It's a Ruff life.

Big Sewing.

The Hubbard Street Dance Company hired me to make a backdrop. It was so huge that we laid it out in one of the dance studios.
Thats Carol stading behind it, she's a crazy person.
Here's some poor sewing machine drowning in fire proof fabric.

Hanukkah

I'm really feeling the hanukkah spirit this year! Holidays seem much more fun when there's a depression. Not so much pressure to find the perfect item, which is a great relief, for I'm a terrible shopper. Also, making gifts is much more accetable during times of economic strife! I made cut paper cards for my family. Here's the one I made for my mom.
And this is the one I made for my sister!
I made one for my dad too, but he's already squirrled it away in some secret place. He thinks I am conspiring to keep art from him.  You will have to imagine it- it had mountains on it.  He likes mountains.  I was stumped on a present to get for my mother, because, as I have previously stated I'm a terrible shopper and Mom is the woman who has everything. And if she doesn't have it, she probably wants to pick it out herself. So I had nothing, and no ideas, and then, all of a sudden, I had a moment of inspiration. I made her a case for her knitting needles! We suffer from knitting needle black hole proliferation at our house.
I used all my favourite fabrics. My sister brought us the most fabulous textile from Mexico.

Is'nt it beautiful?
For Nora, I made a pillow based on the quilt code she and I made up last year.

It means that she is a gold star lesbian who wants a nice trannie or perhaps a drag king to take her out for dinner. And possibly oral sex. Dirty quilting!

The back is the most beautiful rainbow step ladder! With vintage buttons I found in Santa Fe.

Quilt!

I finished my quilt!  It is most satisfying to finish a quilt and then sleep under it.  Because my room is embarrassingly nerdy (could I have any more Lord of the Rings posters?) I took pictures of it outside.

Detail!
And here's the back, with the basting still in.

Anxiety Projects

I'm still reeling from the election. Being anxious about it for so long, it's hard to realize its over. Though I am thoroughly relieved, I still have moments of complete panic. Not that I don't have things to freak out about now. How can you deal with a world in upheaval, trying to find a job, and breaking up with your girlfriend? Well, damned if I know. But making stuff has always helped me. I finally finished the cardigan I've been working on since Santa Fe. Turns out, Careful Knitting Nelly is kind of slow! I admit, I got very angry that it wasn't going faster during the second sleeve. I haven't blocked it yet and its kind of covered in cat hair, but it came out very nicely.I also finally finished a scrap hat for Nora. Only took me a year to weave the ends in! Worst part of knitting, as far as I'm concerned.
Between Mom and I there is a lot of ugly scrap fabric in the family home, and really nothing to be done with it. I mean, neon fish with overbites might have been a good idea in some designers head- it appealed to 7-year old Nelly- but what to do with stuff like that now? In a fit of the crazies, I bleached and dyed all of it. (On the left is my post college dye kitchen.) Then I tore everything into strips and made a quilt top.


And when you have anxiety, its always good to have something to hide under.

Getting ready

Deliciously Home

Sometimes it just feels so right to be at home. I am so lucky, I have work in a great place where we make beautiful things (like this fantastic gold dress) and I have friends who seek my company. Even with all of this goodness, I still feel distinctly melancholy sometimes. Today, in particular, in the midst of a large crowd, I felt very acutely lonely, in a way that I haven't in a long time. There is no better remedy for this situation than bowing out early for the comfort of home.

Perhaps one of the reasons for this fatigue is over work. It has been quite stressful recently at the little costume shop of horrors. I've been doing mostly assisting work this week, rolling fabric, xeroxing, maintaining the designer's bible (which is constantly being raided and added too) and swatching. There is nothing more stressful to me than being asked to take a pair of scissors to an untouched piece of million dollar fabric. I don't want to design, and my conviction is only strengthened by the fact that I am seriously jealous of my co-workers making wonderful 1900s corsets and bloomers and camisoles while I make binders.
I did, however, score some rocking vintage corset covers when we cleaned out camisole stock. I have to figure out a way to wear things like this. I want to be a little more adventurous in my clothing choices (mum's going to laugh at that) but what good are having such awesome items if they are never worn? Theater clothes have such odd fake history, one of the camis I stole has fake blood stains, I'm going to have to do some repairing. Tomorrow I'm going to Philly to see my Nora, hopefully mad crafting will ensue.

Back in Baltimore and stressing about the next show.

To celebrate having new camera batteries, I took a picture of me wearing my new hat, sweater and scarf!

