During my time at AUB, I have enjoyed the opportunity to make for a variety of projects, from live productions to historical recreation for the purposes of research. I transferred to AUB for the final year of my degree after completing a HND in Costume for Stage and Screen at Edinburgh College. This year has really helped me to build on those foundations and widen my skills as a maker.

In my first semester, I made a recreation of a c.1730–50 women's riding jacket from the pattern published by Janet Arnold in Patterns of Fashion 1. The jacket is entirely hand-sewn – a process that gave me a huge insight into how we can use recreation as a form of research for historical methods. Alongside the sewing, with this project, I also worked in the dye room to colour-match the fabrics to each other and learned the process of cold-casting to make my own replicas of the jacket's buttons.

During my Final Major Project, I made a bustle dress for AUB's production of Jekyll and Hyde, which was a completely different experience but taught me equally as much. It was great to work in a team for a genuine production and witness the entire process from start to finish.

My final project was Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was just as fantastic; I really enjoyed researching and making a costume from such an iconic period of history. The costumes in the project were made as if for film, which typically means they need to look realistic to the period when viewed closely. As such, I sewed the majority of the costume by machine, but all the decoration is finished by hand.

After finishing undergraduate, I am continuing my studies on the MA Historical Costume course here at AUB. I am looking forward to furthering my hand-sewing and pattern-cutting skills, and hopefully will be undertaking more making-as-research projects.