Continue reading »]]> The show we’re working on right now is William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. We’re setting it loosely in 1968-72, and we’re making a few costume items rather than buying. Really, you can buy so much for the late 60′s/early 70′s that it’s silly to make your own unless you have specific things you want to see color-wise or if you’re a bit crazy (like me?).

We have run across a lot of vintage patterns from this era, which is a lot of fun. However, they are often single-size, cut by the previous owner, or rare. They are all 40 years old, at least, and therefore the paper, while heavier than what the “Big 3″ use today, is not exactly going to stand up to being cut if we want to preserve the pattern. And, we do want to preserve the pattern. So, we move to tracing.

In the past, we’ve used something called Pellon Red Dot for tracing. However, the thing that works best on that particular material is Sharpie marker. I don’t particularly want to get Sharpie marker all over a pristine vintage pattern, so I went looking for something else to use and found Swedish Tracing Paper, which takes marks from pencils and from pens. When I took it out of the package, my first observation was that it’s a lot heavier than the Pellon, which means it will be less porous to markings. Excellent.

Vintage patterns are pretty cool. Let’s look at some photos.

When I took the pattern out of the envelope, it looked like it was still in factory folds. Crazy! However, as I pulled away at the layers of tissue, it became apparent that the pieces had been at least partially cut out, including the dress front and back, and some pieces to the short jacket.

Things were crinkly, so I needed to iron (without steam!) before I got started.

Before

Ready for tracing.

The coolest thing about this pattern is all the advice it gives you – for example, about darts:
Fold on the solid line, stitch on the dotted line!

It also shows you where you can adjust the pattern using these nice little ruler graphics. I’m unsure, however, if you’re only supposed to adjust by an inch, or if that’s just a suggestion:

Finally, as you can see they used to also number the notches and mark the seam allowance, as well as telling you what the various dots mean. In the photo below, the dot on the collar piece is marked for the RIGHT shoulder seam, so you don’t go getting it reversed:

So there we are, a start on McCall’s 9629.

Continue reading »]]> In the last six months or so, I’ve noticed that all the clothes I love wearing are knit, but I’ve never really sewn with knits. So I bought a couple books to read up on knit sewing techniques. I’d already tried sewing a knit top once before, and with not so great results. But, I thought, I didn’t do any research and I was just winging it, making it up as I went.

Y’all, the problem is I’m comically bad at sewing with knits.

Well, it’s more complicated than that, so let’s catalog all of the things that I heaped on myself for this project.

1. New pattern (clearly, since I don’t sew knits much, I’d need a pattern)
2. The pattern was from BurdaStyle Magazine, and was traced by someone and sent to me. The directions do not include sketches.
3. New machines! I have a serger now, which is great, but also a new sewing machine, the Pfaff Varimatic 6091 (“Stretch & Jeans”).
4. Since leaving well enough alone is not my style, I also didn’t exactly follow the directions.

The hilarity began with my fabric. I was -apparently- distracted when I bought this fabric at Joann. It’s thin sweatshirt type material from Joann. I purchased it specifically for this project, so I’d have something to experiment with that I wouldn’t freak out about if I messed it up. I didn’t realize it was in a tube. I’m probably using the wrong words to describe it, but essentially, no selvage. Another new thing! Awesome! I managed. I didn’t cut the tube until I needed to cut the long pieces for the front pieces. I used fabric Lose Weight Exercises, which I enjoyed.

Reading the instructions, I had no idea what Burda was talking about. There are no illustrations, so I had to try to figure it out. So, I laid out my fabric pieces, and voila! It all made sense.

So, we began. First of all, I made a serious mistake with the clear elastic. Be Ye Not So Stupid – mark the centers and then tack the ends. Pin the centers, and then again, until you have enough pins that you feel like you’re going to be able to sew it properly. I managed to make the worst front neckline in the history of front necklines, and then I had the pleasure of picking out all those stitches. Having washed it once, I should have sewn in the elastic as I did, and then flipped the edge down one more time. It’s rolling on me when I wear it. I managed to stretch it out oddly in this process, another symptom of my hilarious lack of facility with knit fabric.

Next you’re supposed to deal with the back neck by making bias strips (the directions are a little overly detailed considering how few directions there are in general). I thought this fabric would not respond well to making bias strips (or, I wouldn’t) so I chose to use my mutilated bit of elastic to stabilize the back neck. I stitched it in, and then flipped the fabric over to fully encase the elastic. I have no idea why I thought to do that on the back neck and not on the front, but there you are. Well I was doing it so that the edges would ultimately match, so I guess I accidentally made a good decision!