I wore all of these things to work today. (And yes, I'm on the floor. It was a long day, this show, A Little Night Music, is going to destroy the costume shop. And then my life. But more about that later.) Because my new hat (complete with Nora Yarn! (TM)) is so rockin', here's another picture!

I also made some wrist gaurds for my supervisor's daughter. She's going to be 4 tomorrow! I'm sure these will be lost immediately, but that's okay. As with all little kid gifts, it's for the parent more than the kid. My boss saw something similar on another kid, and was talking about how much she loved them, and how it would be good because her baby gets chapped wrists.

They fit me! I need some. I hope they aren't too big for her. I love the yarn, it's like candy!
So tomorrow I have to go into work and the first thing I have to do are plackets. It's not that I haven't done about 10 on each show, it's just that it's stressful! And complicated- I guess I just don't have enough experience to be confident in my placket abilities just yet. And, of course, I'm making silk charmeuse bloomers, meaning I only have one shot to nail it. Just like how the Rebel Alliance only has one chance to take down the Death Star.

Purple Rain

Spent all day doing cartridge pleats.

There are two layers to the skirt- one is this really beautiful netting with fuzzy black floral overlay. It used to be white and black, but Will overdyed it blue.

The second layer is a purple blue taffeta. It's going to be a really fantastic dress. For the most beautiful boy ever. The actor has a 27 inch waist (yowza! skinnypants), so those two layers of fabric, almost 6 feet long, had to be gathered down, which was tricky.
This has been a pleat-tastic show for me! I made box pleats for Ophelia's dress last week.

A few things I've been doing

Sometimes I work for the tailor, Ed. I don't get to do as complicated things for him, because he has such a traditional, complicated method. But yesterday I made some pants for him! They were huge diaper pants, with no crotch seam! The center front panel was also the center back, it folded around, and two side pieces left room for little leg holes. They looked really funny, just like an adult upholstery diaper!

I tool a picture of the pocket, because I think its just so interesting how pockets are put into things, so logical and yet still kind of tricky. Like origami. Actually, making these pants was a lot like origami. I'll put a picture of them up when they're on stage.

My main project recently has been Ophelia's dress. I posted a picture of the mock up and research before. The dress is made up of all these layers of really beautiful lace.

The feathery bits on the end are called eyelash. We've been piecing different bits of lace together, especially on the bodice. It turns out you can just cut up little parts of the lace and then sew it on in different areas, and make this amazing, constructed lacy fabric, that looks really complicated and like it was woven specifically for the garment. But its just held together with a zig zag stich!

This dress has three layers to it, a peach chiffon layer, a sheer sparkly layer, and then the lace. My boss Jill showed me this magical thing. Instead of doing french seams on the lace, we made peach bias tape and lined the seams with it.

So that when its against the underskirt, it completely disappears. So cool! The worst part about making this dress has been knowing that when we're all done, we're going to have to turn it over to Will in crafts, and he's going to distress it. Sad!

Cartridge Pleats

Mock it up

I had a really fun day at work today. Even though it’s exciting to run wardrobe and be part of the show every night, I'm glad to be back in the shop. I'm always endlessly optimistic about the new show (and totally disparaging after it opens) but so far I love Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The designer is a woman named Candy, who is very into using fashion for inspiration. She gave us a bunch of shoots from Italian Vogue as research. Totally a change from the last three shows. This is the pattern Jill draped and had me mock up today.



The sleeve is the long piece sticking out the back, so when it was sewn, I didn't have to set a sleeve, I just went all the way up the side. I learned that's called a kimono sleeve. It’s going to be fierce when it’s done in the real fabric, which is shiny and dark blue.



It goes over a sexy sheath dress, and will be worn by the character Gertrude. Because the sleeves were kimono sleeves, they needed gussets, which Jill showed me how to do. I think I may have done that before as a sample, but with Jill instruction it was much easier, though mine didn't look quite as nice as Jill’s.



Jill had Sarah working on Ophelia's mock up, which was beautiful.



This is the image we were given to work with.



Tomorrow Jill is going to pattern the dress that Alfred is going to wear. Yes, I said Alfred. The character is apparently a boy-whore. And he wears a Shakespearean style dress. I hope I get to work on it.

I'm not really a bad girl, I just do bad things.

Tallulah Bankhead once said "it's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time." I've been haunted by this quote everytime I try to write in any kind of blog. Tonight, slightly tipsy on whiskey after missing a quick change in tonight's show, I decided instead of going out to the lesbian bar that I would stay in with only the company of my dying computer. It's hard being lonely but it will make me better. And maybe I've proven my bad girl chops for the time being.