Blubluschmuh!

Nothing like working through the weekend!  I honestly cannot remember when I had a day off.  I do it to myself so I guess I can't really complain.  I know you're all missing what's been going on around here so here's the skinny on the past few days...


First, there was a photo shoot for Hairspray we needed to get costumes together for.  That meant making Edna a special bra... Here's Robin working on it...

I bought the biggest bra I could find, one that is made in the torpedo fashion.  We then took Muslin and covered the skin side of the bra, making the cups empty.  We then filled the empty cups with lots and lots and lots (pretty much all we could stuff in them) of pillow stuffing.  It worked great!  Here's some pictures from the photo shoot...

Pretty Awesome, right!  Seriously, buy tickets NOW to see Hairspray at the MAC.  Not even kidding!  See the guy in the red shirt?  That's Joe.  He did these fantastic wigs.  See the guy in the purple shirt?  That's Kyle.  He is the amazing director.  :)  Awesome!

After getting these costumes together for the shoot,  I got Rachel ready for her dance recital.  Random and non-costume shop info here... anyhow, I was doing her hair (and she seriously has a TON of it) and when I looked down at her this is what I saw...

Um yup.  That's my kid.  And, because you're all wondering, she did FANTASTIC in her recital!!  

Now, after this eventful weekend (there was much more going on - dinner at the daughters house, church, hanging with the kids, mending at Desert Stages,  cleaning random parts of the house, etc...) it was time to get really busy on Beauty and the Beast!  So, first I cut out 2 of Belle's dresses.  Here's the fabric all cut out...

Today, with the help of my faithful crew of fellow crazy people we were able to finish the blue bodice, put together Belle's skirts and work on the Wardrobe.  Here's a peek at how we're doing...

Belle's Blue bodice.

Parts of Belle's pink library dress. Shandi pretty much hates parts of this dress because, well there was some tricky parts. And somewhere working on them came the new word Blubluschmuh.  There was lots of laughter going on at the wardrobe today. It was a good day for the sillies.  

The Wardrobe in the works. 

That's it for now folks.  I'll be back soon for more updates!  Until then, keep sewing - or glueing... or duck tape using... whichever. 

Today I can't stop yawning...

It's Wednesday.  I'm SO tired I ended up drinking almost a whole 2ltr of Mtn. Dew today.  I mixed it with a couple full sized Hershey chocolate bars and I felt much better.  Still tired, but chocolate cures everything.  Even being exhausted, we accomplished quite a bit today!  Of course, there was the prom alterations, but more fun than that I almost finished Lumiere's coat!  Check THIS out!

So here's Lumiere.  Front and back, with his pants pinned under the front of the coat.  The stripped stuff are his pants, it just doesn't look like pants.  But they are.  Seriously. :) I think if Lumiere wants to do something other than work for the Beast, he could go bull fighting.   Seriously, you have NO idea how long it took to sew all that gold crap down.  I'm glad it's done. 

While I finished this up (ok, it's not done.  I ran out of trim and need 8" more of trim to finish. Stinks, right?!?) Shandi was hard at work starting Cogsworth. 

She glued the fabric to the front and back of his body. 

And then added fabric to the front and back of the little window that will open and shut on the front of the clock body. She also worked on knickers and put lots of costumes away today, but I'm a slacker and didn't take those pictures.  After all, pictures of Shandi putting costumes away might just be way too exciting for this blog. 

After all of this, I took a minute to make a dress for Princess Amerah.  Well, not specifically for her but she hires me to make children's dresses that look like hers.  Princess Amerah wears a purple dress, but this little girl wanted a pink one.  Here's what it looked like when I was putting it together.

And here's what it looks like done.

Rachel was nice enough to hold it up so I could take a picture.  Notice how she's barely touching it?  She's anti princess and anti pink frouffie anything.  I think she didn't want to get any princess on her.  Hee hee.  

That's it for today!  Tomorrow I'm going to do a little shopping for some more supplies but I'll catch you up with all the latest on Friday.  Ciao!

Lots 'O Laundry and Tons of Fun!

Monday was spent washing/drying/putting away most of the Ragtime laundry.  Maggie was kind of sad when I took her little bed away load by load...

Funny side story... Maggie was sleeping there and Austin covered her up with some of the laundry.  Then he asked the kids where she was.  They didn't know, so they called her and SURPRISE! She popped out of the pile of laundry.  It was pretty funny. 

While loads were doing their thing in the machines, I had some helpers taking care of things on Monday!

Shandi changed our Papa's buttons, and Linda worked on the villagers knickers.  Ooh!  Exciting stuff, right!  Here's Papa's coat now that we changed the buttons.