After that, it was all about hemming edges – which I did with the double needle I realized I had in my accessory box. You can see some hilarious examples of my bad double needling here, followed by better double needling when I was paying better attention. When I tried it on, I found that it was, as others had said, very short. I’m five feet tall, and none of my height is in my torso, so I was surprised that I had that problem. I chose to add a 4 inch band at the bottom to make the length more comfortable.

Other people who sewed this also said the ties were too wide and too short. Both of these are true, but because my fabric is heavier than I think you’re really supposed to use, I don’t want to wrap it around twice anyway. I’m eventually going to shorten the ties so that I can tie it behind my back once without having really long tails. If I make this again though, I will narrow the ties and make them a bit longer.

All in all, I’m very happy with this top. There are lots of things about it that are not perfect or even great, but I was able to use my new machine and my new serger to great effect, and I learned a lot! And, the top is cute, if not perfect. My pattern review is here!

Continue reading »]]> Alyssa and I have a few completely indispensable assets at NFDC, and one of them is Tiffany, our #1 Minion. This is a guest post, since there is a lot to write about from Two Gents, and Tiff worked on the majority of the vests. Check out her new blog, Free Radish Designs, after you read her post here!

Hello SewSewDef readers! My name is Tiffany and I am lovingly known to the NFDC crowd as #1 Minion. I hang around, annoy them all, eat their food and do all sorts of wonderful things as needed. Most of the time my skills are put to props, costuming and stage management. For our last show, Two Gentlemen of Verona, I stuck mostly to sewing.

For the first time I was around to help and voice my opinion when it came to pattern picking and as Nikki, Alyssa and I lost our minds in the shiney new sewing room I got to take on a whole new challenge. Vests! Since this show was set in the Wild West, every man on stage would need a vest, which led to problems of its own: How to clothe 8 male characters in vests without making them all look the same?

Well that is where these two patterns came in; Butterick 3721 and Simplicity 2895. Between the three of us we decided on who was wearing what vest and in what fantastically flashy fabric. Once this was done, what we lovingly called the Vestival began.

Here’s the break down of the vests:
Antonio – S2895 view B
Duke of Milan – B3721 view B (double breasted)
Launce – S2895 view B
Proteus – B3721 view C
Thurio – S2895 view B (with contrast back)
Valentine – S2895 view A (with collar)
Eglamor – B3721 view C
Panthino – bought from Ebay

The patterns are very similar but did have distinguishing features. The Simplicity pattern calls for the same fabric all the way around, has a small collar option and has a pointed bottom. The Butterick has a double breasted/collared vest option, calls for contrasting back and is straight across the bottom.

The patterns both have a similar pocket method, however, the Butterick by far has a superior pocket to the Simplicity. I thankfully only had to pockets into two vests* and had to use both pattern methods. I started the pocket adventure of the Vestival with Launce’s vest as it was A.) made from fabric that was given to us and we had lots of it and B.) was Simplicity so how hard could it be? Well, sometimes Simplicity doesn’t earn its name.

It took me about ten minutes of staring at the directions before I decided it was only going to make senseif I did it. Thankfully that approach worked but even when I finished with the pattern directions I was still left with raw edges for the welt and no directions as to how to finish them. I in the end decided to tuck them and stitch them down.

The Butterick used almost the exact same method but gave directions for finishing all edges and made a deeper and sturdier pocket then the Simplicity. This was proven when I never once had to fix the pockets of Proteus’s vest (the one I used the Butterick for) but had to on multiple occasions had to fix Launce’s vest pockets. There is also the Actor Factor in that statement. I have a suspicion that Launce was being overly mean to his pockets by shoving his big hands in them without regard to the size of the pocket. It’s a mystery we shall never solve.

My recommendation, however, is that if you have to pocket a vest or a coat in this manner, pick up a copy of B3721. Just know that it’s currently residing in the Out-Of-Print section for Butterick and might not be there much longer. We were lucky enough to have the pattern in stock.

One step I was fortunate to get away with not doing for all these vests was making belts. The way all the vests ended up fitting made belts unnecessary. Thurio and Valentine’s vests got belts because those are the two Nikki did before having to move on to the gorgeous ladies outfits while I continued on with the Vestival alone but not without moral support and good music.

