The DuPage County Historical Museum is currently hosting an exhibit of 17th/early 18th century French clothing until September 9th. All items are from the private…
Leave a CommentTag: Costume
During the week, when there are no shows going on, actors and most of the crew return to their regularly scheduled lives. Do you know what costumers do?
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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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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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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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So I’ve been working a lot lately, which is great because paychecks basically rock. I’m really lucky to have several of the best jobs ever right now – the costume shop, which is the coolest place on earth, and I started doing some backstage stuff for shows that come through the college.
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So, you’ve got a basic ren wench bodice pattern. Yay! Now it’s time to pick some fabrics and sew it all up.
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Remember a while back, I posted directions for a Basic Conic Block draft? Everyone was sort of like, wow, missa, that’s great, it explains so much, but what do I do with it? Well, a basic block is used to develop other patterns in a big bad hurry, without all that annoying measuring and math. Today, we’re going to make an ultra-generic-wenchy-ren-faire-been-there-drank-the-ale-SEEN-IT type bodice pattern. You know the the one I’m talking about…. It won’t win you points for originality or authenticity, but it’s a fun little piece to wear.
2 CommentsAfter years and years of showing the entire internet how to draft patterns to my measurements-du-jour, I’ve decided to start working with a model. There’s a couple reasons… Firstly, I already have more costumes than I possibly know what to do with. I have so many that I’m trying to come up with ways to get rid of them, without actually taking the huge, ego-wrenching risk of putting things on ebay and finding out that my treasured work is not worth a 25$ bid.
2 CommentsSometimes, you need a knicker, or some other relatively non-denominational short, slightly poofy pantlet with a cuff at the bottom, and you don’t have time to make it from scratch. (Perhaps, for example, you have a cast of 37, and 9 or 11 of them are kids in Fagin’s gang and most of them are too short for proper long pants… Hey, it can happen!) Here’s the cheater’s method:
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