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First dress for ‘Cabaret’ went beautifully!  There are notes, of course (there are always notes!), but for the most part they’re fairly minor and should be easy to fix.

I’ll admit – the part I’m the most pleased with are the Kit Kat girls.  I worked hard to give each dancer her own distinct personality, based on how the actress was working the character.  This is definitely one of those productions where location paid off – my workspace is directly adjacent to the theatre, and since I do all of my work for this school in the evenings, I have the luxury of being able to listen to rehearsals.  It means that, as a designer, I’m more in tune with the actor’s process than I am in other theatres – but it also means that, as a designer, I have to be willing to be flexible and make changes mid-process.  There were a few rough spots, but overall I really love the organic process that I’m able to have here.  Plus, it’s such a joy to be able to hear a production evolve from the first read-through to opening night.  Everyone puts such heart and soul into the process – it’s truly amazing.

Well – back to it.  Still work to be done.  See you in Berlin!

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Angel Dumott Schunard - aka Jason Cooper in NC State University's 'Rent'

Quickie drive-by photo post!  I’ve been crazy busy, getting ‘Rent’ and ‘Cabaret’ up and running.  ‘Rent’ had it’s first dress rehearsal last night, and everything looks great!  The actors are all pouring their hearts into their roles, and everything seems to be running very smoothly behind the scenes.  Here is ‘Angel’, wearing the fantabulous, shiny Santa coat I’ve been posting photos of!

And, over in Berlin, ‘Cabaret’ is moving along.  We have our first dress rehearsal tonight – hopefully it goes smoothly, as well.  We open on Wednesday, which does not give me a lot of time to take care of notes!  A few pieces from that show:

‘Frenchie’ – one of the Kit Kat dancers!  I put all the Kit Kat girls into a hodgepodge of 20′s style lingerie and bits.  Frenchie is wearing a vintage 20′s knit bathing suit, and I added the fig leaf applique based on this pair of tap pants.  I love it – there were a lot of weird pieces like this in my research, where it’s obvious that a dancer used something she owned that was scandalous/skimpy enough to be titillating, and then added SOMETHING (trim, sparkle, whatever) to make it stand out.

The Emcee’s concentration camp shirt.  This was oddly a difficult piece – construction-wise it was fairly simple, but finding the appropriate fabric was difficult.  There are a number of extant uniforms out there, but there is not any consistency in the fabric.  Most of them have alternating dark/light stripes of approximately 1″ in width – but the color of the stripes varied.  The most common seemed to be white/dark blue – but there was black/grey, as well.  Finding any 1″ striped fabric was hard – and finding the appropriate colors was even more difficult.  This is actually an olive green/grey stripe – but on stage it reads as shades of grey.   The yellow/pink triangles forming the Star of David is based off of a poster from the US Holocaust Museum, which shows the meaning behind the symbols used on the prison uniforms.

The number was interesting – I was GOING to use ’24601′, but I was afraid that someone would laugh out loud during a very serious moment.  So…. can anyone figure out the significance of the number used on our Emcee’s uniform here?

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Photo by Bill Frazer (Baron Bardulf)

Last month, Himself and I went to Atlantia’s Twelfth Night, hosted by our very own Windmaster’s Hill.  It was a beautiful day – we didn’t have anything special planned out, so we spent the day wandering around and chatting with friends.  Baron Bardulf was taking photos, so we took time to have our picture taken.  I continue to be amused that we have more formal photos of ourselves in garb than we do in regular clothing.

Here, I’m wearing my 15th c. kirtle and hood – this has become one of my staple outfits, and I kinda love it.  It’s simple, flattering, and looks period.  Himself is wearing a mish-mash of things – the only thing I made is the hat.  But I still think he looks handsome.

