My quest to complete all of the design challenges from Season 9 of Project Runway is soon coming to a close, as I work on my final three-piece collection. The designers on the show have extra time when completing their final collections, so I’m taking a little extra time myself to do mine. I will have share the results with you next week, but for now I thought I’d give you a behind-the-scenes peek at some of what got me to this point.

First, let me show you how I got all my dolls to stand upright for their runway photos each week. I had a cleverly positioned wire behind them that you couldn’t see. It was actually a piece of a coat hanger that had a bend in the bottom which allowed it to rest flat against a piece of foam core (left), and the rest of it poked through (right). The top of the wire had a bend in it that let me lean the doll back as needed, and as long as I aimed my camera just right, the model’s leg would hide the wire completely in the shot.

I used another piece of white foam board for the backdrop, and then covered the floor with a piece of scrapbook paper that coordinated with the garment. I just poked a hole in the middle of the paper and slid it down the wire to the bottom.

My equivalent of the Piperlime wall that the designers on the show had was essentially just whatever doll shoes my niece could manage to find matching pairs of in her Barbie supplies. It ended up being a pretty good mix, but I did have to get creative for episode 5, when I needed gray tennis shoes for the challenge. Fortunately, my niece had no objections to me using a little paint to make the pink sneakers she already had suitable.

The big challenge in episode 3 was that the models needed to be on stilts, so I had to get crafty in order to accomplish that. A couple of wooden chopsticks and some tape were all I needed, though, and it held up just fine.

One of the running themes in a typical season of Project Runway is problematic models, although they haven’t really said anything about that this year. However, I did have one troublemaker in my group, whom I used in episode 7! It was the Hannah Montana doll who had the ability to sing her famous “Hoe Down Throw Down” song every time you pushed the little button on her tummy. That button was so quick to play that it would start if I even moved the table too much. I got so tired of that song by the time I was done with that challenge!

You may remember from episode 9 that I created distressed jeans for my southern rock Ken doll. If you were wondering what I used to distress them, the answer is sandpaper. Viktor did a distressed denim for his garment as well, but he did it by making cuts with a knife. I didn’t think the result was quite as authentic. The sandpaper worked great for me, though, and I’m thinking about trying it on a pair of my own jeans.

As with most anything in life, there are ups and downs in fashion design as well. You’ve seen my final looks each week, but I thought you might like to see one that didn’t make it to the runway. During the challenge from episode 8, I had a failed attempt to create a skirt that would suit the friend I was designing for. It just didn’t work at all, though, so I abandoned it and made pants instead. I think the problem was my fabric, which just didn’t hang right and made my model look like a cupcake!

I had similar frustrations in the challenge from episode 12, when I tried to get my green fringe to work just right. My first mistake was that I cut the fleece in the wrong direction. Back when I made Little Jo’s pumpkin dress and matching hair tie for Halloween, I learned that fleece will fall apart if you cut it and pull it in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, I forgot that lesson when I made my fringe. The result was a huge pile of wasted fabric and time.

I hope you enjoyed these looks at the process behind my series of designs. You’ll see my final collection next week!