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Dressing up

In the 'Art of the Stitch' exhibition, Fanny Viollet made some beautiful clothes in a similar way to this project. She used waste plastic bags, food packages, fabric flowers and free machine embroidery with multi-coloured threads. They were life size so you could work really big as well.

We wear clothes for several reasons, like protecting us from the weather, covering us up to s

us being embarrassed and to make us look good. Special occasions call for special clothes, such as going to a party or visiting an important person. It is fun to design clothes and to try them out on a figure to see what will look good. Try to make a whole wardrobe using different fabrics and decorations.

You will need

white card

drawing equipment
medium or heavy weight Vilene (interfacing)

scraps of fabric, lace, ribbon, sweet wrappers, beads, etc.
P.V.A. glue or Pritt Stick
masking tape
pins
scissors for fabric and paper
threads for hand and machine stitching

Making the figure and the clothes

1
Draw a figure on the card, colour the face and details. The size will depend on the size of the card and the size that you want the figure to be, or if you have a large photo of yourself you can use this. Carefully cut around the figure.
doll on card		 coloured-in doll
2 Using a pencil draw around the
figure on the Vilene, press lightly
so that you can rub out the lines
that you may not need.
doll on vilene
3 Now you can design the clothes on the figure outline, like this dress. Add the tabs as shown so that the dress will stay on the figure.
dress design 		4 Decorating the clothes is the fun part; you can go mad and add any decorations that you wish, for example fabrics, lace and sweet wrappers. Cut them to shape and size, then use a tiny amount of glue or pins to hold them in place on the dress outline.
cut out the dress 		5 Once the glue is dry stitch the decorations in place using a sewing machine or with hand embroidery. Beads and sequin can be the final touch.
    6 When you are happy with the decorations, carefully cut out the clothes and the tabs.
7
Now dress your figure by bending the tabs over the figure, hold in place wth masking tape.
doll on card		 coloured-in doll
8 You can add a card stand to make the figure stand up or add a string to hang it up.
doll on vilene

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by Claire Buckley © Claire Buckley 2001 - 2011.

if you want to share this project with others, please link to it - don't copy it

 

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