My husband does a lot of work with digital media, TV, and smaller film productions. He's the best and puts in a word for me with the costuming people whenever he can. Someone he had met on set contacted me in December to see if I would be her assistant, and help with sewing, for a Broadway Family Favorites show in Feb/March. I said yes. I was so excited. It was an opportunity to get my feet wet and try my hand at costuming. I've loved it. It was a huge cast with many costume changes. We pulled costumes from a warehouse to use and then purchased and sewed whatever else we needed. Most purchases happened at thrift stores, good thing I'm already well equipped with digging and finding what I need there.
I took on outfitting all the orphans in Annie. It was one of the biggest numbers with the most people on stage at one point. It was crazy. I sewed, shopped, altered, dyed, etc. But watching those girls on stage really made me proud.
Some other fun things were sewing up 15 sequin tunics in less than two days. Luckily for me we didn't have to hem anything or finish anything, and I set all the sleeves in flat. In my little experience I find this fun. I like that I don't have to be a perfectionist because small mistakes won't be seen from the audience. I can just enjoy what I do. I also made one of the Fiona dresses, and for some reason that dress gave me more grief than anything I've sewn in a long time. In the end it looked good. My favorite part was when I decided that the trim needed more something and started adding gold acrylic paint to the textured part of the ribbon. I didn't have time to use a small brush so I just put it on lightly with my finger. It helped it pop a little more when she was on stage. I like that about costuming... fun in the details and a lack of perfection.
Here are a few pics from one of the last dress rehearsals. I sewed half of the sequin tunics, and many of the batwing sparkle tops.
This was our Miss Hannigan. Her voice was great! I helped put together her outfit and alter the dress neckline.
I helped costume some of the members in the chorus below. These were all pieces pulled from the warehouse.
Wow, you did a great job making these costumes. I love costumes too and like you wrote, using unusual materials to create a costume is so much fun. The audience will never see the mistakes but they will see your imagination used to create a very important part of a show/play. Wouldn't it be brilliant to work for Cirque du Soilel ??
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