Humpty Dumpty

Some time ago I said that my daughter would be making costumes for this years pantomime.  As they are doing a nursery rhyme theme panto, they are mostly using from the stash of costumes from previous years.
The one she has had to make from scratch is Humpty Dumpty.
Now this did include my help to some degree, but a very small degree consisting of 1 phone call and a number of texts.  So here I go with the details.
Phone call #1
DD "Hi mum, I have to make some shorts for Humpty Dumpty, I have a hula hoop, how do I go about it?"
Me "You need to measure the circumference of the hula hoop, divide by four and draw the waistline of your pattern to that measurement."
DD "What about the rest of it?"
Me "I'll draw a pic and send it to you...."
Still on the phone to her, drawing, taking pic and sending.

DD "So if I draw this pattern and send it to you, where do I sew?"

Me "I'll need a different colour pen, hang on, got the pen!  Ok sending to you."

Me "You sew down the purple bit, then have to sew together the 'J' bit for the crotch."

DD "Ok, will text when I have done the pattern."

The rest is by text.

Pic sent by DD.

Me "Make the legs longer, the 'J' rounder, remember it has to go round the crotch too."

DD "Ran out of paper when realised how long the 'J' would be lol what do you mean by rounder? Also remember the top will be stuck to the hula hoop."

I send back this pic.

Me "Remember I did that with my finger on my  mobile so it's not very accurate!"

DD "Ha ha, ok."

DD "...ish, will cut it rounder!  So is that ok?"

Me "Yeah, looks good, cut legs longer just in case you  need longer crotch than pattern, better to cut some leg off after than have to start from scratch."

DD "Yup was gonna, that way I can cut the length to fit as well.  Will probably cut tonight and make 2 separate legs as well but wait to sew them together tomorrow."

Me "Ok, good luck."

DD "Ok, ended up just keeping on going til I finished lol"

Me "Well done, looks like shorts :)"

The following day this pic arrived. Modelled on 4 year old, being made for older person so obviously too big for the model!

DD "Will have some padding on the shoulders as well."

Me "Excellent job Grasshopper!"

So concludes my tale of how to make a Humpty Dumpty costume.  All I can say is that if she did it from those instructions and sew it all by hand, so can you!

A word of warning

I know I said it was ok to use upholstery fabric, and I know I said that as long as it looks right……..

Big BUT!

A friend of mine is going to a wedding in Finland next month and they have been asked to dress in traditional Nordic clothes so she asked me if I would make her an outfit.  Now as she is a very good friend that helps out whenever she is asked, she is a person I would never refuse. So we discussed, at length, what kind of fabric she needed for a Viking apron dress.   You know, natural fabrics like wool, linen or cotton were what I suggested. 

She turned up at my house very pleased with herself a few weeks ago with some fabric given to her by an old lady she knows.  It was upholstery fabric, it was very thick upholstery fabric and one of the upholstery fabrics was a thick cord!  Now I am all for using what you have, but this is for a wedding and it is to be worn all day not for a two hour performance!

I grunted a bit and suggested it was not quite the fabrics I had said but she was pleased with her bargain basement gift and was not going to be put off.  So I then went into ‘well you asked for it’ mode and said nothing more.  Stage one of apron dress was a very thick woven fabric to be made into an undertunic.  I spent the morning measuring and cutting out and sewed it all together.  After turning it in the right way I noticed a bit of seam was undone.  Not exactly sure how I could have done this I sewed it again, turned it in the right way and noticed a bit of seam was undone.  Getting a bit tense at this stage, I sewed it again, turned it the right way and noticed a bit of seam was undone.  In fact pretty much every seam was undone.  In fact, the fabric was such a loose weave that even the overlocker wasn’t stopping the seams unravelling!

I text my friend and told her it was just not happening with this stuff and we are going out on Tuesday to get what I suggested in the first place. 

I then moved onto stage two, the apron itself and I am now struggling with the ultra-thick cord which is going to have the movement of a lump of wood.  She will be hot, she will be uncomfortable, but she will have saved herself £10 so who am I to argue?

The reason I am telling you about this is simple.  If you are going to use upholstery fabric make sure that it is suitable for the purpose given it!  My upholstery silk looks lovely and moves right; it just feels a bit plasticky.  The fabric for the blue Belle skirt is thick, but not too thick for her to move in.  Please make sure that the fabric you use is not going to cause problems for the wearer, even if it is only for the duration of the performance.

As for my friend, she will still be wearing something extremely hot and uncomfortable and maybe next time she will understand that you need the appropriate fabrics for the job!  Of course, having wasted so much of my time making something I knew was not suitable, there may not be a next time.

