easily distracted by shiny things…
Posted in costume on Feb 1st, 2012
Saturday January 28th was the last day of Neverwhere at Progress Theatre. We saw the final performance, which was followed by a party. Louise and I were given mugs and cards from the cast, as a thank you for working on the costumes. The gorgeous rats were knitted by Kate – one for every member [...]
Posted in costume, crafty things, jewellery on Jan 11th, 2012
Oh dear, I’m doing it again. Blogging all enthusiastically, then disappearing for a week. In my defence I’m still working on the costumes for Neverwhere which, as well as doing the odd day or two of overtime at work, is taking up every spare minute of my time and then some. These are three raven [...]
Happy 2012, everyone! I’ve done a little bit of goal-setting and resolution-writing, but my personal New Year is going to have to wait. We’re eighteen days away (not that I’m counting!) from the first night of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere at Progress Theatre, and there’s still so much left to do on the costumes! You can [...]
This is what a costume-sewing day at Progress Theatre looks like. On the floor is Louise, making a start on Door’s costume. Standing at the back is Laura (Door), working on the Angel’s costume. Pam is running up monks’ robes on the overlocker, and Liz (Old Bailey) is painstakingly hand-sewing feathers onto her own costume. [...]
I know you’ve seen this one before, but I just wanted to show you Simplicity 2172 in its completed state. After the Wild Boy’s Ball I removed the feather collar, and added the sleeves. I decided to leave off the shoulder flanges and the ruffly bits because they’re not to my taste and I wanted [...]
Posted in costume, culture, exhibitions, inspiration, museums on Oct 1st, 2011
So, at long last, here is the completed stripy/steampunk outfit! Paul and I went to the Wild Boy’s Ball at Kensington Palace, and had an absolutely magical evening. You can see all the photos that Paul took, over on Flickr. We started off by going inside the palace itself, which was actually quite different from [...]
Paul decided the day before the event that he would come with me after all. Thankfully I managed to get him a ticket, and I had just enough striped fabric left over to make him a tie to match my outfit. The diagonal stripe is because I didn’t have a big enough scrap of fabric [...]
Posted in costume, crafty things on Aug 26th, 2011
Oh my goodness, the feathers. Fluff everywhere. My Shed will never be the same again. Once the glue’s dry, I’ll be getting out the hot glue gun to attach these feathery extravagances to the sides of a mask. The black feathers and the sparkly bits were originally attached to the mask in the first place, but [...]
Here’s the final part of the outfit – a somewhat modified version of Simplicity 2172. Actually, it’s not as heavily altered as you might think – I just left off a few pieces that were surplus to requirements. Like the sleeves. The buttons are the original ones from my friend’s military jacket. There are four [...]
Posted in costume, dresses, sewing, skirts on Aug 22nd, 2011
You might have noticed that this is made to roughly the same pattern as the black linen dress. This time the ruffle’s a bit shorter, but that was mostly because I’d almost run out of stripy fabric. The body of the dress is a little longer to compensate. The hem is trimmed with one layer [...]