I’m sure you are wondering how all these vets turned out. Well take a look for yourself!

Vests! From left to right: Duke of Milan, Thurio, Antonio, Launce, Valentine, Proteus. Sadly Eglamour is not pictures as he was running late for photo call.

Backs of the Vests! For some reason the Simplicity called for a center back seam that took in to account a small bit of sway back in the seam. It was odd and didn’t really make any sense to me. The Butterick had you cut the back on the fold and it made no difference in the fit as far as i could tell.

The show was amazing and the vests were a hit on stage. They all turned out amazingly even if Thurio’s had fit issues when it came time to put his buttons on. I guess that is just a reminder to always check fit a few times no matter what.

Feel free to shout my praises in the comments. I promise I will only let it go to my head a little bit before our next show.

With lots of vest love,
Tiffany, the greatest #1 Minion you could ever hope for

*I did challenge Nikki to a pocket off, so the Duke ended up with pockets he didn’t really need prop wise. The pocket off was a draw as we were both using the Butterick pocket and it is so nice that even with my edge of having already done pockets, Nikki’s still came out just as nice as mine.

Continue reading »]]> Over Labor Day weekend, I was working on Julia’s costume for Two Gents, and I made this vlog while doing so (but of course forgot to post about it here!). You can see her blouse go from nearly nothing to nearly done, and you get a slight detour into the Vestival!

An NFDC Vlog – September 6, 2010 from North Fulton Drama Club on Vimeo.

A Work Day Episode in which Nikki shows the progression of a costume from pieces to nearly finished, along with a slight detour into vest-fu.

Continue reading »]]> Several of the costumes from our plot for Comedy of Errors relied on Simplicity 5359. We had originally planned on using a separate bellydancing pattern for one of these outfits, but time and the reality of our fabric dictated that using 5359 was the way to go. What follows is my review of the pattern, which will also be posted at PatternReview.com.

Pattern Description: Misses Bellydancing Costumes (Renaissance)

Pattern Sizing: Misses 6 through 20

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? In its several incarnations, yes.

Were the instructions easy to follow? After a while I really didn’t even look at them. However, for some reason, the first skirt I made, I managed to totally mangle and misread the instructions about the waistband, so it was never right. On second read of the instructions, I can only imagine that I was very, very tired.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? The skirt and pants share the slightly weird waistband (yoke). It’s not great fun but it’s not horrible either. The skirt is very nice – it has great swish and is easy to edit down to fewer panels if you need to do so.

Fabric Used:This pattern was used to make three costumes:

• Angela the Goldsmith – The skirt is made of solid gold polyester shantung and a gold/white/green striped upholstery of similar Lose Weight Exercise. The stripe had to be underlined because it was sheerish compared to the shantung. The top is made of cream linen-look fabric from JoAnn. The vest is made with a “Silkessence” soild and the lining is a quilting cotton. The same quilting cotton was used to make the waist cincher.
• Solina, Duchess of Ephesus – Both the pants and the top are made from a nice rayon we bought at Gail K here in Atlanta.
• Courtezan in Training – The skirt is made from a sari print purchased at JoAnn, and the top is also a “Silkessence” fabric in bronze.

Pattern alterations or any design changes made: On the vest, the burnt sienna silky fabric wasn’t going to hold up on its own, so the vest is lined to give it Lose Weight Exercise. I believe the original instructions call for binding the edges. On the blouse, we left the sleeves un-elasticized, and we used a draw string in the neck rather than elastic. On the Genie pants, I interfaced the lining of the waistband/yoke rather than the fashion fabric (and used a cotton for the lining, rather than self-linng). For the Courtezan in Training, we’d originally planned to use a different pattern, so we did not have enough fabric to do eight panels on the skirt, so we just did six. It was fine. On the Genie and the Courtezan, we had to do a dart over the bust for each of them, and we didn’t do hook and eye closures – we did snaps.

Conclusion: It’s a great pattern that is easy and generally turns out exactly as it looks. It calls for a lot of trim and detail, but you can choose what level of trim you want to apply and it really doesn’t loseWeight Exercise much. It can look like a genie, a belly dancer, a gypsy, or be used for Ren Faire garb. All around, a really good pattern.

Continue reading »]]> As previously discussed, our production of Comedy of Errors is set on the Silk Road, which required a lot research into traditional clothing from a variety of countries and ethnicities. I cannot tell you what an enormous help Folkwear patterns was to us. They are practically the only pattern makers online that make detailed, interesting and accessible patterns for ethnic clothing from all over the globe.

