FOUNDATIONS REVEALED COMPETITION ENTRY
Shadow Queen
(click images to to enlarge)
Other Credits
Model: https://instagram.com/iamvikagrin/ Photographer: https://instagram.com/timmad.photography/
Outline the story …
The shadow king is a lonely, once human, creature from Walter Moers‘ novel “The City of Lost Books“. He lives deep within a labyrinth of catacombs beneath Buchhaim, amidst countless of forgotten tomes. His body covered entirely with the pages of old books, he cannot face the sunlight or he will burn at the sight of it. In his last moments, the shadow king is tired of life, lonely and dark in the catacombs and decides to finally face the sunlight.
The shadow queen is a modern, gender-bent interpretation of the shadow king’s last moments. She is intended to capture the longing sadness with which the shadow king finally faces the sunlight before he dies. She is wearing an s-bend inspired corset, made out of paper with loose book pages spilling out at its top and bottom. The pattern and the position of the bones are heavily inspired by extant s-bend corsets and by Nora Waugh’s book “Corsets and Crinolines”.
Outline the construction…
The biggest challenge in using actual paper was stability. To prevent tearing, the pages were glued to a single layer of cotton prior to cutting. That resulted in a very stiff fashion fabric with a beautiful shine. However, no amount of gluing, ironing or stretching could prevent wrinkles and bumps from forming in the paper when dried. All wrinkles were minimized by carefully finger pressing and topstitching over uneven areas, as the heat of the iron would melt the glue.
A lot of strain on the fabric would still cause the pages to tear, so the corset was lined with a layer of cotton coutil, to ensure stability while being worn. The corset is fully boned, with the bones sandwiched between the two layers and the boning channels topstitched. Spiral steel boning allows for flexibility and moulds well to the shape of the body. At the centre-front and -back, flat steel boning was added to achieve the characteristically flat front and curved back. All raw edges at the top and bottom of the corset were lined with 8 cm white cotton bias tape that was whip stitched down on the inside, with stitches as small as the stiffness of the corset would allow.
Because this was the first time I ever made a corset or drafted a complicated pattern, the first pattern was made following the foundations revealed tutorial “draft your own corset” and drastically altered to its desired shape over a time span of 6 months and 3 mock-ups.
…I was honestly convinced that this was fabric with a newspaper print, well done (also howwwwwwwww)
Thank you so much 🙂
I don’t know how I made this work either…it just happened
WAIT WHAT (Mind blown emoji) This is amazing! I cant even fathom how you did this.
Thanks! I’m so happy to hear that you and other people like it!
OMG this is astounding. What an achievement! You should be very proud because this is truly memorable.
Thank you so much 🙂
This is just…PHENOMENAL. The shape! and with PAPER?! You wizard.
Thank you! It might actually habe been wizardry that allowed me to make this. I still can’t believe it myself
It is so cool that you managed to use actual paper for this and make it look like a corset made from fabric! I love the look of the material. It is crazily beautiful!
Thank you!!!
So cool! I totally thought the corset was printed fabric at first.
Thanks! I’m glad it’s convincing.
Beautiful! How is it possible to sew paper?
Thank you 🙂
I backed the paper with fabric and strengthened it with glue (hence the shine) to keep it from ripping
This is incredible, I’m so impressed!!! Also I actually quite like the wrinkled texture of the paper! This is just my opinion but I think if it were completely smooth it would look too much like fabric and might lose some of it’s magical effect. The natural quality of the paper gives it so much charm! Well done on this amazing work!
Paper, huh? You are a genius. The interpretation of the character is brilliant. Excellent job!