Practices: Measuring  | Buckle Sewing

Style/Era: Contemporary

Music majors at Loyola University are required to do a solo senior recital as a capstone project, for my own recital I wanted to create a piece I would wear as a way to incorporate my costuming skills from my theatre major into my music major. I settled on a look I wanted to achieve and required a cummerbund which I had previously made a couple for my theatre major directing capstone project. Utilizing that pattern I measured myself and made a custom fit cummerbund for my recital. Having knowledge from making the aforementioned cummerbunds, I was able to simplify the process by knowing how I would need to lay out the straps according to my measurements so that it sat as I desired. The only difference between this project and the previous was that I was planning to use a buckle instead of Velcro, as my intention was for this piece to be more for general use than just rigged for theatrical purposes. 

Points in which I was challenged:

• Adjusting straps to accommodate for buckle closure instead of Velcro.

  • There was a small amount of trial and error required to figure out how I could get the straps to be at an adjustable length and closing with a buckle in comparison to my past experience making cummerbunds that closed with Velcro. It only took two mockup straps to figure out how I wanted to attach the buckle as there were three different buckles that closed differently, and I settled for a golden, toothed buckle.