On Golden Pond - It's all over now

The show closed Saturday night. I have to say it was some of the best theater I've been involved in thus far. A local reviewer also reviewed me! Go figure. The costumer never gets mentioned:

http://altdaily.com/local-review-on-golden-pond-by-the-williamsburg-players/

The costumes followed the months as they flowed in time on stage. From long sleeves to short sleeves, and subtle changes along the way helped with the passage of time. Charlie, the mailman, wore a pith helmet per the director's suggestions. I found images on the internet, printed them on fabric, and stitched the patches to two shirts (one long sleeved and one short sleeved). Norman, the husband of the couple at the center of the play, was envisioned as a crusty curmudgeon with casual clothes save for the one scene where he needed a tie. For that one, I took a long sleeve Oxford and cut it down to short sleeved. We picked out a bright, salmon colored tie. Ethel, the wife, was seen as someone who would wear button up shirts over tees. She did switch to overalls for her strawberry picking scene. I wanted a floppy hat, but that idea was shot down. Chelsea, the daughter, was dressed in travel casual dresses, and at the end, she wore one of her own skirts and top. I saw the skirt on her at a rehearsal and it was perfect for her at-home wear toward the end of the show.

Bill, Chelsea's shy, dentist boyfriend, was seen to wear an Oxford shirt and tie. He was such a buttoned up character! I put him in a polo shirt for the end scene. Billy, Bill's son, basically wore his down clothes save for the fishing vest and hat I procured. I did have him scruff up his hair to look a bit more rambunctious. The telephone operator dressed herself. She also worked back stage, so hers was an outfit that needed to transition to black backstage wear easily.

Bill, Chelsea, Ethel, on meeting Bill.  

Billy going fishing. 

Better view of Billy's fishing vest.

Charlie and Ethel on porch. 

Charlie's short sleeve shirt. Ethel wore a different robe for the show that we had embellished to look like a frumpy, but strong woman's robe with ruffles. 

Meeting Billy. 

Chelsea's second look. The dress was hanging in the wardrobe rooms unfinished. I finished it and put the label in the front instead of the back. Oh well!

Norman's second shirt. A little warmer now, sleeves rolled up. 

Ethel's first outfit. 

Ethel's last outfit.

Bill ended up in a polo shirt at the end, not this button down shirt. 

Curtain call. Norman wore a dark blue windbreaker for the show and again, Bill wore a polo, not a button down. 

Norman's fishing outfit. Again, I took a long sleeved shirt out of wardrobe and cut it down to short sleeved.

Norman and Billy getting ready to go fishing, from the wings on a show night. 

I didn't really "make" any costumes for the show, but I altered a lot of what I picked out. I'm still not sure whether I like costuming or not, but for this show, I did!

I hope to work with this director again next season. We'll see!

On Golden Pond Costuming - Let's get started

I am fortunate enough to have been asked to costume On Golden Pond for the Williamsburg Players. They're in early rehearsals now, so I'm in the planning and early making stages myself. Right now, I have two formerly white dress shirts in the dryer. They're now blue and one will be a short sleeved USPS shirt and the other a long sleeved USPS shirt. To go with them, the director wants a certain hat, so I'm currently hand sewing a fabric printed emblem onto the hat:

Don't want to show too much just yet! My daughter helped with the artwork search and then I printed what will be all the patches for Charlie's uniform on fabric. The shirts have a couple emblems as well. This is the fun part!

I have a long way to go and I'll take you with me through the process. Tonight, I'll get my bio information together for the program and work on mapping out the characters and when they'll wear certain clothes.

Double bonus for this show, I get to work back stage too! Already got my black pants and tees ready to rock and roll. All of mine are about 10 years old and in really bad shape. A girl needs new black stuff, right?

If you're local, get your tickets early. It's gonna be a great show.

Cleaning!

I took a day off from sewing and decided it was time to clean up all my sewing project mess. Every time I make something, I have a pile of fabric scraps, thread, and sundry other items on my sewing table. Recently, I've made Valentine's Day hearts for my tree, placemats for sale, and did some mending. That left behind fabric with hearts and flowers in various shades of red, the backing fabric and the strip quilting fabrics for the placemats, and the things I haven't mended yet.

It's amazing how much stuff you can collect! As I cleaned and organized, I also went through my spare buttons (some purchased wholesale for sale on line and which have seemed to collect en mass in a box under my sewing machine table) and project containers. I have containers with placemat projects in various states of completion; another one with potholder patterns, fabrics, and partially completed items; containers with like fabrics in shades of brown, rainbow Michael Miller Krystal fabrics; containers with batting and bags of polyfil next to those; and oh gosh, containers of all sorts of stuff. Even just talking about it makes me tired!

