Sewing Room

I've had a sewing room for almost 4 years now. It's very exciting because in my old apartment I did all of my sewing in my living room and it was very cramped. But my new apartment is a 2-bedroom so I now have a room dedicated entirely* to sewing and crafting.

Earlier this year I got an awesome desk from my work when we moved offices. It's a nice large corner desk (it was actually my old desk at work). I had to take one side apart to even get it into the room - which I did entirely by hand because I didn't know where my boyfriend kept his power tools.

It's in a pretty useful configuration right now, so I thought I'd share some pictures/hints/etc.

Note: unlike some bloggers I only did minimal cleaning before taking the pictures - crafty is messy and I'm not going to hide that (entirely).

First off here's the desk:

I can fit both my sewing machine and my serger on one desk! I can reach them both without even having to get out of my chair! I can't even begin to tell you how awesome that is.

The hat boxes in the corner of the desk have all kinds of fun crafty things stored in them: lace, flowers, yarn, pens, etc. etc. etc.

The drawers are especially handy. I've got bins that balance perfectly on the top of the bottom drawer with room left to store other things underneath:

 And this keeps my thread contained (it's always trying to escape):

Next up are my patterns:

They are all in those manilla envelopes in those drawers. My friend Tidy Tina did this for me and it's pretty spectacular. The 2 binders at the bottom have the commercial pattern envelopes in them sorted by women, men, kids, costumes, vintage, lingerie, etc. etc. etc.

So when I need a pattern I just look in the binders to see what I have. Then I go to the drawers for the actual patterns - which are organized by brand then pattern number. I used to keep them in boxes and I'd have to go through all the boxes whenever I was looking for a pattern.

And here's my bookshelf full of crap:

Scripts, sewing books, costume history books, a zombie cross-stitch kit, my balsam head in it's case, boxes of photos/receipts/etc., fireworks, magazines, hats, a laminater, photo paper, my gemagic (bedazzler), and even some crayons.

Here's a wider view of the first side of the room:

So, earlier I had an * on my claim that the room is entirely dedicated to sewing and crafting. Well, since my boyfriend moved in last year that's no longer true. He built those shelves to hold some of his stuff. Fortunately I'm pretty short and really can't reach them so it's hardly in my way.

Here's my ironing corner:

 And my favorite piece of art in the room:

 

Then there's my desk with my computer, printer, important papers, yada yada:

 

Above my desk is my inspiration board:

 

I haven't added much to it recently.

And my closet full of fabric, ribbons, and other frou-frous:

The other half of that close is scuba gear, golf clubs, tools, Christmas stuff, and clothes neither of us wear much.

So, it's not very pretty, but it is very practical. Though I still do most of my cutting on the living room floor - it just really helps to have lots of floor space...and a TV. =)

Mia's First Birthday

A couple weeks ago was my sister-in-law's niece's first birthday (it took me a while to figure out a succinct relationship rather than calling her my sister's wife's sister's daughter). First birthday luaus are a big tradition in Hawaii and people tend to go all out for them. This one was no exception. Lots of people and some really awesome Hawaiian food. 

My sister-in-law's sister asked me to help her out with some decorations. The theme was cupcakes and she asked me to make a cupcake shaped box for people to put cards in. 

She also asked for help with something for entertaining the kids at the party and asked if I could make one of those funny picture things where they have holes in the faces and you put your face in the hole and take a picture. There's got to be a better name than that. Anyone know? Does anyone even understand what I'm talking about?

Anyway...here's the cupcake I made for the cards:

The base is a plastic planter pot from Walmart. I made the top out of paper mâché. I used a beach ball as the form - worked really well and I can still reuse the beach ball!

The final layer of paper mâché was done with white printer paper and then I did a tissue paper decoupage over that. 

The sprinkles are felt. 

For the face-hole-picture thing (there has to be a better name!) I took inspiration from an inflatable monkey deco that they were using for the party (since I couldn't really put faces on cupcakes): 

 

It took a while to figure out how to make it, but I ended up with what I call the "pop-up card" design. Two large foamcore boards at an angle in back and a small one board in front. 

I'm not describing it well at all so here's a picture:

The two boards in back kind of supported each other - it also helped that the kind of curved when we painted them. 

Since the Mia portion is a separate piece the background can be used again for other events. 

Swarovski Eye Patch

Between working on shows I have quite a lot more free time and get to do some small craft projects...hence, two posts in two days! It seems to happen a lot.