Photo by Tannis Baldwin

I was humbly, pleasantly surprised to be inducted into the Order of the Pearl at Twelfth Night this year for my costuming – this is Atlantia’s GoA level A&S order.   Considering that I’ve been fairly inactive for the past few years due to school obligations, I was VERY surprised to find myself called into court.  I will admit that I got a little teary – and it has definitely inspired me to step up my game.  More to come… once I get through this week.  (Two shows going into tech in the same week.  ACK!)

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Cute little cami and tap pants for one of my Kit Kat girls – ‘Texas’.  Although it’s not scandalous to the modern eye, I’m putting most of the Kit Kat dancers in historic lingerie – and I’m “tarting” it up by adding burlesque decorations, as seen in some of the archival photos I used for research.   Texas, playing up the fact that she’s an “exotic American”, is in patriotic blue and white.  I need to find more star appliques, and the tap pants need hemming – but overall, I’m happy with what I have.  Next: the dyeing and distressing.  This looks far too new and shiny for a seedy nightclub dancer!

Continue reading »]]> We’re working frantically to outfit the cast of NCSU’s production of ‘Rent’ in February – and one of the more entertaining projects I get to work on is a piece for ‘Angel Dumott Schunard’ – her iconic, flirty Santa coat.

We have a grad student designing this show – and when she came back with the bag of fabric, she said something like “You’re going to hate me… but this is going to be AWESOME!”  And she’s right.  It IS AWESOME.  Instead of going with a boring plush velvet, she found this amazing metallic red flannel backed tablecloth vinyl.  AMAZING.  It reflects bright red and a charcoal grey, and has a subtle snakeskin-like texture to it.

The designer sketched out a rough rendering, from which I drafted a pattern based on the actor’s measurements and put together a toile of the garment, shown here:

Once the toile was complete, we called the actor in for a fitting and did some (thankfully) minor tweaks to the pattern.  I cut everything out yesterday, and started putting it together today:

The vinyl has been surprisingly easy to work with – although it stinks to high heaven when you iron it.  The best way I’ve found to get the seams to press flat is to press the seam open on the wrong side (using a press cloth – ALWAYS USE A PRESS CLOTH!), flip it over and press the seam on the RIGHT side (press cloth!), and then whack the heck out of it with my tailor’s clapper.  I had to use that process at least twice per seam, but doing so helps the vinyl sit nice and flat.

Of course, right now my inner costume historian is giggling madly, because in its current state it looks just like a popular 15th century men’s doublet style!  Of course, it won’t look like that once it’s finished… but the idea of a bright metallic red 15th c. doublet makes me giggle.

Back to work!

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We’re knee-deep in ‘Cabaret’ and ‘Rent’ at my schools – so my progress on the coif is slowing down a bit.  But I am still confident that I’ll be able to have this done for the spring.  All that’s left is a bit of fill-stitch, and then I’ll probably put some stipple stitch in the vines, as well.  I had thought about adding paillettes, but I don’t think my budget (or my persona’s budget!) can handle it.

Kendra van Cleve of ‘Demode’ has unearthed an AMAZING resource for 16th c. costumers – 16th. c costume illustrations done by Lucas de Heere, in color! (Link to the pdf of the book from the University of Ghent)  There are lovely images from England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.  I am rather fond of these images of Flemish women:

Stripey-trimmed partlet!  Squee!  I need a new working class project…. Flemish is SO 7-8 years ago, but this is so pretty! Love, love, love it.  Thanks, Kendra!

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V&A museum no. T.87-1923

Interesting.

“Cotton petticoat with black surface decoration. Lined with linen, with a strip of printed floral linen, probably from Alsace, around the hem.  Made on the Coromandel Coast for export to Europe. The lining of the hem is from Alsace, ca.1780.”

I was poking around on the V&A website, and I found this little number.  The museum description states: “Although it is hand-drawn, the simple treatment of the design on this skirt almost gives the appearance of a block-print. Unusually for a chintz fabric, the black has been drawn directly onto the cloth. There is an East India Company stamp on top of the painted design on one side of the petticoat. Black designs like this were probably intended as mourning wear.”

