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!

Things I ' m working on.

Using Cathedral Window instructions which I wrote while doing content work for Sewing.com, and which I used to make the wall hanging below, I've been making a recycled denim and black/white fabric Cathedral Window quilt for myself. On the left are squares with the denim pinned on, the middle is one that has some windows completed and the four in the middle to go, and the one on the right is completed. I'll make several groups of nine squares like this and stitch them together, making rows of five groups of nine. I'll continue until it's large enough to fit our queen sized bed.
Here's one I made a while back as a wall hanging:

The other thing I'm working on, in fact have almost finished, is a denim jacket with a sweatshirt lining. The jacket itself is totally recycled. It's a formerly gaudy Christmas sweatshirt (the tacky design is between the layers, never to be seen again), denim strips from junk jeans, and ribbon that was given to me. The only thing I bought was the thread to match the ribbon. I made lots and lots of Log Cabin blocks with the denim which I had added the ribbon to. Unfortunately, I ran out of ribbon, so I improvised and used plain strips along the sides and did a bit of a yoke without ribbon or Log Cabin on the back. My plan for the front is to make tabs with ribbon embellished denim and put them on the front after making buttonholes in them. Then, I'll put buttons on the other side in an area that will allow one side to overlap the other when closed. The self-facing is to be sewn in and I have two Log Cabin blocks left to make a diagonally placed pocket on either side. I put the cuffs on already, but not the collar or ribbing at the bottom, all of which were removed from and are being reused from the ugly Christmas sweatshirt.
I usually do have two or three projects going at once, but hey, that's sewing! Till next time.

Where has the time gone?

Christmas is a few days away and what sewing have I done? EEEEK! None. It's been a busy season, and though I did do costuming for a show, I made zero gifts, zero stockings, zero placemats this year. Unbelievable. This will never do.

In the past, I've made ornaments every year, making a mini quilt and stuffing it or piecing pretty fabrics together and hanging them on the tree. I'd say this is the first year in eons that I've not made anything for the tree. And why is this?

Time management. I am still working on Alyson's quilt made of her grandparents clothes and am planning all the time to work on projects that I want to start. I'm hand sewing a cathedral window quilt (the black and white with denim one). Both were hoped to be done by Christmas, but they're not.

I want to sew every day. I tend to sew once a week or so. For 2007, I think I'll work on that goal. The only way to get sewing done is to do it. It's got to be a priority or it won't be touched. I tend to set it aside for other tasks and make it a secondary item, but it's not. It should be closer to the top of the list of things to do.
Sewing plans for 2007:
Finish Alyson's quilt(commissioned).
Finish the Cathedral Window.
Make a few scrubs for sale.
Make some clothes for myself.
Work on doll clothes and doll quilts for DonationDolls.com.
Make a few Christmas items for sale and to keep.
Try to sew every day.
I don't have "I love sewing" for my license plate for nothing :)


02/27/11 update: Donation Dolls is no longer with us, but I have finished the Alyson quilt, finished the Cathedral Window and started others, never made the scrubs, and the other items are ongoing. It's fun to look back and see what I was doing at an earlier time!

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 :)

Log cabin oops

I'm working on a lap sized log cabin quilt for one of my teeshirtmemories.com quilt customers. It's five rows by five rows, each row with five blocks. I had done two rows before I started last night to finish the other three rows (15 squares). I have one block on my board next to the sewing machine to make sure I get placement of colored strips right. I got to the next to last color and realized, ooooops!, I had put all 15 of these together wrong. So, I put on my "what the heck do I do now?" hat and decided the three rows in the center would be the oddball rows and the two rows (one on top and one on the bottom) left over would be the "correct" rows. No way in hades I'm taking three rows apart or doing them over. Well, we'll look at it like this - the best weavers and quilt makers in the world carry on a tradition believed to have begun with the American Native Indians - leave an intentional mistake somewhere in your work so that it reminds you of your humble and not perfect-ness. So that's what I'll do. This is my intentional mistake. :)

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!