Plans for 2012

It's a new year and I'm sad to say that I slacked quite a bit last year in the blogging department. I'm going to try to do better this year.

At the end of last year my sewing machine broke. I was able to fix it, but because the problem kept happening I decided to buy a new one. I stuck with Singer, but upgraded to a fancier machine that had oodles of stitch types and lots of other cool functions. It can sew without using the foot peddle. It will anchor or tack the ends of the stitch on its own. It will even cut the threads at the end of the stitch. The machine practically doesn't need me.

It also came with lots of exciting presser feet.

Because I have such a fancy new toy I'm hoping to actually use it more and work on lots of fun projects.

Up first for the year I'll be doing the costumes for The Mousetrap. I plan on pulling most of the costumes from storage, but there's a couple that I'd like to make on my own.

I'm not sure what other shows I'll be costuming this year, but I'm sure something will come up.

To fill in any time I might have free I bought a set of patterns and an instruction book from tutu.com so that I can make my own tutu. Not that I need one, I just figure it will be a fun challenge. Just reading the instruction book I've learned several sewing techniques I didn't know before.

So hopefully I can remember to post things along the way.

Happy New Year!

Ruthless! The Musical

Ruthless! The Musical closed last night after a very successful run. The exceedingly funny show makes fun of actors and references many old movies and musicals.

Below are some of the costumes I made for the show (Pictures from Maui Freelance Photography - Matthew Wilkins:

Judy Denmark

Tina Denmark

Sylvia St. Croix

Louise Lerman

Tina as Puddles

Sylvia, Judy, and Lita Encore

Tina at the Daisy Clover School for Psychopathic Ingenues

Ginger DelMarco

Ginger, Sylvia and Tina

Tina's last costume is pretty awesome, but I added a lot to it after Final Dress (when the pictures were taken).

Zombie Stuff 2011

It's Thriller time again. I didn't make a new costume since my Zombie Dress from last year is still in great shape. I did get to do some zombifying though.

I made a whole bunch of zombie tights for some girls in the cast:

Here's me showing off my sexy zombie legs:

I also helped one of the new guys zombify his suit. It was lots of fun and turned out fabulous. Unfortunately this is the only picture I have of it right now:

Waffle Week Sneak Peak

Tomorrow, August 24th is National Waffle Day - it's the anniversary of the first U.S. Waffle Iron patent.

So as a brief precursor to Waffle Week 2011 (Sept 4-10) here's a little something-something I've been working on:

 It's not quite done yet, and if I have time in the next couple weeks between rehearsals and preparations for my Waffle Brunch I hope to make Mr. Happy Waffle some friends.

Chicago, etc.

Sorry for not posting in awhile. To make up for it here are some pictures of things I've made recently:

Pele Costume

Pele Costume

Stole for Matron Mama Morton in Chicago

LOVE hats for Chicago

Hunyak circus costume for Chicago

Velma's "All That Jazz" costume for Chicago

Roxie's Woolworth's lampshade dress for Chicago

Razzle Dazzle circus dirndl

Patriotic Cupcakes!!!

ZigZag Quilt

A couple years ago I had a subscription to some quilting magazines. A year's worth was enough to provide me with quite a bit of inspiration.  This was an ad in one for some fabric:

I liked the zigzag pattern and decided to make myself a quilt out of it.  I chose black and white and red as the theme and got a bunch of different fabrics and cut out lots of triangles (it's a smaller quilt because I'm not that fond of cutting triangles. I arranged an order of the different fabrics and started sewing strips:

 Once I had completed the strips of the two fabrics I sewed those all together to make the zigzags:

Until I had them all sewn together:

Obviously then I trimmed the edges. Then it was just quilting. I quilted along the seams:

This is the final quilt:

This is the backing fabric:

Ta da!

Mice

CATS has closed.

While I am somewhat relieved that it is done, I am also going to miss it a lot. It was over four months of working very closely with a great group of people and what we put together was amazing.  It was a lot of work and I didn’t have much time for anything else – I didn’t blog much as you may have noticed (I also didn’t see much of my family) – but I learned a lot, lost some weight, got back into shape, improved my singing, learned how to do face painting, and performed in CATS (holy crap!). 

The show sold out its entire 3-weekend run (they even added 2 shows to the last weekend – ouch) and unfortunately we were not given an extension. I don’t know why, it seemed entirely viable, and overall a really good idea – we’ve never sold out a whole run of a show. Ever. Like in the entire 80+ year history of the Iao Theater (ok, Deep Throat might have, I really don’t know). I’m kind of still recovering, but hopefully soon I’ll get back to crafting. Here are some things I’ve got to do/blog about:

Renovations
Clean/organize sewing room
Quilt for Annie
Quilt for me
Chicago (the musical – hopefully, I’m waiting to hear if I’m costuming it)

I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting, and probably more I’ll come up with out of the blue.

Something that I can talk about now is a project I did closing weekend of the show when I wasn’t at the theater. As gifts for the cast/crew I decided to make mini versions of George, the remote control mouse I made for Kitty Playtime. They aren’t really mini version since George is the extra large version. I used the same pattern, just in the original size. At first I was just planning to use the same colors as George, but then got ambitious and decided to make them more individualized.  Each cat had a main color and accent colors as part of their costume, so I used those for the body/ears/tail.  On a lot of them I also added stripes since most of the cats’ unitards had airbrushing on them. 

 

I ended up making over 30 mice and fortunately had help from my mom, my sister, and a friend.  This isn’t all of them, but it’s the entire cast (minus me) and the pit singers. I gave the crew black mice (theater tech crews wear blacks on stage so they are less noticeable), and the stage manager got the original George since she was the one controlling him every night. 

The director got a sparkly pin stripe mouse with glasses (he made the glasses out of a bobby pin, I sewed them on) and the musical director got a red satin mouse.

Overall everyone was pretty excited about their mice and everyone has promised to take their mice with them on trips and take pictures with them (a la me and Pete). I myself got this:

It’s a cocktail olive. In CATS theirs a play within a play that the cats put on about Growltiger, a pirate, who is betrayed by a woman and made to walk the plank by the Siamese. I played Genghis, the leader of the Siamese. I got a phallic hat and sword that was painted green so that it looked like a cocktail sword (the proportions were all over the place in this show). While I was making George I decided that I should also make a cocktail olive to go on my cocktail sword.  I don’t know if anyone watching the show noticed (I took it off the sword as part of my choreography) but it was there nonetheless.

The olive was made from a fabric Easter egg pattern.  I left a slit open on two sides and inserted a tube to keep the stuffing in (you can't really see the slits, but they kinda make the olive look a little inappropriate) and filled the top in with red felt to make the pimento.