Big Update! Steps 6 and 7? Idk anymore...

The dress is all put together. Here's a pic of most of the pieces before we taped them together by peeling the edges of the duct tape away from the cloth and interlocking the two pieces (layering from bottom up: cloth 1, cloth 2, duct tape 1, duct tape 2. The top layer of duct tape stuck to the duct tape directly under it, which stuck to the cloth that originally went with the top layer of duct tape. Hopefully that makes sense...). After that part of the "sewing" was done and smoothed out as much as possible, we took a long piece of black duct tape and went over the whole seam top to bottom. It's suprisingly secure. I've also adjusted the dress with darts around the waist and bust by pinching up the extra duct tape cloth (Duct tape cloth will now be refered to as DTC because I'm tired of typing out the whole thing), folding it over, and sticking it down with a long piece of duct tape. And in case anyone's wondering; yes, I did finish the dress form/mannequin thing, but I don't have a good picture of it since my dress has been hanging on it and my sisters stuffed it to the breaking point trying to make it look "realistic" (fat). :P

I'm working on the fancier stuff now, mostly the neckline. The neckline is an unusual original design, and when I'd worked on it a bit, I realized I'd have to move the planned zipper from the back to the side, otherwise I wouldn't be able to get into the dress. I've also evened out the bottom hem with a good pair of scissors (so much easier than working with normal cloth!) and added a curving slit (triangular cutout? wedge shaped clothless spot?) that ends right above my left knee. I'll be adding a bunch of stars there too, to circle around for the train.

Unfortunately I've had to find another partner, but the good news is within a week I found a friend of mine who's willing to give it a shot. We're going to meet on Saturday to work on his tux design and start making his DTC, so we'll see how it goes!

(I'll say one black to tape it together and one purple for the neckline, so 6 blacks, 6 chromes, and 1 purple)

Step 5 Begun and Done!

I'm finished cutting out all the pieces I need for the dress, and I have plans for a friend to help me tape it all together later today. It only took me two or three days to finish cutting it all, mostly backstage during rehearsals again. I've been cuting out a lot more stars too, and I've started stringing them together to use for the train. It'll be about three feet long, maybe more.

I'll try to remember to take a picture of the pieces before we tape it all together. Happy New Year!

Mannequin

Ok, the shoes are pretty much done except for sticking the stars on. I'll wait to post a picture until they're finished. Or maybe I should wait till I enter the contest and everyone can see them...

So, something funny happened to me yesterday. I've started cutting out the pieces for the dress and I decided to use some plain duct tape to make a dress form/mannequin. I've read the best way to do this is to wear an old t-shirt and have someone else wrap you up and cut you out, so that's what I did. Except since it was 11 at night, I skipped the "someone else" part. Being pretty flexible, I wrapped myself up with no problems and was quite satisfied with the result. That done, I went to go cut myself out. Although I was flexible enough to pass the duct tape roll behind my upper back and beneath my arms while keeping the tape straight, I could not cut more than halfway down my back while still being able to operate the scissors. I didn't want to cut down the front, so I ended up asking my sister to cut me out of my latest project.

In the end, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and I'll post a picture after I stuff it. Any idea what I should stuff it with?

Shoes

So a took a little break from the dress and worked a bit on the shoes. I took a pair of old shoes and cut most of the straps off but I did leave a couple on for support and something for the duct tape to stick to. I've got one mainly done, it just needs the decorations and such now. It took me two hours to get the shape right, but it fits quite comfortably. I'm going to go make the other one now...

Step 4 Complete!!!

Yay!!!!! I just finished taping all of the cloth I need. Hopefully that was the most tedious part of making this thing and now I can get a move on it and finish piecing the dress together by the end of break...

It's a whole lot of cloth, I think it's about 4-5 yards of cheap, black cotton stuff and it took a little more than five rolls of duct tape to cover it. I'll probably have enough left over for my collaborator's jacket... (So five black and I think I've used about six rolls of chrome altogether for the stars)

Christmas Break!!!

Well, I didn't get anything done last break, there was too much other stuff going on. But I will finish putting the dress together by the end of this break, I really have no excuses this time and I just need to if it's going to be done on time.

No, I'm not dead yet...

I'm back! And I haven't gotten much done since the school year started. I hope to have the basic body of the dress finished by the end of this break. That will give me all of Christmas break and spring break to finish embellishments and such.
Jeremy, if you're reading this, please get on with it...