Costuming a Show

The entire cast (myself 6th in from the right)

Hoo boy.

Myself as Bambi/Princess Kickapoo

For the past few weeks, I've been in a show.  Not only have I been in the show, but I choreographed half of it and have managed to throw together 16 costumes for our spring musical: Curtains.  The total inventory included 6 "Kansasland" dresses (pattern found here), 5 "Thataway" saloon girl dresses (here, C), 3 men's vests (here), 1 blue dress for "Tough Act to Follow" (here), 1 Madam Marian dress (here, A), and 1 Princess Kickapoo outfit.

"C'mon honey, we need to do Thataway, rightaway"

 I have to admit, I think the "Thataway" costumes (despite not being entirely finished) were my favorite.  I thoroughly enjoyed having an excuse to wear giant feathers

I'm sorry your costume doesn't fit right Niki, but in my defense, we're all "In the Same Boat."

If I have learned one thing from this experience, it's that when you find yourself with down time months ahead of the show, use it to do a lot of work.  After 3 consecutive all-nighters before opening night and still having dresses not hemmed, ruffles not getting sewn on skirts, and my own costumes not done until 3 hours before curtain, I wish I had spent a little more time earlier in the production doing bigger things instead of tiny building blocks.  It may not have been my best work, but at the end of the day, everyone had a costume, and none of them completely fell apart.

Chilling backstage

So one of my favorite things is foreshadowing in costumes.  As they say, hindsight is 20/20, and I didn't think to take pictures of most of the details before we put all the costumes away.  I put a green front panel on my prairie dress for when I was a very green Princess Kickapoo later, Niki got the same blue material front panel that matched her blue dress later, and Georgia had a red gingham front panel since she spent most of the show in her red dress.

Speaking of the red dress, I will admit, I did some genius work with it, even if it wasn't perfectly executed.  So a short summary of Curtains:  Jessica Cranshaw, who plays the leading lady Madam Marian in the less-than-great show of "Robbin' Hood" dies mysteriously onstage after the opening night finale, and is controversially replaced with the show's lyricist, Georgia Hendricks.  Since the two actresses playing Madam Marian had different dress sizes, in order to only make one dress, I didn't install a zipper, took the back in by three inches on either side, then sewed in ribbon loops to make a laced back.  This way, the different measurements of the actresses could be accommodated without having to make two separate dresses.  

Also, gingham printed fabric is very thin and does not handle the stress of movement well, so almost everyone had armpit holes in the prairie dresses by the end of the run, but those weren't visible to the audience, so I didn't worry about them so much, but it would've probably been a good idea to either add more fabric, or to reinforce a bunch of the seams with some iron-on interfacing.  I didn't line any of the costumes, since everyone would be wearing appropriate undergarments anyway.

I could go on for days about this project, what went right, what went wrong, what I would've done differently, etc., but at the end of the day I managed to, for the most part, costume a show.  And I'm probably never going to do it for free again.

Making a Tutu

Here at Florida Tech, every fall, the president hosts a huge event called the President's Picnic.  There's free food and drinks for students, entertainment from his band and other music groups from campus, and lots of fun and games sponsored by different clubs.  My primary organization, the College Players, is always asked to dress up in costume, walk around, and generally entertain children.  When I heard that this year's theme was going to be "Vintage Carnival," I was super excited and had visions of tightrope walkers in my head, and I knew I wanted to make a tutu.  I had just bought this book, and figured with a couple of months, I could definitely make a pretty decent tutu.  Well, months turned into weeks, which turned into days, which turned into hours.  I promised myself I wouldn't procrastinate this badly again, but doing a musical and having to pick up a lot of extra parts takes a lot of time and energy.  Before I knew it, it was roughly 24 hours before I had to report to the theater to get ready for the picnic.  Luckily, I at least had the foresight to stock up on tulle and fabric when Joann's had a huge sale the week before, so I had all my fabric and findings that I needed.  I figured at this point I would have to revert to a romantic tutu, so I decided to just go with that.

Soundtrack provided by Pandora.  This section sponsored by The Producers! I believe it was "The King of Broadway".

