Working at the New Carnival Company: Part 3!

On thursday and friday this week we mainly worked on a set of costumes representing the Delhi Durbar, including red, white, blue and gold tent skirts and a giant elephant puppet!
The main part of the skirts had already been made last week, so we just had to decorate and finish them with the Equals group (who will be wearing them next saturday).

The first part of this process was to finish the decorative side panels by covering them with fabric:

And cutting them out with the most ginormous pair of scissors I've ever seen!
Then goldifying them:

Then adding wire inside so that they can be bent into a 3D effect (this will make sense later):

After that they were all hand printed with a stamp Gina had made from foam and gold paint:

Before

After

Everyone in the group had a go at printing which was another fine example of teamwork; I did the first couple of prints, then I showed the next lady how to do it, and she showed the next and so on! Then when they were dry, we stuck these panels onto the main skirt part along with the bunting that the Equals ladies had made and finished the whole lot off with plenty of gold braid:

Very tent-like and patriotic! A lot of work went into the making of these and they're going to look great on the day, especially accompanied by the elephant that Gina's been working on:

Ellie Skellie

For most of the week he was just a wicker skeleton but on thursday he started to come alive as his outer coating was added:

Here he is lying on his side - that's one of his ears sticking up in the air. This is his trunk, which is detachable:

I am very excited to see what he looks like when he's finished! Meanwhile, I am also making slow progress on my peacock costume. After using some of Helen's handmade embellishments for inspiration:

I created my own 'peacock feather eye' embellishment:

Creating...

Creating...

Finished!

I'll be repeating this motif in other parts of the costume too. That's it for this week, I'm enjoying my weekend exploring Ryde and also doing some homework (watching Rio 2).