(A side note for a future blog post: Peter of Male Pattern Boldness had a great discussion on his blog about the internet and how it has affected his and his readers’ sewing. I said there how Nikki and I could not have done the work we have done for Drama Club without the internet. The resources for vintage and ethnic patterns and research online cannot be overstated.)

Lanyhoodle, we were looking through patterns and basically as soon as we saw this pattern, we knew it was perfect for our Dromios:

Look at those pants! Perfectly insane! They fit  the personality of our clownish Dromios and the short version would provide them with plenty of room for the large amount of running and tumbling the actors would be doing.

I took on the task of creating these monster pants, which became known as the Party Pants due to the jaunty orange polka-dotted cotton I used for lining the waistbands. I’m not going to go into the whole epic saga of their creation – the injuries, the waiting-til-the-last-minute starting, the many, many tears over the goddamn waistbands that Would Not Work, even after 2 alterations. Deep breath.

No, what I want to talk about is something that shockingly only occurred to me after I put a pair on Jim for the first fitting. As he walked around, giggling as the masses of material swung around his legs, I stepped back and stared. The shape of the pant looked disturbingly familiar, tickling an image in my brain from long ago and bringing forth memories of 5th grade and dancing with my best friend at recess. This image:

Yes, MC Hammer, in his infamous “Hammer Pants”.  Look at the shape of those pants, the ballooning at the top, the skinny leg. You can even see some of the crazy pleating at the top encased by the waistband. How remarkably similar does this look to this?:

Pleats, ballooning top, tapered legs. If these pants weren’t made of a canvas-like material, they would be billowing in the same manner as Hammer above. Want more evidence?

Left: MC Hammer Right: Alex as Dromio

Practically identical, right??? Even the short jacket in the original Folkwear pattern (we decided to go with a vest for the ease of our actors) is very similar to the jackets Hammer wore often.

Just one more picture, I promise. Look at this gem I unearthed in my image searches:

Yes! You too can make your own sexy giant pants!

So I did a little research into Hammer pants and their origins. It was hard to pin down (and the most info i could find was on Wikipedia), but what most people can agree is that they were derived from parachute pants. Early parachute pants (late 70s-early 80s), however, were tight, almost form-fitting, the parachute in the name coming from the nylon material the pants were made from.  Sometime in the later 80s, the pants became much baggier and colorful, popularized by breakdancers – same as our Dromios, the looseness the pleats create help with ease of movement.

Now, to support my theory that this baggier style really was influenced by Algerian folk clothing, I found this sentence in the Wikipedia article on parachute pants very telling:

As fashion cut pants, parachute pants were popularized by hip-hop performers. From this point, they were often woven of loose, light fabric, with a low seat containing many folds, and sometimes printed with complex designs, ranging from neon patterns to prints resembling Middle Eastern pattern embroidery, contrasting the earlier monochromatic heavy jumpsuits and trousers.

Algeria is a North African country, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to see that the embroidery and shapes of this region’s clothing would have been adopted by breakdancers. Lots of traditional African clothing appeared in US culture in the 60s and 70s, so the trend could have extended in the 80s with exploration into other regional clothing. Also interesting – several of the patterns we used and others we found as research were specifically named as dancer’s costumes.

What do you think? Do see the connection?

Continue reading »]]> Because we both have regular day jobs, we often don’t have a traditional costume plot. More often than not we assemble a database of potential patterns, inspiration images, fonts, colors, objects, anything that puts either of us in mind of what we are trying to accomplish.

To the left, you will see some of the items I included on my original Comedy of Errors inspiration board. Our concept for CoE was at first, “Arabian Nights,” and then it morphed a bit into “Silk Road.” Think Constantinople, a melting pot centered on commerce, a city in which you  might see beautiful things from almost any culture.

Which brings me to another core concept of the plot: Beauty. We wanted gorgeous fabrics, rich colors, metallics, color shifting fabric. Rich texture.

The next step was to find patterns that fit our needs. The first rule, of course, is “Keep it simple.” Many Middle Eastern cultures still make use of very simple robes for men and women, so the base for many of our simpler costumes was none other than Simplicity 4795, a series of Nativity costumes for men, women, and teens. From those simple illustrations, we got a witch doctor, a merchant, and a condemned old man.

