My Favorite Costume Ever!

I was an actor in high school and when I went off to college I had absolutely no ambitions to continue my theater career. I was an academic and I wanted to study something in science. After the first quarter I figured out that I wanted to major in physics, but at that point it was too late in the year to start the physics track.

So I was looking for classes to take and I found a freshman seminar called Clothing and Culture. I loved the class and I really like the professor so I started taking more and more costume classes until I had enough to minor in Theatre Arts.

About a year after moving back to Maui I started doing costumes for the community theater and I have been averaging about 2 shows a season since including: Barefoot in the Park, The Full Monty, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Blithe Spirit, and others.

My favorite show to costume thus far was The Mystery of Irma Vep – A Penny Dreadful. It’s a spoof of gothic dramas, but there are only two actors in the show. They each play four different roles, so all of the costumes had to be quick-change as they would jump from character to character throughout the show. I think there were something like 37 costumes changes throughout the show.

So, needless to say, it was a costuming challenge and I had a blast with it. I had a French maid underdressed beneath a man’s safari suit, and at one point an actor changed from a ball gown to a man’s suit in under 5 seconds.

The ball gown is – to this day – my favorite costume I’ve ever put on stage. And it’s been used in 3 different shows thus far.

I was the second costume designer that they hired for this show (this first dropped out) so I didn’t have a ton of time. They weren’t sure if they were going to be able to get another costumer, so they had pulled some clothes from storage which I then altered to make them quick-change.

For the gown, which was kind of old and ratty (my one regret for this costume is that I didn’t use something in better shape that would have held up better over time) I had to add some material to the neckline to cover up the suit that the actor would be wearing underneath for his other main character. The actor also wanted the gown to have a train. So, I removed the zipper and cut the dress down the back. I made an overskirt from an 1880’s skirt pattern I found on the internet and sewed it on one side, and had it Velcro in place on the other.

So the overskirt covered the opening in the back making it really easy to get in and out of really quickly (with a little help).


Here is a picture from Irma Vep.

This is me in the dress. I wore it for our anniversary review show.

First Quilt

Sort of.

My first large foray into quilting was after I purchased Fons and Porter’s “Quilter’s Complete Guide” which includes a whole bunch of info about a whole lot of different piecing and quilting techniques. It gives you all you need to make a sampler. Well, I started working on it right after moving back home after college which happened to coincide with my little sister’s entrée into high school. I figured four years would be plenty of time for me to figure out the whole quilting thing and I planned on making her a quilt for graduation.

This would actually end up being my second quilt because after spending three years making the quilt top I didn’t want it to be my first try at quilting. So I made a small simple quilt top so that I could understand the quilting process before working on the gigantic sampler I spent ages toiling over.

While working on the quilt top for my sister’s sampler I got to try many different piecing styles and I found that I really enjoyed doing Celtic designs with strip appliqué. I found a Celtic design that I really liked, a triscele, but it wouldn’t work with strip appliqué because it involved width changes throughout the knot. So I decided that I’d make somewhat of a plain background using various shades of blue and purple and use the triscele as part of the quilting design.

I whipped up the quilt top (kind of skipping over the squaring step as you’ll notice in the pictures) and got to work learning how to quilt. This is the result.

I ended up giving it to my other sister who happened to be moving to the Big Island for grad school at the time. She and I are both fans of all things Irish (we’re Irish ourselves) having travelled there after college together, and getting matching Celtic harp tattoos. It’s actually the Guinness logo backward – it was the best picture of a Celtic harp that I could find – fortunately we both really like Guinness.

More about that first/second quilt later.

Get Ready, get set - Start Blogging

Where to start?

Hard to say. I was inspired today to start my own blog after searching for a quilting blog. All the ones that I found seemed to miss the mark of what I was looking for, and I think that my age is partly to blame. I'm in my late twenties and single and I've found that many of my personal interests differ greatly from the average quilter.

So, I figure there's a gap to fill - it'll kind of be like stitch-n-bitch, but more for quilting and general crafting rather than knitting (which I've never really gotten into myself).

A little about me:

I live on Maui and work as and engineer at an observatory. I have a BS in physics. I also minored in Theatre Arts and I do costumes for community theater outside of work. For those of you unfamiliar with it, community theater = tiny budget. So I'm often forced to be really creative when costuming.

I was never really formally trained in sewing - though my grandmother tried. I worked in the costume shop for one quarter in college, which is where my passion for sewing started. After college I bought a sewing machine, but I was too intimidated to try sewing clothes and didn't want to ask for help, so I bought some books and taught myself to quilt.

Since then I've been taking up all kinds of random craft projects - both out of personal interest, and for costumes for the theater. I will try to share what I've done and the things that I've learned as I fumble through my spare time as a truly Crafty-Ass Chick.