The passion of sewing

Yesterday I saw Vivienne Westwood being interviewed on BBC breakfast when she said (and I am paraphrasing here) that people going into fashion design industry did not necessarily have the talent to make a career out of it.

Now I am absolutely not disagreeing with her on that, as we all know it is not that easy to pluck a design out of thin air that will have the whole world gasping in amazement as Ms Westwood has done on many occasions.  But I do think there is another element involved that she obviously has in droves...and that is a passion for design and (dare I say it) sewing.

You could almost see the passion exude from her as she talked about the design of Dita Von Teese wedding dress and how she had been personally involved in its design and making.  She looked so proud as she told how it was all made from one piece of fabric except some extra in the back to add volume and this dress certainly screams out quality (I am growling at Microsoft word at the moment as it is trying to tell me that I should have typed ‘accept’ not ‘except’, NO MICROSOFT I KNOW WHAT I MEANT!). 

I thought no more about it until this morning while sitting in a staff meeting.  One of my colleagues is a dance teacher and she was sitting stitching some costumes for her students with grunts and groans of complaint.  Meanwhile, I sat next to her resisting the urge to grab the needle and thread from her as I desperately wanted to do it.  I find sewing challenging, frustrating and sometimes downright annoying.  But on other occasions I find myself sewing away as if in a meditative trance and come out the other end relaxed and happy.

I don't care if the needle is attached to a machine or held in my hand I find an almost cathartic release from all my cares and worries comes with it. Keeping me away from sewing makes me grumpy and irritable.  I love doing the pantomime costumes as I get to play around with fabrics and patterns.  I can spend hours just messing around with trims and things, sewing beads onto bodices or hand pleating bits of fabric just because I think it will look pretty.

I like to think that the majority of people who sew these days are passionate sewists as it really isn't a cheaper alternative to shop bought clothing.  People who sew do so because they WANT to not because they NEED to.  This is why when you go in a sewing shop you can see the excitement on their faces as their hands stroke the fabrics and a strange glint enters their eyes as they consider what they will make with this beautiful piece of material.

So while us normal types may not be as creative as the likes of Vivienne Westwood, I do think we are just as passionate and to this end we should all be proud of our own little works of art (for that is what they are).I am writing this as I still await our auditions, just under two weeks to go now, and that fabric is bashing away at the cupboard door to be let out and made into something amazing! 

Well I can always hope, maybe this is the year I will create something so outstanding it will be reported in the national press! 

Don't hold your breath!         

Victorian pantomime designs

As I blogged about designs I thought you might like to see some Victorian panto designs by Wilhelm that are part of the V&A collection.

Beautiful stuff and maybe I will make one of these some day!

On to the designs

So you have your script and you have the ideas in your head...what next?

I always have a number of ideas floating around and find that the best thing is to make sketches to get some idea of what the plan will look like and generally take my time to figure out if I can make it the way I imagine it.  As I have said before there is a horrendous hiatus in our pantomime from getting the script to actually knowing who will play the role which causes me untold problems as I try to figure out what costume to make.  I also buy the fabric in one go.  There is very little to choose from in Norfolk so when I visit my husband’s family in Bolton it is also a chance to go fabric shopping.

Unfortunately, this year I will be in the northern land a month before the auditions.  This means that I have to think about what I want to do but also have alternatives in my head in case a plan goes completely pear shaped.

A good example of this is the fairies.  I have in my mind the two people I think will be playing them and the costumes I have talked about will work perfectly with them.  But if I am wrong will the costumes I have designed suit the alternate actors?

It is always good to have one or two designs for each character just in case the person playing them really doesn't like them.  And in case you are wondering why you should worry about them when you spend all your time and effort making a costume, take a moment to think what it is like to wear something you don't like, then expand that ten fold with having to stand on stage acting in it night after night.  I don't think it hurts to take an actors opinion into account unless they want something totally unworkable that is not a compromise on what you have designed.

The main roles in our panto are taken with people aged 17-70; there is no way they will want to wear the same style of costume if they are a fairy for example!

Now don't panic if you can’t draw, you don't need to!  You download a variety of croquis.  If you are wondering what a croquis is, it’s a body shape that you just draw your outfit on, if you used to play with paper dolls as a child then you will love this.  There are many available for free here;

http://www.designersnexus.com/fashion-design-portfolio/fashion-design-croquis-template/

Get yourself a variety of body sizes, men and women’s and then you will be able to draw over the top of it with your design.

Here are some designs I have drawn for the fairies with the croquis in the middle.

These aren’t coloured in but I also do a number of similar designs in different colours to see what they look like and pick the one I prefer

They take a few minutes to draw but help tremendously, not only for you but also other people to be able to look at and understand the design you are talking about.

So get downloading and have fun playing around with those designs!