Thursday, October 26, 2006

Sewing for Sleuth


I'm costuming Sleuth for the Williamsburg Players. I'm remaking several items of clothing and making a puppet and smoking jacket. This is the smoking jacket before the hand sewing. I'll be finishing it in a day or so.

The character Andrew Wyke will be wearing this jacket in the first act.
With the costuming comes making or gathering some disguises for the other characters, Milo and Inspector Doppler. I'll post pictures of those later, but suffice it to say, it's been fun. We're reusing a KKK costume I made for "The Foreigner" last year. Most of these costumes for disguise were premade, but I had to remake a few items to turn a robe into a monk's robe, and on and on. It's been fun.
I've also made a puppet of sorts - Jack Tar, a sailor who laughs a lot. I'll be working him from backstage. Here's a quick picture.

The smoking jacket is brocade that I picked up on eBay and the pattern was a robe pattern. The black fabric is a tablecloth that I found in one of the dressing rooms. Jack is wearing an old turtle neck of mine, his body is a child's clothing form, the shoulders are made from a pool toy (noodle) as are the legs and arms. It's all held together with postage tape, clothes hangers, and tie wraps, and a lot of "please stay together!" He's wearing a wig under the sailor cap, and you can see where I painted his styrofoam face before he was dressed. His hands are gloves that are stuffed with polyfil and his shoes are socks stuffed with poly. The pants are a pair of my daughter's old pants from The Gap and the shirt over the turtle neck is a genuine sailor shirt.

There's more to do for this show, but this is the start!

2 comments:

  1. Love to read blogs on other peoples costuming as I am obsessed with it also. Used to have a costume shop, sold it , but it is still in the blood. Am now making a few things for church. Loved your smoking jacket and the pupet, wow

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  2. The smoking jacket was actually kind of fun to make. The photos shows it unhemmed and unpressed. I didn't get a photo of it afterwards. Argh.
    I still costume a little bit, but tend to shy away from it because I'm doing so much of my own sewing these days.
    I'm not sure I could costume full time. It's a LOT of work!

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