The fabric

So, you have the ideas in your head, you have your designs all drawn out, which leaves one thing; buying the fabric!

This can either be exasperating or the greatest fun ever.  It gets exasperating when you can’t find what you want, the best fun is when it all comes together with hardly any effort.

I have just returned from my great fabric hunt of 2014.

I have learned to combine the fabric hunt with visiting my husbands’ relatives in the northern lands where the choice of fabric in one town far exceeds anything available in the whole of Norfolk!  This does mean I get two shots a year at this and the first buy up usually involves getting over 50 metres of fabric in one day!

This year I managed to get pretty much everything I wanted and came away on a high (this was rapidly depleted as we hit traffic jam after traffic jam and it took us over 6 hours to get home instead of the normal 4).

Here is the haul piled up on my table;

Now in the sensible world of the seamstress this lot would be washed before sewing but I have a life to lead and I never wash the costume fabrics before a performance!  This way I make the costume to fit and then if it shrinks, or some of the pattern or bling comes off in the wash, it is revamped for the following year without me having a hissy fit!

The one exception I will make to that this year is the Beast’s costume as I may need to use the padded shirt for another panto and I don't want a shrunken lining ruining it all.

I didn’t get an elaborate gold for Belle, but I did get some old gold taffeta and a piece of patterned gold that I will use for the bodice and decoration, I expect some bling will appear on that before it is finished. 

I could have bought a yellow colour but if the person I think will play Belle gets the role, she really doesn't suit yellow and it makes her look jaundice.  There is always the possibility she won’t be Belle but it really won’t make a difference in that case.

The big job is to now fold all this fabric up and put it away.  It will probably take all day lol

I am itching to get sewing and trying to work out which costumes I can make that are adjustable so they fit whoever gets the role.