Yellow skirt

 

My children go on a choir tour each summer this last summer they went to California.  At 1 am the morning of leaving I realized I had not made a skirt for my daughter who is the choir manager to wear during performances... hers is yellow to match the boys ties the other members of the choir that are female wear dark blue...  I took her old skirt that was too small traced it made the modifications to the pattern to go up to the size needed.  Then she helped cut it out and I sewed it up fitted her and made more modifications.  Some how all in time to leave by 6 a.m. that was a long night.

Picture below is the choir two years ago in Williamsburg.

beaded corset

Was making a beaded corset for a class at school the class finished. I got the item done before the class finished but I wanted to embellish it more.  So I am adding beads to it still.  For the class I had to draft and pattern from a sloper and fit it to me then do the modifications to cinch in where I wanted it to.  The tapes that form the vertical stripes on it are antique batten berg tapes.  The corset has a spoon busk and spiral boning.

The mannequin scene in the photo above and the ones before I found on face-book marketplace super inexpensively.  It is a functioning S curved corset which accommodates pigeon breast shirts well.  One of these days I need to name my dress-forms.  The photos below are not mine but from the original seller.  She had inheritaded it from her grandmother and had no use for it.  I was so excited to add her to the family of dressfoms in my home.

little bits of scraps make flowers

 One week ago my daughter went to one of our family friends weddings where she caught the bouquet.  The dress she wore to the wedding which you see at the right and above was 5 inches too long before that event.  So quickly I cut off the hem and she did a hand rolled hem on it so she could wear it to the event. 

 Last night I cut the hem into little circles 30 of them . Then folded those in half and did a gathering stitch on the raw edge side stringing 5 of these together to make a flower.  I had enough fabric from the hem to make 6 of these flowers.  I  then sewed them to her upper left shoulder of the dress and removed the bow from center front and stitched it into the middle of the flower cluster.  I also went through my buttons and picked out rhinestone buttons from three generations of our family from both sides  an sewed them to the center of the flowers to add a little sparkle.

 Recently I did A similar style detail on a dress for play Anything Goes.  In this dress I sewed the entire dress all 5 layers of skirt and all bias. and ruffle sleeves and lots of flowers on it.

 Here you can see what the flowers look like up close

 prior to flowers and rhinestones being added.

  This is the lovely Mandee Shaffer who use to be one of my bosses who draped this dress for me to make.  She is now the Manager of the West Valley Hale costume shop here she is being silly and just wearing a costume for an upcoming play.  I so miss working with her one of my most favorite people in all the world.

Making items for a dance

 

So I go junking a lot at thrift shops and garage sales the fabric in this dress is a mixture of a 2 year olds dress the purple skirt part that I cut apart for the bodice and a embroidered cream lace curtain I used for the skirt.  The pink was gifted to me for the jacket and the brown under skirt and cream lining are just scrapes I had.

I made some buttons for the dress and the jacket.  This was just made out of the fabric scrapes from cutting out the bodice.  I  fussy cut the scrapes to center the flowers on the button

The button loops are just a crochet chain of 20,  I should have made them 15 in retrospect.

 This is the dress when it was quickly pinned on my dress form.  This is a dress that you can not buy the pattern for.  You might be able to find something similar.  But this pattern is one we draped and drafted.

 This is the dress still under construction while having the jacket half made.  Originally I wanted the buttons on the back of the jacket but after some modifications to the pattern I flipped the jacket piece around and put them on the front.

 Daughter trying on the dress  was still working out some kinks in the dress.  This dress is fully boned.



 Here is the dress done with some of the accessories she and her sisters made to go with the dress.

 Here is my daughter Starr working on making the neck lace you can see in the above and below photos.

My oldest daughter China made these Hair pieces for her to wear to the dance.

 These are the matching earrings China made for Starr.

This is the corsage that all three of my daughters worke don together to match the outfit.

 

Below is the Necklace that Starr made for her younger sister to wear to the dance.

 This is the matching earrings.

 Starr made her younger sister a corsage and hair piece to wear with her dress.  Her dress I didn't have to make as I found it thrift shopping for 15 dollars.

 

 sorry blurry photo

 My kids don't wear shoes in the house she had red shoes to go to the dance in that match the flowers on the dress.

Making costumes at work

Yep a small sample of what I do at work. Sew like crazy on industrial machines.  These are parts of costumes for the play In the Time of Trolls.

the sand cape of one of the winds and the flower cape of another wind and the start of winter cape for another wind... there are four wind capes in this show.  When they are completely done all four will lite up.

The hat in the back ground that is yellow we made and embroidered on the embroidery machine at work not in that order. Above are two of the four wind capes being made this show all for will light up I am making 3 to 3 1/2 of them then the designer will light then up like the one below.

Yes that is me sewing in this photo...thanks to the designer of the show Carolyn.  I am working on the ribbon skirt for the troll princess in that photo. You can see the designers pin board in front of me as I was working on it.  The skirt itself you can see below and close up the detail of in other photo below that the skirt is  about 90 percent done I should finish it today.  The university came by yesterday to make a promotional video for this play.  Yep of all days to wear a  hat oh well...  May end up in that video either sewing or ironing or something that I have to do as I make this costume as they were just filming everything we were all doing and I was just trying to get the project done so I could go on to the next cape.