was foolish enough to think that I could print everything in one day, so my schedule for the week was a bit un-realistic. My problems started with making the template. I wanted a pattern that was partly symmetric and had a circulating edging. I spent a lot of time designing the template, and I really like the way it turned out. It was difficult to make it work while printing more than one pattern. I made the template out of transparency, using a carpet knife to cut it. Cutting precise slits with a carpet knife takes some practise, so I recommend you to have more transparency than you need when making a template. This way you can first practise the use of  a carpet knife.

Here's the template. You can see that it's been used :)

 After making the template, it was time to start printing. The first part of the skirt was the slowest to make. I hadn't yet mastered the secrets of textile printing, and it took 2,5 hours to finish that piece of fabric. I was desperate after that, thinking that with five other pieces of  golden fabric and one piece of red fabric, larger than the others, I would spend the rest of my holiday printing. Luckily, I soon became a quick worker and making the last golden piece took only an hour.  

Colours and templates. I used the red colour for golden fabric and the black and golden ones for red fabric

Here's pictures of the fabrics after printing. I'm glad that I wen't trough the whole process of textile printing, because the skirt part of the dress looks very good indeed.

 

 The result from all this: I got hooked on textile printing. Now I just keep getting ideas about things I can decorate with textile printing. I made a template with the picture of my all-time favorite movie villain, the Joker. I think it looks pretty cool. What do you think?

Why so serious?

That's all for this time, I hope you liked this post. Comments are more than welcome, so feel free to share your view on textile printing. See you all next time!

Fabric, fabric everywhere

Wow, long time no see! I've been very busy with my schoolwork and dance lessons, but now I'm back and on holiday! I told a couple of weeks ago that I would go and buy fabrics. So I did. The first thing I need to tell you is that amazing movie costumes take a LOT of fabric. I bought about 15 meters of fabric, not including buckram. I spend 80 euros on fabrics and thread. And here I would like to thank my mom for paying all this. Thanks mom! Anyway, I got almost everything I wanted. The golden part of the dress has a beautiful black and red pattern which I'll print myself using template I've designed. Also, the hearts in the front panel of the skirt-part will be hand painted.
For the first time in my life, I'm using patterns by Simplicity.This is the pattern I'm using. Yes, I've used patterns before but I've never had the sewing intructions in English. I like to think that my English is relatively good, but these instructions have words that I can't even find from a dictionary. With a little help from Google I've managed to figure out the instructions. I had to make few changes to the patterns, especially with the collar. It had to be it a lot bigger! Now I'm planning to use my holiday making this costume and planning future costumes. If I stay in my schedule, the Red Queen -costume will be ready this Sunday. I'll be back soon, posting about sewing this dress!