Although the museum website dates it at 1580-1585, I’m guessing that’s a typo – since it dates the lining of the hem at 1780, the EIC wasn’t founded until 1600, and the English didn’t even START their journey around the Cape of Good Hope until 1591.  (the Coromandel Coast is the southeastern coast of the Indian subcontinent.)  Still, it’s a lovely piece – too bad it’s out of period for SCA use, though!

Continue reading »]]> It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this project - but I’ve been poking along at it off and on.  My theatre is closed over the holiday, so I’ve had a lot of time to simply sit and work on it the past week – and progress has been made!

Yesterday I finished all the outlining – it feels GREAT.  I thought about simply putting it together like this – but after flipping through coif images and research, I realized that it just wouldn’t look complete without some fill stitches.  The bad part – I’m really not a very good embroiderer when I don’t have lines to follow!

So I’ve been mostly using a simple speckle stitch to fill things in, and trying to do some shading with it.  The shading is a lot tougher than it looks – but it adds some challenge and variety.  The fill is going a lot quicker than anticipated – so hopefully this project will be done and ready to wear this spring!

As stated in the previous post – I went with a perfectly Elizabethan method of patterning… buying a pattern and tracing it.  The pattern was redacted by Laura Mellin and purchased from Reconstructing History.

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My Husband’s Christmas present, complete!

My husband is a ballroom dance instructor – I call him my very own personal Patrick Swayze.  He has to wear slacks, shirt, and tie to work every night – and this fall he found a vest at Goodwill that he likes to throw in for a change every once in a while.  For Christmas, he asked for another vest.  I TRIED to be lazy and just buy him one – but all the vests I found were cheap (polyester, mass produced monstrosities) and expensive ($85 for a plain black polyester vest?  Weak).  So i broke down and made him one.

The striped fabric was a scrap of really lush suit-weight wool, black with grey/silver pinstripes.  The lining and back are a high-quality polyester lining.  Buttons from Hancock’s – I had wanted to use pewter buttons, but didn’t think about it in time to order any.  We can always switch them out later, if he wants me to.

Although I usually draft my patterns, I ended up using a commercial pattern for this – I didn’t have time to draft something nice, and all I have is his chest measurement, so I needed something that worked off of standard sizing.  Enter Folkwear 222 – Vintage Vests.

Pattern Description: From Folkwear: “Victorian gentlemen at the end of the 1800s needed a vest or waistcoat to be considered well-dressed, and smart Victorian women often paired vests with walking skirts for street wear. Our vests offer a variety of stylings, including collarless V-neck, bias-cut vest with shawl collar, and short front-darted style. Traditional bow tie, with instructions for tying, is also included.”

Pattern Sizing:Misses 6-16; Men’s 36-44.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? I made view B – the men’s bias-cut vest. It looked just like the pattern envelope photo.

Were the instructions easy to follow? Yes! Although I’ve made a number of Renaissance doublets, this is my first attempt at a Victorian style vest. I had never done welt pockets before – and could not wrap my brain around how the geometry worked. I followed the pattern instructions meticulously, step by step, working on faith that they would work – and they did! All instructions were clear and well written, accompanied by line drawings when necessary.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? I loved working with this pattern. It went together beautifully – there were no grading issues, all the pieces matched up nicely, and the instructions were clear and simple to follow.

Fabric Used: Suitweight wool, polyester back/lining

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? Yes! I have a feeling that my husband will be wanting a few more vests…

Conclusion: Overall, this is an excellent pattern. The instructions are clear, the sizing is accurate, and I was able to create a beautiful finished product with little fuss. As with all patterns, it may be necessary to tweak the sizing to fit the wearer. The key to creating a finely tailored garment is, of course, pressing – since the fashion fabric is a soft wool, I made lots of use of my steam iron and tailor’s clapper to press all the seams into submission. There are a lot of little pieces and curved pieces in the collar, and it’s a bit tedious to clip and press all of those pieces – but it’s worth it in the end! Don’t scrimp on the pressing.

