What else?

Time to catch up - again!

For the first week of March, I was still working a lot at the St. Kate's costume shop. I got to create several little decorative elements for Pirates of Penzance.

 1) For the character Ruth (the maid of all work on the pirate ship), I added a lovely white eyelet peter pan-style collar and French cuffs to her first bodice. The pattern called for pregathered lace on the edge of the collar and cuffs, but since her accent color was red, I made red ruffles instead. Her second bodice had the same red ruffle around the neckline. Unfortunately, the actress who wore the outfit sweated so profusely, that the red dye in her hair snood leached onto the white collar and turned it pink! Hopefully, this will come out when it's dry-cleaned, because it's a really beautiful 1860's-era bodice, based on this pattern.

2) I made a pale green jacked and skirt for one of the chorus members, but the skirt pattern was too short for her. This turned out to be a happy mistake, because the designer wanted a pleated flounce around the bottom of the skirt; so I spent a morning pleating the fabric to make a 4 1/2" flounce to add to the bottom of her skirt. The fabric had a regular stripe in it, so the pleats were easy to mark out. I also made a narrower pleated piece to add to the sleeve wrists, for a little extra design interest.

3) The girls wear nightgowns and mobcaps in the second act, and while we had a bunch of white cotton gowns and caps, they were pretty plain. So we added ribbon trim: the student workers mostly made bows to attach to the mobcaps and the front of the nightgowns, but I got a little more creative. For one girl (the one nicknamed "Moaning Myrtle" by the running crew!), I made yellow ribbon rosettes with little blue bows in the center to put on both sides of her mobcap, and a bigger blue ribbon bow with a yellow ribbon accent for the front neckline of her gown. I used peach ribbon and green floral trim on another gown/mobcap combo. The girls looked very sweet (and just a little silly!).

See? There was plenty of creating going on in my life. I'm trying to document all of them, though I'm sure I'm forgetting one or two items. But today, the sun is shining, the weather is unbelievably fabulous (76 degrees on March 16th! In Minnesota! Whaaat??), and I'm going to make a few final tweaks to costumes for American Family, walk around downtown St. Paul, and maybe get an ice cream cone. *smile*. Hope you have a similar Friday!