Dress rehearsal tomorrow, so this weekend is spent backstage in the dressing room, with many last minute, textile-related tasks.
Ironing the wings' curtains
Making two throne cushions
Checking the tadpole costumes
Making a golden cape
Checking that all 48 costumes are ready
and not collapsing , like the producer!
She’s OK really, just trying to use body weight to stick down a prop tree!
When I volunteered to assist with making costumes for the local pantomime, I thought I would just need my usual sewing kit. For the first costume, that was the case, dress for the female, youth lead,
However, when the next one was for the king of the rats, I needed to use tools less commonly associated with sewing.
Thank you to Youtube for tips on cutting and sewing long-haired fake fur.
Shirt number 2 for son number 2 is completed. As this was a rush job to give to him when he was home for a weekend, there are no more photos of construction, only the final item.
There are still some fitting issues in the armpit, although this yoke fits him much better. The sleeves look oddly full in this photo, but they really are not.
The kilt was for our annual Burns Supper, so much fun.
The sun was out this morning, but disappeared this afternoon, so I stayed in and attempted to expand the selection of blues in my stash - the dyes came out.
I'm trying a combination of methods here - low-water immersion and microwave dyeing to get six different shades and to see what the different results are with each method.
Results later.
A very elderly ( 101) resident in our road died recently, and her family are clearing her house. She had this Frister and Rossman machine, which I think dates from the early sixties. It looks in very good condition, but had no plug , so could not test if it is working. I'll offer this to our quilt group and then on Freecycle if no-one wants it.
Continuing explorations and sampling, I played around a bit this week with putting colour on cloth using watercolour pencils and Inktense pencils. I'm still undecided about the Inktense, as the colours are so bright - and I usually like bright.
As you can see, I am not a tidy worker. Initial trials were with freezer paper stencils with water-colour pencils and ink pads.
This gave quite accurate and pleasant results.
The on to using Inktense on some of the quilted samples from the Philippa Naylor course, following the instructions here. I experimented with water only, water and textile medium, and textile medium on its own. Water causes a lot of colour bleeding, could be good in some contexts, and the most refined results came form a mixture of water and textile medium - petals 1-6 in the flower on top right.
I needed some stitch work after that, working at my mobile sewing station.
Some postcards appeared for a swap next week. The metallic threads on these proved very temperamental but isn't that fabric appropriate for this week?.
I have forced myself to get down to more drawing, I'm Ok with these results.
I've called this, " Will I keep them?" as I am still undecided about these shoes. They are Clarks, and have actual Linton tweed in them, so I would be supporting two aspects of the British economy by keeping them.
