The Show that Never Was

About two years ago I did an "amazing" show:  Jonah! A Whale of a Tail, An Exciting New Musical.  I cant make this shit up.   Well the show was for a Christian Dinner Theatre - that quickly closed a few months after the show. Well, it was the story of Jonah and the wale, but we set it a la Pirates of the Caribbean.

Well the show went great - and as is the goal of every job - I made a great contact with the director.  Cut to 2 years later and to my surprise i get a all from the director. He is now the director of summer entertainment for the Gaylord National Resort and this summer they were planning shows and wanted to have roaming characters to interact with the guests: sort of like at Disney.  So I was hired to build a male and a female pirate. 

  

I had 5 weeks, a huge budget and it was going to be an on going project, when new actors come in or things needed to be replaced, I would be making the replacement clothes as well. Great gig!

Then a few days later I got another call - another costume designer had dropped out, and they wanted me to make two more characters: Skip (a surfer dude) and Skittles (his bratty little sister)

Great  - more money! And who wouldn't love that?!

So I plunged ahead, swatched fabric, started making  patterns, budgeted for shoes, wigs, and accessories. I was set for a fitting the weekend of Mothers Day, so needless to say I was working like a dog days and late into the morning to get things ready.  And I have to say - this was some of my best work. All garments were very well made, and I thought looked great!

Well then I get the call. The whole event has been CANCELED! Yep all that work up in smoke. Well, after I stopped freaking out, I discovered that the Gaylor is actually owned by the Grand Ol' Oprey which was under 11 feet of water.  The flooding in Nashville had effected this project. They needed to redirect the money for the summer programs to help in the drying out of the theatre. I stopped all production and sent them what I had compleated. They agreed to pay me a third of my salary, and reimburse me for all the materials I had purchased - which so far was over $900.00. I manged to style the costumes in the shape they were in so I could at least have a record of what it was that I had done thus far.  With any luck the project will be remounted next year and we can pick up where we left off....

Until then, here are the pirate couple. I really hope one day I can revisit this project and see it through to completion. 

Adam - the male pirate - got a striped cotton "poet" shirt, blue/grey silk vest with real wooden buttons, black twill pants with a slight pattern to it and a coat of burgundy velveteen. NOTE - this was made to the point of fittings, so that is why it has no lapels, and only one sleeve. 

Morgan - the female pirate -  got a green cotton petticoat, and a great brown tweed wool overskirt. Her blouse was made of a light weight textured cotton. It is off the shoulder and I gave it elongated sleeves and tucked around the bust. The highlight of the costume is the corset. It is made of 2 different colors of pony ultra suede, backed onto denim and them boned. I wish I had gotten the chance to finish it with the trim and all that I had planned...hopefully next year I can post about that!!

I have been away too long - back to the clothes!

A lot has been happening with me and i have not been good about getting here to post things. Lets get back to the clothes!

Here are a few  more things that were made for Babes in Toyland. Mistress Mary I wanted to have a pretty "girly" dress as she is out ingenue. The girl cast was not a very feminine so I felt she needed as much help as possible!

The dress turned out pretty cute. I am very pleased with how it came out!

In the course of the play she runs away from home and I decided that she should have a cloak to wear when running away from home.  Still in the girly pink, the cape is a beautiful tweed with lace details. 

Halloween that never was

Heather has kept me on my toes for years now. Back in 1998 when we were but children in High School - Shakespeare in Love was released and Heather fell in love with the clothes. I mean can you blame her!  Just look at them!

So for Halloween, which we plan for WAY in advance every year, and still do to this day, Heather decided she wanted something like the ball gown in the picture above. If you know her, you know that she is pale and thus would not look good in peach or antique gold.

We decided to go toward a jewel tone and found a great emerald brocade with gold fleur-de-lis on it.  We paired the overskirt and bodice with a gold satin for the underskirt, and a dual layer of organza in green and gold for the sleeve puffs. Antique gold satin was used for pipping the edges and - in a bold move at that time -  I lined the WHOLE thing. It turned out pretty well I thought.

Here is a close up of the bodice: I have come along way my construction skills and can now see all the short cuts i gook in making this dress. But we all get better with time right?

So the dress was made, fit, and finished and hung up...and sadly that is where the story ends! The dress has not been worn yet. Now 10+ years later the dress has been outgrown and mostly forgotten until i was home recently for Babes in Toyland. I think I will take the dress and donate it to TDF costume collection. I have donated a few other things in the past and can use the credit when I design in the future.

Humpty Dumpty

It has been a long time since i posted on here about my goings on. With the holiday season following on the heels of my family health issues, and desiging a show for the Anoka Childrens Theatre's 20th Season, i have been a bit busy!
But here i am, back to tell you all about my adventures!
The first one is the one that gave me the most trouble: Humpty Dumpty

This costume soon became the bain of my existance.  The child had to be able to sit, so it cold not engulf him and make him a whole egg. He had other blocking, so we saw him in 3-D, thus he could not be a flad egg, that the child hid behind.  My original idea was to have a flat piece that the actor could hid behind (like in the photo)  and when he fell have him dressed as the egg yolk! I thought this was very cute and clever, they did not agree.                     

We decided to do a 3D egg, and decided to do it with the use of an egg crate - the kind you put on a bed.  Matt Lauer's costume from The Today Show a few years ago was the inpiration.

 

    I made the pattern, and fit the kid. But as i didnt have time to make the costume or the otpion of making it and sending it back from NYC.  So mom was hired to make the costume. With my fathers health issues, she didn't have time to do it and it was put off until 2 days before dress rehersal.   This left much to be done in not very much time.

While my fmaily gathered for Thanksgiving, I rushed to get the show ready. Sheila and Marlene got the egg ready.

Here are a few pics of Sheila and Marlene working on the egg:

                 After a few hours and a lot of glue, we got him together, and my sister, Erin, was kind enough to model it for me...

Mermaid Parade

All my life i have had an affinity for mermaids. So it is no reason my bestie is also a HUGE mermaid fan, to the point she has a full back tattoo of one.
Well every year in at Coney Island NY, they kick off the summer beach season with the Mermaid Parade (http://www.coneyisland.com/mermaid.shtml for more information).
This year she decided we needed to go, and we both started working on our respective costumes from home - her in MN and I in Brooklyn.

I set out to find the perfect fabric = i wanted something kind of unusual but would convey scales. A few months ago i found a great snake skin printed cotton and thought that would be fun. along the way I came across a snake sin vinyl which was even better! it has a greenish grey hue to it and looked very masculine, which was perfect for the look I wanted.

The tail i made in a fitted trumpet style, with a HUGE train in the back, this I planned on dragging behind me so I would have a tail. I connected the skirt to a Y- back suspender of the same material, and then created a dorsal fin to ride up the back Y, and into the CB seam. I love how it turned out!


Heather is responsible for the beautiful crown, and i made the gauntlets of the same material. We had a lot of people taking pics of us, and got many compliments on both our tails! To see hers go to www.heathereve.blogspot.com