General Overview

You can see more in depth and detailed behind the scenes in their individual blog posts
Neck Corset + Belt | Skirt and Underskirt | Bodice

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This whole work began with a proposal and the general premise of the show "Let Them Eat Fake" (more details?). After the first idea was sprung the progress began with a simple sketch and overview of how I wanted to create this garment and overall how i wanted to execute this project. Below you can see the pages form my sketchbook (apologies for the wordage in the notes, I am dyslexic)

After the sketch and plan was finished and some measuring was done I moved to cutting out my fabric and patter pieces. I did this all in one step as to make sure I had enough fabric to complete the project ahead of time. After each patter peace was cut out I labeled them to keep myself form getting confused and go to work on each of the parts separately.

Additionally there was a lot of material experimentation with this garment. I tried different embroidery patterns out, different types of application for fake blood, paint, ect.

Around the first of November I took some progress shots to be shown to the gallery organizer. this was about the progress I had made between the start of the project (October 24th) and that day (November 1st). Keeping in mind that I was spending an average of 8 hours per day working on this.

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I had added some stings of fake pearls to the shirt after attaching the ruffle. This is where my progress was a few days latter (November 3rd) as things really began to come together. This was also the point at which I ran out of beads and had to stall some parts until they arrived.
In the meantime I added some lace and additional embellishments to the bodice and go to work on finishing the skirt portion of the garment.
I had to paint the panels as well as make the underskirt. sometime in the middle of sewing the skirt together my machine began to make sounds and jam more than normal. I decided to give it a deep clean and oil which was sorely needed, it could sew though my fingers if I wasn't careful after i gave it some tlc.
The skirt came together rather fast. Sometime in the middle of finishing that part my beads arrived and I was actually able to finish the shoulders of the garment. The beading took more time than actually constructing the garment.
At some point i also added extra pearls to the belt to add some dimension in the back of garment despite knowing it would not be seen very much.

After all of that I was ready to document the garment. in total the creation of this peace took me about one full month. If you include the documentation it took just over 30 days! I took both Polaroid photos that lived in the psychical world as well as some digital images which were purely for social media. After all that was said and done it was time to take the finished work to the gallery to install.