Visit to Bowes Museum

 Costumes at the Bowes!

Recently I visited the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle to the the costume exhibition.

This dress is a recreation of a dress worn by Josephine Bowes in a painting. It was created by Luca Costigliolo. The dress was amazingly put together and the whole size and scale was worked out from only a belt and a waist measurement

Other costumes there ranged from 1700's up to the 1950s/60s. Out of all the costumes I most enjoyed seeing the Victorian period clothing. These Costumes were all donated in to the museum and so they are original clothing!

This green victorian dress is so pretty. I like looking into the Victorian era and I am thinking about it as a personal project for my next module. Coming to the Bowes has been quite inspiring!

CBBC's Hacker and Dodge Costumes

 Hacker and Doge are dog puppet presenters on a children's channel.  I and other students were asked individually to come up with costume ideas and to make a costume for each of the puppets. these then would be chosen and might appear on TV.

I was very excited to create costumes and it was a great opportunity for my work to be seen.

I first thought about upcoming events and i came up with the costume idea- the Queens diamond Jubilee.

 I made one costume for the character Dodge-
this costume was meant to look like the coronation robe the Queen wore when she was crowned. I also made a miniature crown to complete the costume.

The second costume for the other character Hacker, I made to match. It was meant to look like Prince Phillips military style suit he wore on the coronation day.

After completing these costumes I thought i had done quite well. They were sent in to the studio.

During the week of the Jubilee celebrations, and on the Jubilee day its self my costume for the character Dodge was used! This picture below shows the crown and robe on the puppet.

Sleeping Beauty Costume

My last project of my first year at uni was to make a costume for an event that would celebrate the Queens Diamond Jubilee. The costumes were iconic children's TV and film characters. I was given the iconic Sleeping beauty gown.

My first thoughts about making were about the amount of bright pink polyester satin i thought would need to buy!
Once I had researched I found ways of creating a recognisable but more elegant and structured dress.

Here is the finished dress, modelled by my friend.

A view of the costume on the mannequin. The boned bodice with standing collar. A crinoline hoop skirt sits under the full pink pleated skirt and white frilly petticoat.

Miniature Maquette Costume- Elizabethan Dress

One of my first projects was to create a 1/4 scale cultural costume. I chose traditional English Elizabethan costume. It was challenging! I created the dress from red velvet. The pattern was embroidered with gold thread. It took a lot of embroidery work to finish it. Embroidering velvet was difficult! I was pleased with the outcome and it even got put on display in the university building! 

My Victorian Bathing Suit Costume

For my first project at Uni i created a Victorian style bathing suit