She's Done: Little Red Process #5

I am very happy to announce that the Little Red Riding Hood portion of my Relished Fairy Tales Series is finally done.  Whippee!!

A lot has happened to it since I last posted--I cut the capelet out and did some floral stenciling on it.  Then I went back and used some embroidery thread to outline the flowers that I painted on...  I think it turned out rather "folk-ish", which is what I wanted.

Then I assembled the hood with the fur and the lace I hand dyed to make it look more antiqued...  I had a problem attaching the lace to the velour, so I had to use something I've never used before: fabric glue...  Now, my instinct is to cringe when thinking about glue and fabric together...  It's rare that one uses glues when assembling costumes because they don't react to laundering well.  And usually, designers like the costumes to look the same throughout the run--loose lace that appears halfway through a show's run isn't necessarily a desirable detail when it hasn't been specifically chosen to be loose...  So glues don't have a great reputation in costume shops.  And you'd be surprised how useless hot glue is when you really get right down to it...

But I digress...  Regardless, the glue worked, and I'm happy with how it turned out.  It says it's dry cleanable, so I hope it actually is...  hehe...

After that came buttonholes and buttons, then attaching the hood to the vest neckline.  And voila!  It's complete!

At this moment, I anticipate that Little Red will be a part of a series of iconic female fairy tale characters.  I envision a number of garments all based on the same vest pattern for different characters that will progress from a regular, practical, manufacturable piece of contemporary fashion to a completely non-practical piece of wearable art...  I'm imagining that each of the vests will get progressively more and more abstract and less and less wearable.  I'm going to try to draw attention to the line at which our attire shifts from garment to art piece.  It disturbs me that society has a relatively narrow corridor of what is "acceptable clothing", and is even less apt to accept clothing as a legitimate artistic medium capable of making cultural and social statements beyond appreciation of craft and technique.

I'm not quite ready to make a statement on what the entire series says to me yet... I need to verbalize it a bit more to make it clearer and more concise.  I'm still wrapping my head around it...

So this piece, Little Red Riding Hood, is part of a larger whole that's going to end up including (right now) The Little Match Girl, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Alice in Wonderland, Goldilocks, and Cinderella.

Wish me luck!!

From these, I'm going to distill their "essences" and make other items using the same materials that will be a bit more "marketable"... I am already planning on making Basket Handbags using the scraps of Little Red, which I think will be really cute (more on them later). I bought the materials for Sleeping Beauty today (quite the looker she's gonna be), and I'm thinking of sachet pillows to accompany her piece.

I can't wait to tell you what else I have planned for the others, but this is long enough already! Until next time, Live Life with Relish!!