Catching up!

I feel as though I blinked and suddenly we have gone from December to mid February in a flash!

I hate to keep saying the same thing but it has been really busy in my world.
I took on a project that was late in starting, but I felt that we could pull it off.
I had people in place, the fabrics arrived just before the Christmas holiday started, I made some patterns then I came down with the flu.
I put everyone off for a few days, while I lay in bed feverish. Once my fever broke, I dragged myself to the studio to cut so we could be prepared for fittings the next week. What a hellish thing the flu is.

Well now that project is over, I have been back at my main job for a month now- and I waved goodbye to that project on Saturday.


One more project to be delivered - a ballet costume-  and I will be down to a single job and I can't tell you how good that feels.




Here is my Ballet coat.
I sent it in with a colleague for a fitting as I was otherwise unavailable on that day. Little did I know that the dancer I cut it for was injured and another dancer showed up to be fit. Luckily, they were quite similar in size!
There were a few changes that the designer (Colin Richmond)made, as you can see- shortening the hem, lengthening the sleeves, and he took it in quite a bit through the body- I had cut it with a lot more ease and had the skirts flared from a higher position on the body. The roll line was moved up and the collar reduced in proportions.
He added fur cuffs and a back belt.
Generally though, not too bad for a first fit in fabric.

Now it is boxed up ready to be delivered! I hope I get to go in and see the dress rehearsal, the show looks amazing from the sketches I have seen and the promo videos. The ballet wardrobe is one of my favourite wardrobes and everyone there deserves huge credit for their beautiful work!!



Next up in my world are productions of Guys and Dolls and HMS Pinafore! Two musicals that I have a great fondness for. I also have a 12th night that I will be working on so that should keep me busy!
Hopefully I will find more time to blog about them than I have recently.

Oh!
I also added something useful to the studio....
I have been on the lookout for a larger sized male judy, and found one last week on an online sales site. I didn't really need a full body judy, but he is a beauty! The price was well within my range and I just couldn't pass it up. It is a 42 young men's size which is great as the torso is longer- more proportional- to someone 6 feet tall, which is so much better than the standard 5'8" models.

Back to work tomorrow.

Almost finished or A rack of suits

Oh, we are almost finished the project!
I started bagging up the suits today. I tagged them and double checked everything.
It is very gratifying to have accomplished all this work.

We made five complete tail suits, which included altering the shirts, adding dance briefs and quick changing the bow ties by snapping them to the collars.
We also made 9 other suits, five of which were three piece suits, plus an extra pair of trousers.
We put period collars on the shirts, and quick changed some of them as well.

I put the last eight buttonholes in today as well, so that is done too.

I need to box up the remaining fabric, finish up my paperwork and arrange delivery. I am looking forward to seeing them worn when the show techs.

Next week I start back at my regular gig, and I will be working on three very different shows: Fiddler on the Roof, Mary Stuart, and Blithe Spirit. It should be interesting, and I will keep you posted.

Tailcoat layout

I have been so busy these last few weeks. All I can do is check in here and show you what is keeping me so busy.

On my table is the last two of the five tail suits chalked out and ready to be cut.

I have an extension piece that is piano hinged to the length of my table so that it can be extended to allow 60" wide fabric to be rolled out flat. This is so helpful when cutting capes or other large projects. In this case, I am cutting five sets of tails so I can utilize the fabric better with it laid out flat. As you can see here, in one trouser length, I can also lay out the front, back and side panel of one tailcoat as well as the front of the next one. When I lay out the next pair of trousers, I can get the next tailcoat back, side and the skirts of two tailcoats. Once that is done, I can cut all the sleeves.

As of Friday afternoon, I had all five pairs of trousers bundled separately with all their components and all five coats in nice little bins awaiting sewing. I have all the period collar patterns made and cut out for the men's shirts, so for all intents and purposes, I am finished the major cutting work until I can fit again.

Monday I think will be a day off just to catch up with all the things I have been neglecting over the past month, then I have a week and a half of instruction with Lela to finish up her training. Funnily enough, we will be delving into body coats. I have a fit model lined up and think that a tailcoat and a frock coat are in order, as well as some period styling discussions. I am hoping we can document a bit of that process here.

That should take us into December and one or two more Ballet fittings before Christmas, then it will be after the New Year to fit all the tail suits before starting back at the Festival.

Where has the time gone?

 Friday.
 The contract is done and shipped.

 I feel exhausted. Could be the wine.

 Could be the weather- we suffered through the cold before the  boiler turned on in the building and as soon as it did the   weather warmed up. Now we are too hot. Running the a/c in October!

What is it about small versions of things- they are too cute! This was the smallest size waistcoat. I hope they send me some photos of whoever they cast to wear it!
















