At the workshops, Imogen taught us all about the process of producing a costume. We researched many areas relevant to designing costumes for our College Musical "The Queen of Storms" and began the designing process, by listening to Mr Combes talk about his vision for the musical and we then investigated types of clothing that people wore in the Elizabethan and Edo Japan eras. In addition to this, we also had to research the different types of fabric and how they look under different lighting. After hearing all of Imogen's ideas and techniques, we left the workshops inspired. We then had a clearer image of what the characters in the musical might look like. The research that was conducted enabled us to put pencil to paper and draw our own unique costumes.

I really enjoyed the workshops as I learnt so many new things including how to accentuate the characteristics of a character through the designed costume. I am very thankful for the time that Imogen spent with us, teaching all of the techniques and ways to produce an effective and successful costume. 

Loretta T – Year 10 Textiles Technology

After our Costume Workshop incursion the Year 10 Textiles students continued with Costume Collages. We then had to get creative and add the last touches by using other materials such as markers, paints and fabrics to build up the layers. Then it was time to bring the ideas we had envisioned to life on paper. Sketching costume ideas was really fun as we were able to add ideas and take away others to find the perfect costume for our chosen characters. We had to consider our character’s qualities and physical traits when designing the costumes. The costumes also had to be practical and strong to last several live stage performances. As a class we helped each other by giving feedback on one another’s designs. This helped us develop a design that was both practical and fit the character brief.

We have now planned our time to help us to stay on track with both our practical and theory tasks. We now have fully developed designs for our costumes and have finished our productions sketches. We have begun searching for different patterns that could be used for our costume production. We have created colour swatches and researched fabrics to see how we can alter, change, dye, distress and use the fabrics in multiple ways to achieve different effects and silhouettes. We are now on the look-out for our final fabrics and resources and look forward to our cast measuring and consultations to begin working on this very exciting project. 

Emily M and Sophie S – Year 10 Textiles Technology