Wishing Well

I created a Boeing Maui team for Relay for Life. I have never done Relay for Life before, but I am the Maui team captain for Boeing on the Move (a Boeing-wide pedometer/step contest intended to get us all in shape) and I thought it would be a good way to get everyone moving.

I didn't realize what an enormous event Relay for Life is. Yikes. Good thing I've got some very supportive co-workers.

The event theme is "superheroes" and so we've decided that our team would have a Medieval theme and do a "Lords and Ladies of Boeing" thing. It appeals so nicely to my crafty side that it's making the stress of the whole event just melt away.  I'm busy working on making tabbards and henins for the team, and I thought that a great way to raise money at our tent would be to make a wishing well.

A co-worker that's done the event before said that selling things at your tent doesn't really work out, so I thought a wishing well would be perfect. Plus I can set it up at work and collect extra money from my co-workers who aren't participating.

So I went to Walmart and found some things and put together my wishing well.

 I found a lovely planter that looked like a wishing well bucket, so I decided to use it as the base. I bought a couple bags of stones to use at the bottom and some dowels and flowers. I came up with an ingenious (if I do say so myself) way of anchoring the dowels using some hardware left over from my old vertical blinds. I screwed the brackets into the bottom of the planter and used framing wire to secure the dowels (I am a master at using what I already have in my apartment.

You can see Burt (my roomba) and the base of Janine (my dress form) in the picture.

I hand painted the sign.

I added some moss under the stones (I thought it was fake, but it's not).

I ended up adding some Xmas lights (battery powered) and some extra fake foliage.

I'm naming that purple butterfly Alberto.

Some of Alberto's entourage. It's hard to tell but those little purple things are butterflies (the pictures come out a little fuzzy when I'm drunk - or maybe that's just me. But Burt looks great!)

Costume Design - Elements of Design

I was cleaning out my trunk of keepsakes when I came across my college "portfolio" from my costume design class and I thought I'd share what I had. I'd love to do more of these, but unfortunately I'm usually to busy making costumes to actually draft costumes up. Plus my pattern-making skills are nil so I wouldn't necessarily be able to make what I'd design. Maybe someday I'll have the time to draft up some ideas for future costumes.

This set (there will be more) is from the start of the class when we were learning about the elements of design: Line, Form, Color, Texture. Unfortunately I seemed to have discarded my 'Line" designs so all I have are Color, Form and Texture. They were all too big for my scanner so I had to take pictures of them which is why the lighting seems odd.

Each week we did a set of designs with a new element. For line (straight or curved) we had to make a design based on a season. I think I did winter for straight and spring for curved. They were just done in pencil which is probably why I didn't keep them. The rest are done in watercolor. I didn't like working with watercolors until I took this class. Now I love them.

For Color we had to do designs based on time of day using complimentary colors, analogous colors (next to each other on the color wheel) and then one color using different tones. I chose to do ballerinas:

Midnight

Evening

Sunrise

For Form (hard or soft) we did designs for a hypothetical "Star Wars: Episode 256" (I'm totally making up the number as I don't remember what the real one was):

Hard

Soft

 

For Texture we had to pick a time period and make three designs using three of the many textures available. I chose the 1880's (I think):

Lace

Stripes

Ruffles

I like my Texture designs so much the are framed and hanging on the wall of my sewing room.

Cinderella

Just finished our second weekend of Cinderella in kihei. It's such a fun little show. I'm the fairy godmother. I also did the costumes, sort of. They've done the show twice before so the costumes were mostly already done. I mainly did alterations. Though I did decide to make a new costume for myself - the one they had was uncomfortable.
Here's a picture of me with my mouse assistant. I made his ears and tail. The ears are sparkly but it's hard to tell from this picture.





This is a headpiece I made for one of the stepsisters to wear to the ball. I think birds are hilarious.





There's a really cool dress transformation for Cinderella in the show. It's based on this one from Tokyo Disney.

Organza flowers

I took all these pictures a couple months ago and completely forgot to blog them.

This was part of a costume I made for Ruthless! The Musical. It was a pretty sparkle red organza dress that I thought needed an accent so I decided to add some flowers. I also made a headband with flowers on it too.




The flowers were very easy to make, though it took a couple tries to get the technique mastered.

The flowers are made by melting the edges of the organza. You cut out several different sized circles of organza and using a candle melt the edges.




As the organza melts it curls in a little and they kinda turn into bowls.



The part that takes practice is melting the edges just right so they don't turn black or bubble.

Then you glue the layers together to make the flower.




I added some little gems inside to complete the look.




And here they are on the dress.




They looked really cute on the headband as well but it looks like I forgot to take a picture of it.

Couture sewing on Craftsy.com

I am currently taking an online class through Craftsy.com called The Couture Dress . It's taught by Susan Khalje and it's wonderful.

Within the last year I've had an interest in going to the mainland to take a sewing class. Most of the sewing classes on island are mostly quilting related or don't really fit my needs. UH Maui College (where I'm now a Guest Lecturer in Physics!) offers a fashion AA degree, but I don't have the time to pursue an actual degree - plus I already have a bachelors.

So I started looking online for sewing classes and I found a great weeklong program in Couture sewing taught by Susan Khalje. Couture refers to Haute Couture which is kinda of a school of sewing that is done by the big fashion houses in Paris, London, Milan and New York. It involves custom fitting and usually involves high-quality, expensive fabric. While the class sounds fabulous (although a little expensive) I haven't been able to work out the time off from work. Right now I'm saving up my vacation for a trip to England with my sisters.

Then, this week I got an email from McCall's about this online course that was 50% off for a limited time and you get a free vogue pattern with the class! So I signed up and I've learned so much already and I haven't yet had time to actually sew anything.

The process in Couture sewing is very different from what I'm used to. It's a lot more time consuming but produces a much better product. The garments fit better and they are better constructed.

However, while the Couture process is very interesting, I don't know if I'll be able to use all of it all the time. When making costumes for a play I usually don't have all the time in the world to sew, and often times I don't need the costumes to be of such high quality. But there's things I've learned that will help my costuming no matter what I'm sewing, and there's often times when I do want my costumes to have a more high quality look.

Plus, some of the sturdier techniques from Couture sewing will definitely help with costumes that get abused just from being on stage. And it will be interesting to see how I can morph the Couture process to improve my sewing.

And if I ever get the time it would be fun to make myself an actual Couture dress one day. I just wish she record the process again with a different dress so that I could learn more techinques.

If you have any interest in apparel sewing take this course!!

Mousetrap

Right now I'm frantically finishing the costumes for Agatha Christie's Mousetrap which opens this Friday in Kihei. I ended up making 4 of the costumes - a feat I thought would be pretty minor, but turned into a major issue because of ordering fabric online (they didn't send me all of the fabric I ordered and it took forever to ship the fabric I ordered to replace it). And of course, Maui not having the right kind of suiting fabric for a 1950's play that takes place in snowy England.

Here are some pictures of the work in progress. I'll try to post some of the show when they photos of dress rehearsal this week.

This is part of a suit I'm making for Miss Casewell. This is the fabric that I didn't get all of. When I reordered I went with a wool flannel instead of a crepe. Right now I'm taking in the pants that go with this jacket - the actress is so damn skinny. I haven't been able to take a picture of it because my dress form doesn't have legs.

This dress is for Mollie Rolston. This fabric was advertised as "dark navy." Looks pretty black to me.

I actually got this fabric on Maui. It's very synthetic and it melted easily. Oh well.

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!