I had never worked with muslin before, so I figured why not give it a go here.  I didn't have the time to figure out how to make a proper basque, so I tried to make a belt thing instead.  I cut a piece on the fold about 4 inches tall and the length of my waist circumference, plus about 4 inches.

I wasn't trying too hard for it to be super perfect. I wanted it to sit really high on my waist, and I figured that the bodice would cover most of the top part anyway.  Now comes the part where I kind of messed up.

Monty Python's Spamalot

So my original plan was to cut a bunch of tulle the same length as the "basque," then with the extra 4 inches, it should overlap and there wouldn't be a gap.  Well, I forgot that a single rectangular piece of fabric creates a tube, not a bell, when coiled, so after I attached and sewed the first 4 pieces of tulle, I realized my error and started over.  I ultimately used 16 yards of different colored tulle, with the colors staggered between layers.

I ended up using about a 4:2:1 ratio of pale pink, pink, and coral.

My supervisor was watching me the whole time, judging me.

"Stop fussing with that tulle and give me more food!"

 It took 3 pieces of tulle to complete each layer, and I staggered each layer about one inch apart from each other. I wound up pleating the tops of each piece of tulle and pinning it to the muslin.  I didn't want the different lengths of tulle to show, so I planned for the outermost layer to be the longest, so that layer was sewn on first, with mostly pale pink tulle.  It wasn't until the second and third layers that I began to add in more color.

After one layer to make sure the pleats would fall the way I want them to.

One full layer, comprised of two smaller layers stacked on top of each other.

A few more layers later, I had somehow crammed 16 yards of tulle onto the tutu.  Somewhere between the first and second full layer, I realized that all the tulle sections within the smaller layer ended at about the same place, and might result in a gap if I were to do a turn, so I started staggering the layers so the tulle would be evenly distributed.

Detail on the pleating

It would have been wise to cut out a matching piece of satin from the muslin before I started sewing tulle onto it, but I didn't have that kind of foresight.  I cut a piece to match, figured that no one would see the "inside" of the skirt, and made sure that at least the outside looked nice when I sewed it on.  I kind of just finagled with it until it looked presentable.

I did at least finish the edge of the outside section.

I needed help to sew on the hooks and eyes, mainly to mark where they go, so I sewed on the eyes, and waited until I got to setup where someone could help me place the hooks.  It ended up being too loose and I had to safety pin it anyway, but that's beside the point.

I lucked out that the default tulle length was the length I wanted the skirt to be.

Next, I moved on to the bodice.  I figured that since I had worn so many in my career as a dancer that it couldn't be too hard.  I quickly drafted out the basic shape on muslin, made cuts where the book described, used those patterns to cut out the actual muslin pieces I used with seam allowances, then used those as a pattern to cut out the satin.  

Drafting the pattern.

By this point, it was very late, and I wanted to get dinner with my boyfriend and go to sleep, so I just basted the muslin to the satin, then sewed those pieces together.  

So much pink

I ended up restitching a little bit around the bust and the waist to make it fit a little bit better, but ultimately, it didn't fit well.  As much as I love my fish, he's very bad at helping me pin to make alterations.

Mostly finished

I wanted a longer bodice to cover up most of the "basque."  It also had a little more of a vintage feel than the shorter ones I was used to wearing.  I also realized right before I started making the bodice that I had forgotten to run out and get pale pink bloomers to wear underneath, so I knew I would have to wear my lavender leotard underneath, which I had to cover.  I decided that since sewing on the elastic shoulder straps, along with the hooks and eyes, would only take about an hour, I decided to save all of that for the morning.  Ultimately, it ended up not fitting that well, which doesn't surprise me.  I was walking around with a ridiculous amount of safety pins in it, trying not to look like a sack of potatoes.

Excuse the poor lighting.

I found a brooch I made for Vintage Hitchcock in the costume loft, so since I didn't have the chance to do any embellishing on the actual bodice, I slapped that sucker on there and called it a day.  Now that I have more time, I hopefully will have the chance to open the bodice back up and do some alterations.  I'd like to add interfacing, boning, and beaded embellishments at some point, as well as altering the fit itself.  It definitely needs a lot more work, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.