Follow the yellow brick road...

Over the past few weeks I have been working on a project of my own choice. Over Christmas I was given the inspiration to create pieces of work which are based on one of my much loved films. The Wizard of Oz.
I decided to look at Dorothy's dress, and began thinking up ideas which would renew this very famous dress.
I started off by using a pattern for a skirt which I used to create an underskirt aswell.
Once I sewed my dress together , I decided that it looked pretty much the same to the original and so decided that I needed to change it.
In the end , I gathered the panals of my dress together, this created more shape and also let me fit a netted skirt underneith it, for the netted skirt I used heavy duty net and created layers of netting at the bottom of the underskirt to give it more volume.
Once I had created the skirt I needed to look at creating a top. The top I decided to create using just my mannequin. I made panals to create a bodice and stitched some of the left over checked fabric to make an edge. But it needed something extra which would add interest to the plain baby blue lining of the top.
And after visiting the Whitworth Gallery ( Thanks Kate ! ) I found my inspiration. At the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester , a group were in, creating different items with fabric , which I created something I later found out to be called a Suffolk Puff.
A Suffolk Puff is basically a circle of fabric hemmed and then gathered together with a button sewn through the middle to keep it in place.
I really enjoyed making them and I decided that they would add a subtle change to my top , I decided that I didnt want to keep the buttons all the same , I liked the fact that all the buttons were different and if someone was up close looking at it I think they would find it asthetically please as I did.
Finally after creating my outfit I used my friend as a model in the photography studio at my college. My friend Becky has some of the best tattoos I have ever seen , and it was pointed out to me by another friend that her tattoos would make a great contrast to the conventional dress I have made, and so when I photographed her I made sure that her tattoos were on show and that they stood out against the dress and vice versa.

The image above is one of my favourite photographs of Becky , I love her contrasting tattoos with the dress and the effect I have added on to the photo. All of these photos were orginally taken on my film SLR and then imported on to the computer to create digital images. I added these effects to make it look like the black and white scenes in the wizard of Oz.
http://artjunk.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/11/10/dorothy.jpg
Inspired by the link to a picture of Dorothy .
Overall, I'm really happy with the outfit , I think that as a first attempt it is quite well done and look forward to creating more pieces.