Yesterday my sister had some minor outpatient eye surgery. The whole family is supposed to come see me in Legally Blonde tonight and she needs an eye patch for the event. So I decided to decorate one for her because I have absolutely nothing to do on a Saturday.

Last month I went to the Hawaii Burlesque Festival in Honolulu. There were shows and workshops - I went to both. Tons of fun! One of the workshops was on rhinestones. Kitten Minx la Femme is an expert in Swarovski crystals and had all kinds of wonderful tips and tricks for adding crystals to things.

She sells supplies and decorated items and has all kinds of tutorials.

It was a lot of fun and I feel very confident after taking her workshop. Also, as part of the workshop we got all kinds of helpful supplies and some Swarovski crystals - so that is what I chose to decorate my sisters eye patch with.

She likes stars - she doesn't really like pink, but that's what I had in preparation for Legally Blonde costumes, so that's what she got. I hope she likes it.

Wonder Woman

Every year on the Saturday closest to my birthday in mid-May is the Maui Brewers Festival - the best day of the year! I have been to every single one since the first one 6 years ago. It's usually my bday pressie from my sisters.

We've gone VIP the last 3 years because it's gotten almost too popular and that is the best way to avoid lines. You also get extra pours, access to rare beers and a T-shirt.

Three years ago a friend decided we would wear hats and mustaches. Which kinda started something - every year since we've seen people wearing mustaches. Last year we decided to be fancy with fascinators, top hats, ties, etc.

This year we kicked things up a notch. Like really kicked it up. A lot.

We dressed up a superheroes. I chose Wonder Woman. My boyfriend went as Batman.

Rather than buying a pre-made Wonder Woman costume I assembled mine from pieces found in various places - some are specifically meant for Wonder Woman some are not.

Here was my basic costume:

I bought a red corset and blue shorts. The chest piece I bought but had to slice down the middle because of my corset. I added the stars to the shorts.

The belt I made out of upholstery vinyl. The vinyl was gold but not quite the right gold, so I spray painted it.

I bought the boots - actually I had to buy 2 pairs. The first went up way to high and cut me off at the knee. So I let our female Captain America wear them.

I bought a tiara and cuffs as well, but ended up spray painting those too because they were not quite the right gold. I also bought the lasso.

I ended up making a little belt purse so I had a place to put my phone and ID. Unfortunately the straps holding it on didn't last through all of Brew Fest.

Here's me and my boyfriend drinking our rare beers - his was called Tart of Darkness and while it suited Batman perfectly it was one of the most bitter awful beers I've ever tasted.

 

Here's the group of us, though we are missing our Capt America. In case you can't tell we have Lara Croft, Zorro, Batman, Wonder Woman, Mr. Incredible, Lady Punisher, Hit Girl, Wolverine, Supergirl, She-Ra, and Cat Woman.

And here's Wonder Woman and Batman making out because that's just frickin' awesome:

La Cage Aux Folles

So, not quite 2 in one day, but still 2 in 2 days is pretty good for me...

This show is the reason that I haven't blogged in forever, and why I've been slightly cranky for a couple months - if you got any firsthand experience of my mood, I'd like to apologize now.

La Cage Aux Folles is probably one of the largest costume undertakings I have ever done. Wizard of Oz may have been more, but it was a different kind of challenge and I had a lot more help there. I was supposed to have more help for La Cage, but it didn't work out - I blame Fiddler on the Roof for taking all my help away.

So, if you don't know the story of La Cage Aux Folles watch the Birdcage - it's based on the same story. It's a great story and a funny show. But it has a chorus of drag queens - that's where the costume insanity came in. The chorus of drag queens - Les Cagelles - is actually made up of a mix of men and women, with the idea that you're not supposed to be able to tell who is which. Unfortunately there aren't enough masculine women or feminine men on Maui (who can sing and dance) so it was a challenge trying to make them all look the same. We had some tiny little women and some rather large men - AND THEY ALL HAD TO LOOK ALIKE!!

That was my challenge.

Challenge Accepted!

Here's some pictures:

A Little More Mascara

I made the teal dress and jacket that Zaza is wearing - the sequin dresses came from eBay (I did have to make several of larger ones - not seen in this picture).

We Are What We Are

 I made 11 sets of sailor tops and red sparkle shorts - the sparkle shorts look better in person.

