One of my favorite Syd retrospectives is her path through creating, constructing, and modeling her original designs in our town's Trashion/Refashion Show. She's gone from a four-year-old who used up most of a pink marker to draw what she wanted me to make her--
2020 would have been the debut of her first work designing a garment for someone else, with three of her designs accepted into the show, and two friends excited to model with her.
Happily, the Trashion/Refashion Show came back in 2021, though in a new location and diminished capacity:
2021: That Girl from The Ring
So 2022 was when we got to enjoy our Trashion/Refashion Show back at capacity and back where it belonged in our town's 100-year-old theater. In 1922, people packed the seats to watch silent movies, but a few days ago, they were there to watch the designer of Mothic model her original creation on the runway.
Her garment originally started out quite different. Here are some of her application photos:
Syd later decided to change the undershirt to black, as well, but the bodice and skirt set stayed the same in the final garment. The biggest change, though, was the wings. Here are her original wings:
She could not figure out how to construct the look she was going for, so settled on highly embellishing wings that would remain closed and function like a cape:
Syd finally solved the construction issue by moving to the lightest fabric we could find--old cotton bedsheets--painting them with a combination of fabric dye and artist's acrylics, and creating a light structure from corrugated cardboard to give them the extension she wanted.
I think she achieved the look she was going for:
And here she is in motion:
It was a special day and a beautiful night, and I'm glad that we got to have it again.
Syd is still interested in extendable wing forms, particularly articulated ones that can be controlled by the wearer, so it looks like we've got our summer engineering project all figured out!
We've done a LOT of studying on the subject of Ancient Greece, including dressing the part--doesn't Syd make an adorable Spartan?
--so we didn't spend a lot of time on this particular unit in the study. Syd read the chapter on Ancient Greece in The Complete Book of Fashion History, found a rectangle of fabric (it just happened to be the My Little Pony blanket that I gave her for Christmas last year), and I helped her assemble her chiton.
It's really very simple. The fabric gets wrapped under one armpit, and the edges are pinned at the opposite shoulder--don't pin them right at the corners, which will make the neckline gape, but at a comfortable spot for a nice boatneck. Pin up the other side at the shoulder, as well, and there you have your chiton!
We have neither made the decorative overfold nor added the belt--if your fabric is too wide, either or both of those will take care of the excess, but that My Little Pony blanket was made to be this kid's chiton!
For extra embellishment, the clips that hold the fabric at the shoulders can also be fancy. And if you were male, your chiton could be knee-length.
Here are some more hands-on projects for studying Ancient Greece:
P.S. If you like hands-on homeschooling projects, check out my Craft Knife Facebook page, where I share all the awesome homeschooling and hands-on resources that I come across.
In our History of Fashion study so far, the little kid and I have:
worked with leather, embellished shells, and woven on a loom in Prehistory.
And now it's time to travel to Ancient Egypt!
Our spine for this study is The Complete Book of Fashion History, which is already well-thumbed by everyone in the family. For this unit, the little kid and I re-read the pages for Ancient Egypt, and while there are loads of cross-curricular activities that you could do here--you could use the Story of the World chapters and activity book resources for Ancient Egypt, read biographies of Cleopatra and Nefertiti, study mummification, make a pharoah's costume or models of their elaborate jewelry--we've actually spent a LOT of time on Ancient Egypt over the years, so I zoomed in on the one thing that we haven't played around with yet: their eye makeup.
Eye makeup was a big deal for the Ancient Egyptians, and not just for cosmetic reasons. Just like football players do now, putting on dark eyeliner reduced glare on the eyes of the Ancient Egyptians in the bright sunlight, and the fact that the eye makeup contained lead, while it was terrible for their long-term health, did protect them from loads of eye diseases and infections.
Why would Ancient Egyptians get so many eye infections, you ask? It's because of all that freaking sand! It got everywhere, including in their eyes and into all of their food. Ancient Egyptians also had terrible teeth, because they ate so much sand that got into their meals that it wore down the enamel on their teeth.
The little kid and I watched this video that shows images of Ancient Egyptian artwork, focusing on their eyes to provide the evidence that yes, indeed, dark eye makeup was a thing (at least on the artwork!)--
--and then we watched this video of a makeup artist recreating the look on her own eyes:
And then the kid tried it for herself!
This was a fun activity for the little kid, and inspired a whole week's worth of makeup play. It has never occurred to me for a single moment to ever want to put on even a smidge of makeup, but honestly, looking at the kid sitting across the table from me at 10 in the morning, sulking over finding the percent of difference between two numbers... I think she's wearing a little makeup right now, actually.
Here are some other ways that we've studied Ancient Egypt over the years:
P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!
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