Costumes are progressing. This is a vest for one of the "Knives". It still has to be fitted and is minus the buttons. Since we had bad weather today, all after school activities were cancelled, so the fittings will have to wait.

Craftzine.com blog : Tokyo International Quilt Festival 2010

Craftzine.com blog : Tokyo International Quilt Festival 2010

Costume progress

So far, the napkin rings for the napkin costumes are complete except for fitting them to the characters. I also made the tops for the salt & pepper costumes. So much fun to create these.

Costume shop visit with "characters"!

Our trip to the costume shop, for fittings, was successful! Of course, the students had fun trying out their costumes, and then some! What an awesome place. Wall to wall costumes of every kind can be found here, and they found them!

Costume production in full swing!

Costume construction for the Stratford High School production of Beauty & the Beast is in full swing. Sixteen villager skirts have been completed by the team. Now, my job is to make the salt & pepper costumes, napkin rings for the napkin costumes, assorted capes and vests and search for shaggy gray fabric for the wolves' costumes. With a week off from teaching, I am hoping to get a lot done. Wednesday, we are taking the main characters up to an awesome costume warehouse to fit them for their costumes. Thankfully, we are able to rent these costumes at a reasonable price. This allows us to really put our focus on the other characters. Yesterday, we cleaned and organized the costume closet. Susan, Kate, Laura and I had fun sorting through some of the donated clothes and props. There were some really beautiful clothes from the sixties era that looked like something Jackie Kennedy could have worn. Lots of stuff that reminded me of "Laugh In" too. I think we had more fun trying on some of the hats and props, than cleaning and organizing.
Today, I spent the day organizing my ideas and testing out some embroidery designs. I have posted some pictures of the evolution of the costume ideas so you can see the process.

First I sketch out my ideas for costumes and run them by the director, choreographer and others involved in the play. For the napkin ring belts on the napkin costumes, I wanted to embellish them with embroidered roses.

First, I searched through my designs to find the perfect rose. Next, I stitched out a test of the design. I used my embroidery editing software to combine the design elements to make my final design. The fun part was stitching it out on the belt fabric. It is a silver "pleather" which I hope will look like a metal napkin ring when I sew piping on the top and bottom.

Hunkering down for the winter

With the cold, windy weather we have been experiencing, I have been getting some sewing and machine embroidery done. We are in full swing of costume creation for the high school production of "Beauty & the Beast" which will be performed at the end of March. The major character costumes will be rented, but many of the others will be created. We have already sewn about 16 villager's skirts.



I made some pillows for David and Gena's apartment. Dave came looking for some big pillows he had stored in the basement. While clearing & cleaning a while ago, I'm pretty sure they were thrown out. So, feeling guilty about that and wanting to create something with embroidery and colors to match the sofa, I made them some pillows. I used a design from Embroidery Library.



This inspired me to embellish some plain pillows I had, so I sewed up a floral design that has some texture to it. I'm posting a picture of that one, too. The flower petals are cut open after they are embroidered. This gives them a velvety texture. They are very pretty and it is nice to be able to color coordinate them with my upholstery designs and colors.
I also bought a new serger. It's a Baby Lock because I love the air jet threading on their machines. I am signed up for lessons and haven't had much time to use it yet, but I will!