Dr Pinch, the Merchant, and Aegeon

Dr. Pinch & Aegeon used the same base pattern for the robe, but we added trim to give interest to Aegeon’s sad, gray look, and Dr. Pinch’s fabric was shiny and exotic looking, with cuffs and hem in green to tie in the colors from his long vest, which was a paisley tapestry that we intentionally cut with the pattern horizontally placed, rather than vertically, which is the “correct” direction for paisley to run.  We took the rather larger than life robe in the center photo from the same pattern and made it reversible; more on that later. The point, however, is bang for your buck here. One pattern gave us three looks. It was simple to use and not time consuming to cut or sew, and could be handed off to others to finish without a lot of explanation. GOLDMINE, in other words, when it comes to a show where we are making practically everything.

The other patterns we selected were chosen for a variety of reasons and we felt no compunction about mixing and matching between them. You can see all of the patterns we chose in NFDC’s Flickr. After we selected the patterns, we sat down with a pile of samples we’d collected from fabric stores in our area and with everything we thought we wanted to use from our stash and started making piles and talking color. We knew we wanted jewel tones, but we also wanted richness and we wanted to evoke the desert, travel, and maybe the sea. We wanted a riot of color, but we didn’t want to blind people or make things confusing to look at. And, to be perfectly honest, there was at least one inside joke we had to pay homage to, because nothing’s complete without an inside joke. And, this play features a lot of twins, if we didn’t mention that already. How can we play up the twin aspect? If Shakespeare thought two sets of twins were hilarious, how can we make it look even TWIN-IER?

You can see the results of our efforts. The ladies are all wearing jewel tones – Adriana in rich purple and gold brocade, Luciana in similar, but not matchy, pink and gold brocade. The Courtezan is wearing similar rich colors, and the other ladies are by and large wearing jewel tones.

The men folk are wearing mostly earth tones with a heavy dose of metallics that are NOT lame` (that’s lah-may, not lame, although either is correct). Aegeon and his sons, the Antipholouses, have blue trim and seafoam highlights, respectively, to perhaps bring to  mind the sea without going all Cape Cod on us.

As for twins? We have the Antipholouses, dressed exactly the same, and the Dromios, also dressed identically. Two ensemble members wear saris that are of very similar patterns. The merchants, played by the same actor, has a robe (pictured above) that is reversible. We remixed the same shirt pattern several times, so it looks familiar but not identical or repetitive on people.  It’s a pleasing mix to look at, with lots of interior reference for those of us who look for that sort of thing. To us, it looks like it all belongs together. See more of our costumes here.

Continue reading »]]> Y’all, I am not gonna lie: sewing is a dangerous business. Nikki and I were comparing notes a couple of nights ago and between the 2 of us, every finger and several inches of arms are damaged. I think this might have been our bluest working period yet – not a night went by that a “fuck!” or “shit!” followed by violent shaking of hands or fingers in the mouth sounded across the Annex (our current work space).

The most frequent assailants are pins. You would not believe the number of ways you can be attacked by pins. There is the Standard Poke as you pin a garment, which can escalate into the Stab if you are trying to pin quickly or through a thick piece of fabric. My most frequent pin injury for this show was The Grab – grasping a handful of pins as I picked up a garment to move it to my machine. Let’s not forget the Poke Variations – pokes to your arms or stomach or (shudder) neck as you carry a pinned garment or manipulate it as it moves through your machine. FUN.

Another dangerous tool is the iron. And not in the way you might think, burning yourself on the hot metal surface. Oh no. It’s the steam function that is the real danger. You are smoothing the fabric in front of the iron, you hit the steam button and WHAM! Fingers covered in super-heated water. Nikki steam-burned the crap out of herself the other night, to the point that she still had a mark on her thumb the next day.

Last night I lay in bed, having a hard time sleeping because of the throbbing in my right thumb and forefinger. Culprit? 2 1/2 hours of hand-sewing thick canvas-like material over canvas karate shoes. There were some places the material so thick that I had to use the flat of my scissors to help me push the needle through the material.

The thing is, though I like complaining about it, the pain doesn’t really bother me (well, most of the time). It’s all part of the process to bring that garment to fruition. Nikki and I sat on the cool ground as we hand-sewed last night, watching as our actors played onstage in costume for the first time. And as those first characters walked out into the lights, a huge wave of pride rushed through me. We had sweated, bled, and even cried over those costumes, but seeing them finished and making the performance that much richer made it all worth it.