Continue reading »]]> So – William Peace University Theatre is doing Cabaret in February, which means that I have my work cut out for me.  Big time.

I am, primarily, a historic costumer – so I tend to approach theatrical costume from a historic perspective, and then deviate from that in order to create an appropriately theatrical stage picture.  Which means, for Cabaret, I need to learn about the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic, and how it influenced the nightclub/cabaret subcultures in Berlin.  Thankfully, there are some great resources out there for that.  On my reading list this week are two books: Berlin Cabaret by Peter Jelavich and Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, by Mel Gordon.   Voluptuous Panic is going to be a great resource – it has a ton of great archival photos.

Stylistically, I’ve been reading up on Weimar artists and art – Otto Dix, Ernst Kirchner, George Grosz.  Movies such as The Blue Angel, Metropolis, M, and Mädchen in Uniform.

Otto Dix – The Salon I, 1921.

I want the Kit-Kat dancers, especially, to be gritty.  Not dirty, per se – but not polished.  Seedy.  Decaying decadence.  Many productions have the Kit-Kat girls in either modern lingerie (gross), or matchy-matchy reproduction lingerie.  Personally, I see the Kit-Kat girls as something a little different – they’re nightclub dancers, in a seedy little Berlin cabaret.  It’s highly unlikely that they’d have the resources for matchy-matchy outfits – rather, I see them as picking up pieces here and there, in resale shops and the occasional gift.  A hodgepodge of old and new, homemade and couture.

So…. time to start scouring Ebay, thrift stores, and Etsy to see if I can get these women outfitted!

Continue reading »]]> NCSU University Theatre’s production of ‘Little Women’ – Fall 2011

• Costume Design: Jen Dasher
• Draper/Costume Technician: Laura Parker
• Scenic Design: Jayme Mellema
• Lighting Design: Joshua Reaves
• Technical Direction: David Jensen

University Theatre’s holiday show this year was ‘Little Women’.  Although we typically like to build some costume pieces and pull others from stock, that was not possible for this particular production – we simply do not own any 1860′s women’s costumes that would be appropriate for the show.  The men’s costumes were rented, but we decided to build all five women’s gowns in the shop.

The costume designer wanted each character to have an iconic look – so I had the opportunity to draft five very different Civil War styled gowns for these characters.  When drafting the patterns, I made sure to include lots of different techniques for our student shop assistants to learn – cartridge pleating, knife pleating, flatlining, self-piping, etc.  Due to the complexity of Marmee’s fan-front bodice and Jo’s little military-style jacket, I ended up putting these two bodices together.  The rest of the garments were built by student shop assistants, under careful supervision.

Photos by Ron Foreman

Continue reading »]]> About a month ago, I moved all of my website content over to a WordPress installation on my server.  It took a few weeks to get everything tweaked just the way I wanted it…. and then when I tried to shift it over to the index file of my website, it exploded, died, crashed, and burned.  I lost EVERYTHING.

Then I went into production mode for two shows – and the website languished.  It’s back up now (sorta).  All the old blog posts have been imported, and I have pictures under the costume design and fiber sections.  The bulk of the work – organizing the historic costume portion of the website – still needs to be done.  It’s coming, I promise!  Just give me a bit.

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Dress done in rust-colored wool, lined in white linen. Skirt is cartridge pleated onto the bodice with center front opening. Guards are wool twill tape, applied in a pattern taken from various Campi paintings. The entire dress is hand-sewn using silk thread.

Sleeves are green herringbone twill linen, lined in white linen. Tied onto the dress with cotton cord lacing points, tipped with agilets.

Partlet and shift in linen.

