Class #7 10/08/09

After making my hand and nose, it was interesting to see what everyone else had come up with. By using calico I think I could have made my job easier by using a stretch fabric instead of a woven. My first hand I made actually turned out better than my final hand. There could have been hundreds of ways to make the hand, but none would have been easy, because the hand is such a complicated structure to replicate. The shape of the fingers, to the angle of the thumb it was such a challenge to try and create the shape of the hand. I persisted with the calico because I wanted the result to have a structured, almost ‘lego’ look.
The first hand I did was the hand silhouette sewn together-this could have worked in a stretch but even then you would have had to put in a gusset in between the fingers.
The second hand I tried to use stretch in between the fingers to create shape-this didn’t work so well-It didn’t look enough like a ‘finger’.
The third hand actually ended up being the hand I liked most. The only problem with it is that the fingers are sewn to the palm with one stitch, so the fingers look like they’ve been crushed at the palm! I tried to create the shape of the hand using the lines across the palm, folding at the knuckles and the bumps over the muscles. I used pleating and tucks to get that effect, it was really hard to sew the fingers because they were so small, and getting the machine into the crevasses was really difficult. As you can see in the photo-the seams on the fingers are on the outside.
For my final prototype I was making the patterns as I was sewing the hand, so I was making adjustments as I went. I used some tucks and made it a definite left hand, but Emily ended up making a left hand to so I swapped mine to a right hand when I sewed it to the body. My mission for this hand was to remove that crushed effect I had at the base of the fingers. Trying to do that compromised the end result and I actually like the other hand better!
The nose was a lot easier to make but I still had the same problems i.e- hard to sew because of the scale, the shape was difficult to get right. I started by building the nose with bra cups, creating the shape. I created the pattern by covering the model I had made and cutting the pattern from there. My aim for the nose was to define the shape of the nostrils and the bone. It came out ok, but it was really hard trying to get the shape right!
One of the activities of today’s class was to increase the scale of one of our body parts using traditional dressmaking techniques. I blew up the nose to 400% by photocopying the patterns. I added in tucks down the center of the nose, just to change the look of the nose- it definitely made it a lot less recognizable.

Here is a slide show of the process