I had a couple pair of jeans that needed to be taken apart, so go that done and put the resultant fabric in its container along with the pockets. I might use them someday, right?

I "found" my container that I take with me to the theater to do mending on costumes and restocked that, putting away older items in the container that I may never use again. And next to this was a small metal container that I use for hand sewing items. So that's where all my hand sewing needles "went!" And under another pile of fabric was my bobbin winder. Darn, been wondering where that was. I also learned that the small screwdriver that goes with my trusty Bernina isn't in its container; I'll find that on the floor someday when I bend down to find a button that falls.

Overall, it was a great adventure in sewing land. I now have things all tidied up and ready to mess up once more. What's next?

An incomplete photo album of some things I've made over the years.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dgapperson/ThingsIVeMadeSewingAndOtherArtsyFartsyStuffThroughTheYears #

There are a lot more photos on my hard drive - one of these days, I'll get the pictures up here! Some of these things were created along with a how-to written for the web site du jour for which I was working or owning. Others are things I've made on contract, just for fun, to try something new, for the local community theater, and on and on. The overwhelming thread that seems to bind is that I like to make things out of things that have already been made. Must track back to my former hippie wannabe days!

And yeti, I still like to sew

Argh. Have you ever taken on a sewing project that you wish you had never started? Of course you have. I just finished mine. It was the ultimate, uber, pinnacle of bad ideas and yet I did it, beginning, middle, and end.

I got a request from a friend at our local community theater - "Can you make a yeti?" "Sure," I say, "no problem." We talked about it and I decided that yarn on a sweatsuit was the way to go.

I met the actor and asked him to get a gray sweatsuit that fit him a little large. I picked up some white yarn, someone donated some offwhite yarn, I bought a pair of white gloves with black speckles for the hands, ordered a white ski mask with eyes and mouth cutout, and finished off the basics with slipper socks.

And thus it began. I started with winding the yarn around a 2" ruler and cutting it to length. After about eleventy seven hours of that, I started disecting skeins of yarn at various lengths. The winding didn't work too well with time constraints. My husband was the one who thought there had to be an easier way. He was right.

I started with the hands, adding yarn bit by bit from the cuff to the fingers and anywhere my sewing machine would reach on the top side of the gloves. I took those in for approval and the director and actor thought they were great.
I cut off the elastic at the bottom of the sweat pants and began sewing yarn threads to the pants, one row at a time, from cuff to crotch and then from waist to crotch. Sounds easy, right? Well, it didn't work that way. I had to cut the pants at the knee and do them in two pieces. I couldn't scrunch everything up in the sewing machine. I did the legs and then the crotch to waist, and then stitched the legs back on and voila - The pants were done and full and fluffy and looked pretty good and guess what? The show was opening in three days.

Next came the top. I started at the bottom sewing yarn to the shirt and worked my way to the armpits, then realized I needed to cut the sleeves like I did the pants legs. Then I realized that a yeti needs a belly. I took a large piece of muslin, drew on a chest and six-pack, and then stitched that to the shirt, satin stitching the outline of the chest and six pack. After another day or so, I got the body of the shirt done and decided to attach the ski mask to the top of it. I made a black nose out of cotton and added that triangle to the face mask. I decided it needed hair, so I sketched out a face shape and added thin yarn hair to the rest of it, including a small bit coming up to the mouth and covering the neck. I attached the head (ski mask) and filled in the blank spots with more yarn.

At this point, I had yarn all over the floor, the dog, in my shoes, all over me, and everywhere you could imagine, including in my car, but I wasn't done yet!

Dress rehearsal was Tuesday night. I had the suit at the theater, but wasn't happy with the top, so asked the director to bring it home for me. (She lives near me.) Yesterday, I filled in blank spots with more yarn and took it back to her.

I sewed for days on end, sometimes 6 hours at a time. I used three large skeins of white yarn and 3 skeins of off-white yarn and about 10 bobbins. I sewed and sewed, and then I sewed some more. The play is On the Verge. I found some costuming ideas on line here - http://www.rfdesigns.org/verg.htm  That is not our production and I will get pictures of my pitiful yeti soon and post them, but you can kind of see why I thought yarn would work. The yeti in that performance looks kind of yarnish.

(Update, 10/2017 - I never did get any photos of the yeti. I have, though, worked with the actor since then and it's something neither of us will ever forget.)