La Cage Aux Folles - Can Can

I bought corsets for everyone - they had them in all the sizes I needed, surprisingly. I made the can can skirts. They are awesome and one of my absolute favorite pieces. Here's what the top looks like:

The song 'La Cage Aux Folles' toward the end of the first act has 3 different dance parts for Les Cagelles. They start off as birds, then the can can section from above, then a tailcoat portion at the end. Below is the bird section - they wear the same corset and dance briefs through the whole song. For the bird section they have tutus (there were supposed to be bustles but the boas I bought have not arrived yet - the show opened over a week ago) and showgirl style headdresses.

La Cage Aux Folles - Birds

I made the headdresses following this Sempstress tutorial. It worked out really well - some of the cast helped me make them assembly-line style.  I also ended up trying out some other styles for the finale based on a random pinterest search of showgirl headdresses. Here's the other two (I would have made more but I didn't have enough time):

Here's some random costumes from the finale (and some sequin dresses) at the opening night gala (gay-la) along with the director - second from the left:

Random Costumes - Opening Gala

I made some other really cute headpieces for some of the costumes:

 

The one on the left is one of my favorites but it wasn't used.

It was supposed to go with this costume:

Phaedra - the Enigma

I made that the weekend before the show opened. I used an existing robe and added a whole lot to it. I love the collar. Here's the collar by itself:

It's so fluffy I could die!

Here's another one of the Zaza dress and jacket:

The dress is awesome - I picked the pattern because I needed something I could make zip up the front because she puts it on onstage. But she ended up just wearing it under a robe already zipped - so it zips up the front for no reason. But, on the bright side, I now know how to sew in an invisible zipper.

The material for the jacket was expensive. It's a mesh with sequins and embroidery all over it. I had grand plans to do this jacket correctly and remove the sequins from the seam lines and allowances - but sadly that was taking too frickin' long so I gave up and just sewed through the damn sequins. Oh well - theater allows for some amount of shortcuts. 

Of course there's more to this show than the drag queens. Here's some of the other costumes:

Anne on My Arm

Georges, Jean-Michel, and the Dindons

The Best of Times is Now

One last Cagelle pic. Here's a couple of my friends (they are actually a couple). I made/bought the parts for the costume on the right - she decorated it.

Christmas Tree Dress

Like usual I am many months behind on blogging...but I have a day off so I may even do 2 in one day!

This one is a costume I made for a Christmas show from last year. They wanted their emcee dressed as a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree that lights up.

Challenge accepted!!

So I decided to do a full skirt/corset look. I bought the corset - there are some amazing things you can find on eBay. I designed and made the skirt based on a hoop skirt Instructable. And I made the pattern(s) myself.
Instead of having a skirt over a hoop skirt, I put the hoops in the skirt itself - what can I can say, I'm a little lazy.

Also, instead of using one piece of fabric like in the instructable I made a graduated skirt - each layer gets a little bigger. Each layer had a circular peplum to be the actual fluff for the tree.

Here's the completed skirt:

Then I added garland and lights - the lights are kinda hidden in the garland in this picture. I made an inside bustle/fanny pack to hold the battery packs for the skirt.

I used wired pixie lights. They were light, they were LED so the didn't get hot, and the batteries last forever. But because they were battery powered they only came in short lengths: 7 to 10 feet. There were 3 sets of lights on the skirt, 2 on the bodice, and 1 on the hat.

 

I made some ornaments out of craft foam - I needed to keep things light since the hoops and batteries made the skirt pretty heavy.

 

 

The skirt itself looked so great on my dress form I used it for a Christmas tree for awhile:

 

The hat was kind of fun to make too - and it kind of works on it's own. I used a pattern for a party hat I found online. I used buckram for the hat and ended up filling it with Styrofoam and floral foam. The Styrofoam was in the top and supported the star. The floral foam was on the bottom and I carved out a notch for the battery pack to fit into. I stuck pins through the outside to kind of keep the foam in place.

The star in the picture below is not the one I ended up using. This was an actual Christmas tree star and it ended up making the hat too top heavy. So I used it as a pattern and made one out of craft foam.

I don't have any pictures of just the corset. It was a great corset, but since it came from China it took a month and a half to get here. Good thing I ordered it right after Halloween. So I only had a day or too to put on the garland and lights.  I had to use 2 sets of lights because corsets are essentially two separate pieces - two halves - so I needed a set of lights for each side. She kept those battery packs in her boobs.

I also put together a Christmas Can-Can dance for this same Christmas show and incorporated the Christmas Tree. I made the Can-Can skirts as well. Here's a picture of Santa, the Christmas Tree, and me and my fellow can-canners.