Progress Photos:

163438 by silverstah, on Flickr

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For William Peace University’s production of Jane Eyre, we needed a wedding dress.  I had to build a vast number of pieces for this show (all of the women’s brown dresses, Bertha’s costume, etc), so building another gown was simply out of the question.  While going through stock, I found an old silk dress that had potential.  The poor thing was in terrible shape – the skirt had some massive water stains on it, and there was some horrible staining under the armpits.  Further, it was an odd sort of design – it had a beautiful full skirt, but the bodice went straight up to the neck with a peter-pan style collar.  Weird.   I needed a dress, though.  So… let’s make it work.

First – the color was wrong.  I couldn’t picture Jane Eyre wearing bright silver silk duiponi.  I chopped off the peter-pan collar and used those pieces to test-dye the silk.  I dipped it into red, which produced a lovely burgundy – and tan, which produced a wonderful silvery copper.  I settled on the copper, since that fit our color palette a little better.  Into the dye vat went the dress.  And when it came out…. it was definitely NOT copper.  Instead, it was an amazing silvery/grey/sage green that I couldn’t have made if I had TRIED.  The dye process masked the staining on the skirt and underarms, to boot.  One problem down… one to go!

The style of the bodice was all wrong for the 1840′s.  I dropped the neckline down to a shallow V, and dyed some net lace beige to coordinate with the sage green of the gown.  The lace got tacked into the neckline, mimicking an 1840′s Bertha.  In the end, the gown looked gorgeous on stage – and is truly a testament to what you can do with something that is seemingly ruined.

Continue reading »]]> Crafting new from old – a Cranach to a 15th c. Kirtle

A few years ago, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and try a German Cranach style gown.  It wasn’t BAD, but when push comes to shove, I did NOT feel pretty in this dress.  The bodice felt overly bulky, I hated the sleeves, and it just felt restrictive and cumbersome.  I wore it to one event, and then it sat in the closet.

After reading Marie Chantal’s article on 15th c. fitted kirtles (http://cadieux.mediumaevum.com/frontlaced-kirtles2.html), I came to the conclusion that I would salvage the circle skirt from the Cranach gown and use that as the base for the fitted 15th c. waist-seamed kirtle.  She’s done research and has even found that the full circle skirt (like I used on the Cranach) is a plausible skirt style for this time period.

So I took the Cranach apart and used my cotehardie pattern block to make a curved-front, self-supportive bodice.  Mistress Mathilde’s paper on sleeve construction (http://www.mathildegirlgenius.com/Documentation/SleeveClass.pdf) is always a life-saver when it comes to sleeves – I never can find my sleeve pattern when I need it.  My old Cranach gown, which did NOT make me feel pretty, was reincarnated into a brand new 15th c. fitted kirtle, which DOES make me feel pretty.

So – Before and After photos:

Before, the Cranach.  I really dislike even LOOKING at these photos, but they’re necessary to show the evolution of the gown.

After – a generic 15th c. fitted, waist-seamed kirtle with open hood.  THIS makes me feel pretty. 

The point of the story is this – sometimes projects simply do NOT come out the way we want them to.  We ALL have those projects in our closet.  Don’t let them sit there collecting dust – re-purpose and re-use the base elements of the garment for something new.   Heck, even if you cut it up and use it for trim, it’s still better than letting all that fabric go to waste.  Right?

In that spirit… today’s project is retofitting a wool kirtle that is WAY too big into something that fits me just right.  Fingers crossed it will go just as smoothly as the last retrofit!

Anyone else have before-and-after photos or stories of modified/retrofitted garb?

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It doesn’t look like much – but underneath all that ice is the prettiest tuna steak I’ve ever seen.  Tonight’s dinner is going to ROCK. Which is good, because the last few days have been rough.

The motorcycle is in the shop – seems like it’s some sort of internal engine problem.  Of course, the place we have taken it to in the past has since gone out of business, so I brought it someplace new.  The few reviews I read on Google seemed decent, it’s close by, and it specializes in Suzuki bikes.  So, fingers crossed that they’re able to do a decent job.  Unfortunately, their chief mechanic is going on vacation next week, so we won’t even know what’s wrong with it until he gets back.