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Costume Design & Construction

Surrealist Pockets (3D+10C)

What you will need: 

• A suit jacket (male or female)

• Fabric for pocket flaps and lining

• Scissors, pins, hand sewing needle and thread, tailor's chalk or marking pencil.

• Sewing Machine

• Interfacing

Complete Book of Sewing

The Costume Designer's Handbook : A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Designers

The Costume Technician's Handbook : A Complete Guide for Amateur and Professional Costume Technicians

 

Stage Costume Step-By-Step : The Complete Guide to Designing and Making Stage Costumes for All Major Drama Periods and Genres

The Magic Garment : Principles of Costume Design

Costume Construction

Elegantly Frugal Costumes : The Poor Man's Do-It-Yourself Costume Maker's Guide

What To Do:

Render your costume design on paper to give yourself a plan to work towards.  You may end up changing your plan slightly, but starting without a plan is definitely a mistake.  The instructions below detail how to do lip pockets like those shown, but you may choose to design a different style of pocket (eyes, mouth with teeth, cockroach wings, etc.) and can extrapolate your own process based on your design crossed with the instructions below.

Find a suit jacket that fits your performer

Make paper cutouts to try out the design

Look at the suit from the distance you would see it onstage (this varies based on the size of the theatre) and check it against your original design.  Is the design  of the cutout big enough to "read" or is it fading away?  If it isn't bold enough , go back and keep working on the paper pattern till it looks right to you.

Once you are happy with your cutout shapes and their placement on the jacket, trace around them with an appropriate marking tool. 

Next, trim a hole in the jacket approximately 1/4 inch inside your marking, make sure you are on the inside of the line.    Next with a needle and thread, turn under and baste the 1/4 on the line you marked.   This will leave you a lip shaped hole.   

Now make your welts. The welts are just two strips of fabric that when doubled will extend 1/2 inch past the corners of the mouth shape and 1/2above or below it.  

Depending on your fabric I would recommend using a light weight interfacing. you will need 2 welts per pocket. Butt the folded edges of you welts together. Slip the welts under your lip shaped hole, the butted edges should be at the corners of the mouth.   Hand sew the welts in place using a stitch that doesn't show (aka "blind" stitch).

Now for the functional part of the pocket.      Wonder why your welts had to extend beyond the edges??  So you will have something to sew the actual innards of the pocket to.    Cut a strip of pocket lining that is 1" wider than the mouth opening, and double the desired depth of the pocket plus 2".  Attach the two ends of the strip to the welts as shown below, then seam closed the two sides.

When it is finished, photograph the jacket and the pocket(s) as jpeg files and post them to your File folder at the class eGroup.  Post a message to the group letting everyone know you have posted these pictures so you can get feedback.

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