My suggestion to anyone considering a yeti - think fur, think boas, think anything but yarn cut in short lengths and stitched on by machine. It took a lot longer than I thought it would and as are a lot of sewing projects, it was a huge lesson in what not to do. I laughingly said to the director, "You'll never ask me to costume a show again!" to which she replied, "That way, you don't have to say no."

I am SO glad that I'm done with the critter. The audience thus far has said that it looks good for the less than 2 minutes it is on stage.

Will I ever sew again!???

Jamestown 400th Anniversary

I was asked to help with the costuming for a show that is being presented at Jamestown in May. I'm the assistant, definitely not the designer. All the designs have to be approved by this committee and that committee and authenticity is a huge part of it all. I am starting by making a dozen Tudor sailor shirts. Basically, this is what the sailors and some of the people in hulls of the ships wore on the way over to the US. They're not difficult - basically 40" square with rectangular sleeves, simple cuffs and a standup type collar, and two GUSSETS! - one under the sleeve and one at the collar end of each shoulder. Oh my, did that scare me. I've never made those before, but now I'm a semi-pro after doing four of them. I'll post a picture or two as I get them made. They'll be living in my house until the show.

This is a big, big project. I think I'll be working on it every day for sure. How much fun is this!

Jack, the hearty laughing sailor (Sleuth costuming)

Jack's done!  I put shoes on him last night, stapling them onto his legs. Hey, you do what you can do, right? They're my daughter's old Busch Gardens work tennies. They look like something a sailor might have worn. I also cut his neck off about 1-1/2 inches, so he doesn't look so giraffe-like, and during the run of rehearsal last night, his head didn't fall off, so that's also a good thing. I stapled the rest of his clothing in place to the column, the wall, and pressed his legs a little closer to the column. I think he's ready for prime time now.

I took the hem out of Sgt. Doppler's pants, but they still are way too short, so it's back to the drawing room on them. Under the lights, the "tweed" looked awful. Too polyester looking. Jim is going to try to pick up a pair of darker gray slacks and we'll reimburse him. I've provided two pair and they both sucked :)
The clown suit is primary colors. It needed some pockets, so I cut some pockets out of primary color striped fabric and stitched them on. They look like they were made just for that suit. Got that done yesterday. Also, the clown's tophat is now fixed. It has elastic to hold it on, thank goodness. That was a chore!

For the Sleuth to-do list, I have the monk's robe to make out of a bathrobe. I stole rope from the theater last night to serve as the belt for the monk's robe. The fat suit for Doppler has to be made, but I have it fleshed out in my head now, so know what I'm doing. We played with makeup last night for Doppler. I think I have a good feel for what we're doing. I picked up some gray eye shadow last night to do some creases and eye sinking with. And then there's the smoke machine. Argh. Tonight I'll play with that a bit and see if I can get it to work right. Oh, and the smoking jacket - David/Andrew Wyke found a great scarf that is like the spectral opposite of the brocade in the jacket and he's using that for his ascot. It matches like a dream.

And next - Alyson's log cabin quilt. I need to get back to that as soon as I can and finish it. I'm really into it, but had to set it aside to finish costumes for Sleuth.

Onward! Stitch, stitch, stitch.

Updated 05/19/11

Black and White

I didn't do any theater stuff yesterday, but I did work on my Black and White Cathedral Quilt. I should take a few pictures to show, but haven't done that yet. It's a project I've wanted to do for years and it's finally coming together. I have two of about six rows done. I'll be working on it for months on end.

Today, I won't have much time to sew. Work, post office, theater are going to take my time. I'll work on Alyson's quilt a bit tomorrow. I'll take in progress pictures of that to post. This is the second of who knows how many I'm making for her. It's the Log Cabin Oops I spoke of below. It's gorgeous, though, in an ugly fabric kind of way. You have to be creative with the colors of fabrics she gave me - all her grandparents' old clothes.

The photo is a quilt that I made for her. Closeup pictures of that one can be seen on TeeShirtMemories.com in the photo section. I did that one with quilt-as-you-go technique. The Log Cabin will be pieced and then tied. I'm not sure where I'll go with the third one I make for her. I might do simple triangles, or something else altogether. Most of the fabrics are super stretchy, so they do better on the muslin backing.

(Note: TeeShirtMemories is no longer with us and the photo mentioned has "disappeared" for now. 05/19/11.)

Theater-wise, I have a monk robe to make out of an old brown bathrobe and need to put the elastic on a top hat for the clown to wear. It's happening, though :)

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!