Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Well here I am again. On the night of our first performance. I helped costume 7B47B and it's been fun. Stressful but fun. We've had dress rehearsals all week. A week ago I wasn't sure we were going to make it, but here we are with everyone outfitted and just working on minor details. At this point in a show when I call my husband to tell him I'm finally on my way home I say things like I'm only bringing home a few things to fix... instead of a few things to fix and 6 aprons to sew (that was Tuesday night) or something like that. My family has been so supportive and patient with me this week. 

This was a fun show to outfit because nothing is really modern. Calico prints and gathered skirts abound! Lots of eyelet and lace was used for embellishing. And petticoats are involved! Also at this point in the show I wish I was joining them on stage. Someday maybe. 

Some dresses I made below.

My sister actually made the dress second from left and I embellished it. I also made the apron you can't see too well.

For this show I also learned how to sew a men's button down type shirt. I actually didn't install buttons because we put zippers in instead. They have a super fast wardrobe change and didn't have time for buttons. So it's all hidden zippers and velcro. I sewed the three shirts below. Gold, pink, and green. 

On top of this we sourced a lot of items from the warehouse, where all of these will go for future shows. Not photographed is the mending and alterations that get done after each practice. Someone always needs something fixed. I actually take at least one of my machines with me so I can be ready to fix things when (not if) needed.

It's been fun, stressful but fun. Honestly I look forward to sewing for myself again at this point, but I'm also excited to hear if I'll be asked to help out on any future shows.

Costuming

I've wanted to get into costuming for a little while now. I love sewing and I really enjoy making Halloween costumes. I find that with costuming I get to work with different materials and sew things that I normally wouldn't.

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.

Not Every Witch Lives in Salem

By His grace I've got my confidence back and look at what I've done with it.

A few weeks back I was thinking I just wanted to make a good witch costume that I could wear every year. I knew it would be a huge undertaking so I planned on only making a few pieces each year. This year I chose to make the skirt and hat.

For the skirt I was inspired to make this skirt and used these instructions for adding a "hoop." For my skirt though I made things a little easier and just cut panels that were wide rectangles. I figured out how big I wanted the bottom circumference of my skirt to be, added 3 inches for seam allowance and then divided that by 6. That gave me 16 inch wide panels. To bring them in at the waist I just put both layers together and then added large pleats at every panel seam. I made sure the opening was large enough to pull on over my hips. Instead of using a zipper I added a yoga waistband/knit waistband. I did this because there is the possibility we'll have more children and I wanted the skirt to fit under a pregnant belly or on a postpartum belly... dressing up for Halloween is important, you know ;)

For the hat I was going to build one from scratch but my first two attempts didn't work out so I scrapped that idea and bought a $3 hat from Target and then added on to it. I added burlap on the top and bottom of the brim, and wrapped the cone in burlap. The fringe on the sides of the cone were a happy accident. Really the burlap on the hat just evolved as I was gluing it. The decorations were all found at Michael's and I made a little spider to add to the mix. The pin was just as simple as gluing and hand sewing some decorations to a piece of felt and using safety pins to attach it to my coat. The bird... ah that bird. I saw it at the store and knew that I needed a pet. It was quite a fun detail that didn't go unnoticed at last night's Witches Night Out.

For the lace gloves I used scraps of stretch lace I had on hand and watched a few youtube tutorials and they came together quickly.

Dragon Costume

I feel like I'm always apologizing for not posting enough. I guess I need to stop apologizing and just relax. Really I post whenever I make something. The silence, that's been a bigger issue than just not posting. I haven't been sewing much. Not for lack of fabric, to-sew lists, projects, etc... but I've realized that somehow I developed a lot of fear... fear of what, I'm not sure, but I've had this debilitating feeling of fear and ineptitude. I know that's dumb because I know I'm good at what I do. I can't do it all but I'm good at what I do. I think I'm getting better and I'm getting some things done but those feelings have bogged me down for months.

One of the projects that's helped me get out of my funk is this costume. I was commissioned by a friend to make her daughter a dragon costume for Halloween. She sent some inspiration pics and I followed them pretty closely and added a couple other details. 

This project was more intense than it might appear. I drafted the patten and that's no easy feat. Even if it's pretty much a circle skirt with a hood it takes time. I'm always so impressed with indie pattern designers. Making a pattern is not for sissy's. I fully lined the costume and quilted the spikes and back of the costume. I added velcro for a neck closure and two sets of ties on the interior to hold it together while it's worn. There are also some elastic wrist straps. It may appear small on the model and that's because my daughter wears 5T/xs clothes and this is made for a little lady that is still mostly in 2T clothes. My 2T wearing son refuses to wear this... I put it on him for fit checks but he cries the whole time. Hopefully the lucky lady likes it.

Now on to Halloween costumes for my family.