This class is a practical course, which meant that it was my first class in costume construction! I was incredibly excited for this class. I had prior experience in sewing, as I had done a lot of sewing in high school, and I had worked in the costume shop for many shows before taking this class, but I still learned an immense amount! This class was also wonderful because it reinforced techniques I already knew and it really increased my confidence in sewing.

For many projects in this class, we were asked to sew children’s clothing items, as they were smaller, easier to work with, and took much less time and effort to create. However, I asked many times to sew clothing pieces that were larger, for adults. I wanted to challenge myself with this course and make pieces that I was really proud of. (Also, I wanted to make clothes for myself, ha!) This ended up making the class quite challenging for me, but it also made my projects so much more fun to me, as I was making something to not only get a good grade on, but to hopefully wear myself!

The artifact that I chose for this class is my first real clothing piece from this class. It is a colorful bomber jacket, which fits me perfectly, and is incredibly comfortable, I might add. This project was quite difficult! I chose a pattern by a company that is typically known for having difficult to understand instructions, (and, boy, were they difficult to understand!) which really slowed down my progress and really frustrated me. However, I persevered, stayed after class for hours, and ended up having something really cool to show for it! My professor actually commented on my finished product, saying that it looked like something that could have been bought from a store.