treasure map
I entered a competition not too long ago, it was to create an “art to wear” type design for Barbie through the Toronto Fashion Incubator. The prize was a cool 10 mill. I mean 10 grand. Serious stuff.
I was like, aha! STEGA. This is my chance.
I had a whim a while ago for a simple top with Stegosaurus like sleeves, basically spikes going down the arms. So I designed an outfit for Barbie on this premise- called her “Sunstar” Barbie. It was my opportunity to create my Stega masterpiece, and with purpose to boot. The inspiration [I had to make up] was something along the lines of “Barbie gets a hard time, a lot of the time. From Moms. From Feminists. From Feminist Moms. You know, everybody loves to hate Barbie, give her flack about her unachievable proportions, her being a bad role model for little girls. She is often acquiring another career to appease her critics, to make her more of an independent woman who is in charge of her own destiny.” Something like that, we all know this to be true. So my gal, Sunstar Barbie, is the antithesis to the criticism. She’s all about being the unapologetic center of attention, the centre of the universe, actually. She’s rockin in the free world, strutting her stuff, a happy, fun, shiny star.
I am not a magnificent artiste, so I sent this representation of the design to my friend fashion illustrator/blogger extraordinaire Danielle Meder, to turn into a masterpiece for my entry.
And here is what Danielle put together- amazing! I would totally buy this Barbie for my daughters. I didn’t want my design to have anything to do with sexiness, or even beauty (in the Barbie sense). I guess. But this Barbie is a dynamic, individual of a woman that I want to know more about. Total manrepeller.
And then, I didn’t get into the finals, unfortunately. They were picking 25 finalists for an ultimate showdown on the runway. I was mucho disappointed for an afternoon, but I got over it pretty quickly. I realized that most of my disappointment stemmed from the fact that I really wanted to make the design. So I was like, that’s cool, I’ll just make it. Although I of course thought of a million reasons why I didn’t get in- Too obvious? Not complicated enough? Did I insult them with my Sunstar Barbie explanation (which I guess is really, Inyoface Barbie) Do they hate me? And so on.
patterning
One half drawn, and ready to be folded and cut.
one half drawn
Cut and laid out, with two alternate necklines. The top can be worn with the V in the back or front.
laid out
I opted to fuse the overarm area where the spikes will be, to give it more substance and stability. Here it is fused and marked for sewing.
sewing lines marked
And here are the lines sewn. Notice the U shape.
sewn
So next, I carefully slit into the tiny space between the two sewing lines and made a tiny Y shape into the corners at their interior. Which gave me this. I have already added a wide wrist facing here as well.
getting closer...
But, the boxes were actually too tall! DOH! So I had to put a seam in their upper edge after all, this would be eliminated second time around though. Oops. So here is what they looked like after that-
pre-flip
So I’ve already sewn the shirts seams that hold the back to the front and it’s time to flip. I flipped it right side out and ever so carefully work the squares out without puncturing the ever so tiny seam allowances between them. Then, I took the corners of each square and pushed them back in towards the center, creating a triangle. Voila! That’s it. I tacked the two corners together on one but found it was actually kind of unecessary so I didn’t go any further with that operation.
getting a nice press
The really exciting thing is that I think this pattern making principal could be applied anywhere on a garment. It could be an interesting way to control fullness and add shaping, by grabbing sections of fabric here and there, and then doing this to it. The spikes could be tiny, or huge. . . there are so many possibilities to play around with the idea.
Here are a few more pictures of my new top! Love it! If anyone else wants one, I’ve got it listed on Etsy (just for the hell of it.)
