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Month: May 2011

A Pattern is More Like a Guideline, Really…

So, Laura said she was looking forward to a demo on how I made the Frock Coats for 1776.  I used a pattern. (What?! Missa? Are you feeling ok??) It’s not that I’m not all about cheating, or being creative, or drafting patterns. It’s just that it easier to a pattern that already exists and change it up. Here’s some ideas…

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How to Turn Out a Passable Rev War Uniform Jacket from Goodwill

Have I mentioned that my show has, by and large, come from Goodwill? Yes, indeed. One of the characters in 1776 is “a courier”. (No, really, that’s all they call him in the script.) He’s an army courier who brings messages in to the continental congress. I need him to look like he’s a) military and b) really, really dirty. This means that I get to build the coat, and then I get to have a bit of fun with it…

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How to Find Colonial Britches at Goodwill

Oddly enough, I needed 19 pair of Colonial britches to go with my 25 Colonial vests. (Because I had much better luck renting britches than vests, not because I let anyone go pantless.) This is very similar to the trick I used for the Oliver! knickers, but they need a slimmer fit and different length. It goes like this:

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How to Find Colonial Waistcoats at Goodwill

I needed 25 Colonial-looking vests for 1776. Because I wasn’t sure that I’d get round to making a coat for everyone, I wanted vests that weren’t faked out in the back, and I needed them to have structure and to be long enough to cover the obviously modern fly fronts on the britches I was making them. Now, you can’t just trot off to the Goodwill and buy a real live Colonial vest. But you can pull off something passable, if you believe that that there are, in fact, user-serviceable parts inside of a jacket….

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Eleventh Century German Multi-Needle Beadwork

So, I took a few hours break from my current bout of insane workaholism the other day and did a little beading. This is what programming does to me: my mind goes from being a marvelous realm of creative joy to being a twisted up little thing that can only think in terms of methodology and function. Hurts my soul a little, not gonna lie, but it’s quite useful to those who employ me. Also, it makes me say hopelessly silly things like “How about a small scale mockup of Eleventh century German multi-needle beadwork on 1/4th inch wide organdy ribbon?” I’m fairly convinced I would not be doing this if I were in my right mind. Darn you, temporary left-brain dominance! Here’s the method I used…

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