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!

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: