Another Old Post from MySpace

Do you need stitches when you sew through your finger (November 16, 2005)

So I have been toiling away, sewing in this sweatshop...okay, it's just the women's dressing room at the Iao Theater, but it is darn hot down there. But anyway, I have been working hard in my free time making nuns' habits for the Meshuggah-Nuns! musical that opens Friday (Nov. 18 - Dec. 11, Fri-Sat 7:30pm, Sun 5pm), and yesterday I managed to not only sew the habit that I was working on, but through my finger as well. OUCH!! Fortunately I missed both the bone and the nail, and because it was a sewing machine needle it was quick and straight, and there was very little blood and almost no wound. But it still hurts and it is making this hard to type. Luckily it was on my left hand, but unluckily it was the pointer finger, and I never really realized how much I use my left pointer finger.

Old Post - From MySpace

Here are some pictures of the quilt I made for my sister Lexy. It was her graduation present.

It took me almost 4 years to make it - although I did take a lot of long breaks.

The Sound of Music

Right now I am neck-deep in costumes for "The Sound of Music" which will be opening at the end of February at the Historic Iao Theater in Wailuku.

So far my biggest challenge has been fabric. There are only a couple of fabric stores on island and most of them cater to quilters or people looking for Aloha prints (Hawaiian prints). The other problem is that in addition to the limited amount of fabric available here, what is available is expensive.

Wal-Mart has some reasonable prices, but very limited stock - and it really irks me to shop there (crowds, global takeover, etc.). So I have been buying basic but important things there like muslin and interfacing. They used to have really great velcro too, but now it seems that all they've got is the adhesive stuff that you can't sew through - useless.

So I have been buying fabric online. Of course buying online can be tricky from Hawaii because there are a lot of websites that automatically charge beaucoup bucks for shipping to Hawaii (like walmart.com - total rip-off). The site that I love right now is www.fabric.com - great selection, cheap (often free) shipping, great clearance and discount fabrics, a neat design wall thing, and they'll send swatches. I bought 30-yards of black poplin for nun-habits and I'm waiting on some cute fabric for the curtain costumes (but that's a whole other story - more on that some other time).

Well, I'm off to buy some satin for a party dress for Liesl.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

The theater is having a “Beatles Night” fundraiser and I am going to help out by passing pupus during the event. (Pupu is Hawaiian for appetizer). While helping out I will be dressed as “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” from that oh-so famous Beatles ditty falsely attributed to LSD.

After listening to the song – which doesn’t describe Lucy much beyond saying she has kaleidoscope eyes – and watching the segment in the “Yellow Submarine” movie – which basically shows a womanly-doodle that changes colors – I decided to go literal.

I found a pattern for a coat (New Look 6788, view D – without the pockets) that looked 60’s-ish to me and bought some sky blue fabric. Once the coat was made I took a half yard of fabric with a psychedelic floral pattern and used Heat-n-Bond Ultra-Hold to make iron-on’s of the flowers and squiggly designs for the bottom of the coat.

With the left over iron-in interfacing from the coat I made clouds which I overstitched to secure in place. I used the embroidery foot for my sewing machine that I normally use for quilting to get the cloud shape for the stitching.

Then I took my trusty As-Seen-On-TV GeMagic (knock-off Bedazzler) and added a bunch of “diamonds” in the clouds. I wore this over an orange floral patterned dress that I found at Savers with some cute orange wedge-heeled sandals that I got at Payless.

Although it was a little warm in the AC-less theater – especially with all the running around and dancing I did – it was an awesome, easily-recognizable costume for Beatles Night.

I couldn't find any novelty sunglasses for the "kaleidoscope eyes" so I decorated a pair of sunglasses with puffy paint. Though I didn't wear them because the theater was too dark.

Zombie Ballerina

On to something recent.

For the past couple of years Maui OnStage has done a Haunted House at the Iao Theater for Halloween. This year they decided to add a pre-show of Michael Jackson’s Thriller to the mix. Since I enjoy both Maui OnStage and dancing I participated.

The dance is a lot of fun, but the style is a little tricky and can be a pain in the neck – literally. We did Thriller for each group that came through the haunted house. The smallest group had 2 people and the largest had over 20. Over 5 days across two weekends we did the 6-minute dance 97 times. I was one of 3 people who danced it every time (and I want a sticker!).

Since the whole production was a volunteer thing we had to create our own costumes. I decided to be a zombie ballerina. I had an old pair of pointe shoes which I painted with dye to make them look yuckier – it kind of looked like I kicked someone to death as the brown on the toes kind of looked like dried blood. The fact that they were old (a remnant from High School) turned out to be a bad thing in the end because they did not exactly hold up to 97 Thrillers.

The rest of the costume consisted of some old tights, an old tutu, and an old shirt that I dyed and distressed to look decayed and distressed. I had a lot of fun dying, and did so in a way so that the dye job was far from even.

The makeup was kind of tricky because they don’t sell good theatrical makeup on Maui – we all bought the cheap stuff at Wal-Mart. Also, the theater isn’t air conditioned, so it gets extremely hot and the excess amounts of sweat tend to cause the makeup to run. We had some good tips about setting the makeup, which helped a lot, but there was usually some reapplying necessary.

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.