Tag: costumes

Hats to order

Russett cloche with organic cotton lace

I was doing well for a while, keeping up with the blog, and then I was ill, and then busy catching up with work, and here I am behind again. This is one of the things I’ve been up to – a new hat! It’s my favourite asymmetric cloche shape, with an organic cotton lace motif and Swarovski crystal trim. Available now in the Etsy shop, or made to order in a colour of your choice!

Nicola's ORANGE hat!

I’ve popped a few other hats in the Etsy shop too, so that I can make them to order. This is one of the first hats I made, and I’m still completely in love with the giant felt flower. You can now order one of your own, though it doesn’t have to be bright orange of course!

I never did get around to making fascinators with the other felted flowers that I made, and they haven’t sold at all well on hair combs, so I think they’ll be coming soon to a hat near you.

Hand blocked wool felt fuchsia pink cloche hat with black guipure lace and button trim

This is one of the simpler styles of hat, a plain round cloche trimmed with guipure lace. I think it’s the one I’ve made the most of (three pink and one grey, at the last count), and now you can order one for yourself. The hat can be made in any of 25 different colours, but the lace is only available in black or ivory.

The next step on the hat journey is going to be pillboxes! I’m just waiting for a clever widget to arrive from Guy Morse-Brown, which will allow me to use my existing blocks to make little felt pillbox shapes. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to trim those, I need to see how they sit on the head before I decide. At the moment I’m thinking big felt bows, or maybe lots of little flowers. We’ll see.

Milly's witch's hat

And just by way of a complete contrast, I spent the weekend making this! The reason it looks a little bit too small for me is that it’s intended for my three year old niece. Although I have to confess I’m pretty tempted to make another one that I can keep! This one has a secret pocket inside the brim (where else does a witch keep her important things?), complete with a little packet of “Magic Dust” for casting spells with. I really hope she likes it!

Spare Batteries

Spare Batteries for Owen's Wig

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 see some sneaky peeks of what we’ve all been up to over on Tumblr, and I’ve uploaded some costumes-in-progress photos on Flickr. The costume team are going to a rehearsal tomorrow, to spend the afternoon doing fittings and making a massive list of all the things we need to get finished in the next couple of weeks.

I’m mostly ploughing on with my to-do list, ticking off each little thing as soon as it’s done, and trying not to panic about it all. Most of the big things are now sorted out (with the exception of one complete costume, eek!), so my list is mainly comprised of odd little things like “bring sandpaper” or “buy brown boot polish”. Oh, and “don’t forget the batteries for Owen’s wig”.

Obviously.

Making Progress

Costume-sewing Day

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.

The costumes are for Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, which runs from the 19th to the 28th of January. Last Friday evening we interrupted rehearsals for WriteFest and The 39 Steps to take over the stage for a photo shoot. The publicity shots are being sorted and edited, and I can’t wait to show them to you as soon as they’re released. A lot of the costume pieces we used for the shoot are only temporary, but the overall atmosphere of the photos is absolutely brilliant.

I’ll be posting more little bits and pieces on here, but I won’t be showing you full pictures of the costumes – we’d rather you came to the theatre to see them! For sneaky peeks, your best bet is to follow @RdgNeverwhere on Twitter.

Tickets are on sale now, but you might have to be quick – a tweet from Neil Gaiman toppled the theatre’s website and generated an awful lot of extra interest! I’ll be involved in costume fittings throughout the rehearsal process, but I’m really looking forward to going along as a member of the audience and seeing the whole show for myself.