I think I will take the week-end off since I can hardly stand to make another pattern right now. I think I have made patterns for 8 suits and cut them out in the past week and a half while supervising the finishing of the project that just shipped.
One more week to prep for 11 or 12 fittings on the 29th and 30th.
I am not going to think about it now.
I'll try to get back to some kind of regular posting soon.

Multiples

designed by Richard Hudson

Cut and basted up in fabric for first and only fitting

The finished product- unfortunately these didn't make it onstage- cut by the choreographer before they were shipped! Oy!

I was thinking about how interesting and informative it is to do multiples of the same garment.

I don't often run into situations where I am making multiples, at least not usually more than two in the case of an understudy. I also usually deal with figures that are all over the place in terms of sizing, so if I have to make a second costume for an understudy it is usually because they won't fit into the original one.

The ballet gave me the opportunity to draft the same thing in different sizes but for bodies that are very similar. It was a good test of my draft for that particular style of doublet, good practice being consistent too.

In terms of the sewing, it was also interesting to do 6 of the same thing. We naturally gravitated towards each taking on all of one task, which made the work progress much more quickly.

I had help with the cutting- Lela pitched in to cut all the pieced skirts and cuffs- I figured out the sizing of the triangles and wedges for each size of skirt, and made patterns on cardstock with seam allowance included so they could be pieced without having to mark anything. There were about 180 pieces to be cut for the skirts and another 150 or so for the cuffs, so we made a good team once we had it figured out.

Denise figured out a way to secure the tassels from falling apart- and that is such an important thing to do for the dancers safety! then she hand sewed all 288 of them to the sleeves, in the grid pattern that I worked out and Susy marked.

Silvia made most of the body alterations, all the collars and applied them as well as all the underplackets. Susy made all the pieced sleeve cuffs and applied them to the sleeves.

After all the patternmaking was finished, I sewed all the belts for Lela to apply, and the sleeve detail bands for Susy to apply and sewed hooks and snaps onto the fronts.

It went surprisingly quickly and thankfully Susy and Denise sewed all the sleeves in (that is one of my least favourite jobs, I confess). We were just like a well oiled machine, we worked really hard to get these done for the deadline, as they had added two more to the four that we were originally making.

Anyway, we were very pleased with them, we enjoyed making them and the ballet my use them somewhere, sometime in the future.

I am off on a teaching gig for the next two weeks, so posting may be sparse, but teaching always brings up new and interesting topics to think about.

ballet videos

Off to the big city yesterday to attend the dress rehearsal for the ballet.

We had a great dinner with colleagues at Jules Bistro which accomodated a growing reservation list of the wardobe department with good grace. Not everyone came but there were still 25 of us at dinner, apologies to the other restaurant patrons because we were loud!

It was great to see a ballet again!

I am always amazed at the range of movement and physicality that these dancers have and the way they make those movements seem so natural and easy on stage.

The thrust stage that I am used to seeing performance on is so intimate and close compared to the proscenium stage that this ballet is presented on. I had forgotten what the scale of these pieces are like.

I am including a link here to a set of promotional videos about the process of this ballet, from set building to sword fighting to the ballet's costume shop.

back from the brink

Whew!

That was an intense few weeks. Our deadline was November 7th for 10 doublets. The ballet company was away on tour until October 12, so I cut right into fabric to get ready for fittings.

I did one set of fittings on October 14th and another set on the 18th. 15 minute fittings was what was scheduled!! They worked out fairly well, Took photos and notes and luckily the designer was happy with what I had cut.

Then.....

on the 25th of October, there was a complete change of casting! I had to remark what I could and hope the almost finished costumes would be able to be refit and altered by the ballet staff for the new dancers.

Then 2 costumes were added so there would be something to fit the bigger guys in the other group.

On Nov 1st we were told they were cut and those wouldn't be needed. On Nov 3 there was speculation that they were back in.

We finished at 6 pm on the 5th.

We were vibrating from working so hard. (Well it also could have been the wine we had in the afternoon).

Oh I forgot, the boiler in the building broke down, then the back-up boiler broke as well, so we had no heat. Luckily it wasn't too cold overnight, but we were sewing with our coats on and space heaters at our feet as it was only about 13 degrees in the studio.

Anyway, I have no idea if all of the costumes now are in or out. Only the choreographer knows for sure.

After the opening, I'll show you a few pictures of what we were up to.

Right now I am still recovering. I ventured back into the studio to draft my next job today. I didn't get too far, but it was a start.

ballet

Just popping by to let you know I am still working on those ballet costumes!

Just to prove it, here's a nice gusset in a ballet sleeve. It is basically the same concept as my regular grown on gusset for a two piece sleeve, just with more range of motion. I had a great talk with my colleague Evan before I started this project as he has oodles of experience cutting for ballet. I took his advice to heart and I have been very happy with the results. Thanks Evan!

In case you were wondering, the under sleeve gusset is basically as high as the top of the sleeve head

Now we just have to get the two extra costumes done that were added and soon they will be ready to be shipped.

I'll be back soon.