"Rough Braid"

During my first week in York I learned a new technique: "rough braid." "Braid" as such is familiar, of course - you buy it, often at greater expense than you'd like, from a store.

When you have a hundred costumes needing braid, however, as well as a limited budget, AND those hundred costumes are for mostly poor-ish people in a crowd scene, you turn to "rough braid." It's shorthand for braid you make yourself, from fabric scraps. The goal is to provide visual stage interest without going to great expense.

First: select a garment you want to trim - or, in our case, take one of the garments with a "tasks sheet" which says, for example, "rough braid around hem and neckline."

Give the outfit a quick visual to see what kinds of colours might work for it as a whole, then take the item to be "rough braided" to the scrap fabric bin to select material:

Cut fabric into strips, then look at the samples to get an idea of what kind of "braid" might work for the type of fabric (heavy, light, ravelly, rough, smooth) you've selected:

Here's the rough braid I made, on the garment in the first picture:

I realize that I've probably been making a version of "rough braid" for quite a while - almost anything that is not specifically made and purchased as "braid" could be called "rough braid." What I learned in this process, though, is that anything goes, and rough edges are actually desirable since they add texture and visual interest generally. Hmmm.... all that ravelly dupioni silk I have at home... could rip it into strips and braid it... hmmm...