Injuries

I recently re-posted an old blog entry from my Myspace page about sewing through my finger while costuming “Meshuggah-Nuns.” Well, that wasn’t my only crafting injury and not my worst either.

During my work for “The Sound of Music” I cut my finger pretty badly with a rotary cutter. This is a pretty common quilting injury as the rotary cutter is a very popular quilting tool. I was cutting strips to make suspenders for Lederhosen when the blade slipped over my straight-edge and through my left pointer finger. I cut a nice slice off, but not really enough to require stitches. It did however bleed a lot and I had to call a friend to come over and help me out because I was on the verge of passing out.

It was a huge inconvenience because I couldn’t use that finger for several weeks right in the middle of my big push to get all the costumes made. You never realize how important a finger is until you can’t use it. But it’s recovered quite nicely.

Some other injuries I have sustained while crafting include a nice burn on my forearm I received while ironing costumes for “The Foreigner.” I also had a significant hot glue burn on my leg from glue dripping on me while making a hat for “The Spirit of the Iao.”

Injuries happen and I find that most of mine have been due to rushing. If I had just pinned what I had been sewing rather than holding things in place, I wouldn’t have sewn through my finger – but I was rushing and trying to save time. And my advice for the rotary cutter is not to take it lightly and to make sure you think everything through before you do it – and be really cautious about finger placement.

The Sound of Music

I’ve been busy. Very, very busy. For the last two months (+) I have been sewing my ass off for last week’s opening of “The Sound of Music” at the Historic Iao Theater in Wailuku. I do a lot of costume design at the Iao Theater for Mau OnStage, but this is my biggest show by far.

Normally – because I have a full-time job and I don’t have the costuming experience of my colleagues – I get the smaller shows that tend to have more “pulled” costumes (costumes that are pulled from stock or purchased off-the-rack). The big-spring-musicals usually involve a lot of sewing, so for the 4+ years that I have been a costume designer they have always been given to someone else.

Well, this year apparently “they” didn’t want this show so I got it – it’s not like I was asking for it, I’ll pretty much do any show they give me. I knew going in that it was going to be tough and that I would need a lot of help, but I was confident that my persistence and “make it work” attitude would carry me through – plus I was planning on getting an assistant.

An assistant was found – she had previous experience and possible had a complete set of curtain costume for the children – but things didn’t work out entirely. And it took a month for them to not work out, so by the time I realized it, it was too late to get another one. I did have help from a lot of people, but I had been planning on having my assistant make a lot of the children’s clothes and now that I didn’t have one, I was going to have to do that myself.

So, I ended up making a lot more of the costumes than I had anticipated. But I learned a lot about dressmaking in the process. I am very proud of what I made and I think everyone was surprised at what I was able to accomplish. I will go into specifics about what I did for the show in other blogs, otherwise this one could end up being quite lengthy, but I do have a lot to say about what I did and what I learned in this process.

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.