We had a great time sewing like crazy!  In addition to the show stuff, I was able to finish a couple prom dress alterations. Now THAT's excitement.  Or not... I was also able to take care of some alterations for some kids renting costumes for their high school production of Cinderella.  See, my no is broken - so the work load is varied and nuts! But still fun.

Monday I was able to start Lumiere's coat.  I was pretty excited to get started on it.  Seriously excited!  I had the velvet cut out, and I self lined it with some stiffer black fabric so it would hold it's shape.  Then I put some of it together and started the embellishment.

Below is the fabric I cut the gold embellishment out of to make what I wanted for Lumiere. I cut out the scrolls from this mesh, and reshaped them onto the coat. 

 Below is the front of the coat.  It's the left side, you can see the collar and then the front of the coat.

I pinned the embellishment where I wanted it and then sewed it down. 

The cutting out and sewing down took FOREVER.  My hand was cramping from cutting and my back hurts from sewing.  Poor me, I know.  

Tuesday (today) I finished up washing/drying the laundry!  Yay! My living room is almost free of costumes - though the couch with the beauty and the beast stuff is still covered with the same stuff.  By tomorrow I'm hoping to have all of Ragtime put away (minus the dry cleaning I still have to pick up).  Robin came and helped finish up some knickers and put things away.  I was able to take care of a couple more prom alterations (ugh.) and built Pocahontas for Mrs. Potts Tea Party - a local princess party place.  Here's a picture of it:

I did not pick the fabrics - just built the costume. 

Back on track with B&B I started working on Lumiere's coat again.  More cutting out... lots more cutting out and now, as of tonight, I have most of the front and the sleeves done.  

I still have to embellish the back and the tails (not shown) and then attach the tails and sleeves (they're pinned on here) and trim around the edges like I did on the cuffs.  The pictures don't do it justice, it is really looking beautiful!  Right now, without the tails, It looks kinda like a bull fighter.  Haa ha. 

Well, I'm tired and need to rest up before another full day of sewing.  I know it doesn't look like much but geesh!  This took hours. :/ 

Sunday, the day of rest...

 Today I was thrilled to wake up and see that my fantastic husband cut out the shapes I sketched for the Wardrobe and Cogsworth!  This is what was in the living room when I got up...

Fancy, right!  This is the shape of the wardrobe, with cogsworth behind it so you can't see it here... but it's there!  Yay!! 

 Next, the kids and I went to church.  After church we rushed home to grab a quick bite to eat and then took off to this place...

Where we made an emergency visit to fix this...

Yikes!  Ferocious tear in the butt!  

For this show:

Once that mending job was done, the littles and I headed back home to make dinner and take care of misc. household chores... things that go neglected during the week like actually folding the laundry, and washing the dishes.  Honestly, I wash the dishes almost every day...  laundry?  not so much... After all of this, Austin got home from work just in time for me to rush off to this place:

Ragtime was closing and I needed to strike the costumes.  (which is theatre talk for taking them all from the theatre).  The cast was great and I had tons of help loading the car.  Before I knew it the car looked like this: 

Haa haa can you see my reflection in the car?  Yah, pretty much it's making me look super fat.  So ignore that part.  

Once home, our living room soon looked like this:

This is almost half way sorted through.  The costumes are in the blue bags, and I go through them and sort the laundry.  This, by far, is the most disgusting part of my job.  At the end of a run, most of the costumes are still wet from sweat when I get them home.  Some haven't been washed at all (I don't do maintenance, and some theatres don't have a wardrobe person).  This equals super smelly laundry, and super smelly living room.  Yuck.  It was around 6:30pm that our living room looked like this.  Now it's 9:30, and one load is almost done in the dryer and load 2 is in the washing machine.  It's gonna be a long night!  

Building 2 shows at once...

Once again I find myself with back to back shows.  Shows that open one week from eachother.  I just did this - Opened Ragtime one week and How to Succeed the next.  Not so much fun, as tech weeks are super busy times.  BUT I really wanted to build both of these shows!  So what's a girl to do?  Pretty much build them!  It's not even that I think one show is super easy and the other is just so-so.  These are two HUGE productions and I've wanted to build them for some time.  Probaly not at the same time, but here we go!  Beauty and the Beast and Hairspray are on their way!!

I decided that it would be kind of fun to share the insanity that goes on behind the scenes to make shows look fantastic.  There is actually a TON of work - and not only the costumes.  Much more time goes into a performance than you'd think.  Last week was spent buying the fabrics and supplies to start the builds.  This proved successful, expensive and kind of confusing.  Going from cartoon colonial styles/fabrics to the 60's was somewhat distracting.  As I found one fabric for one show I would get on a roll and find things for that show.  Then, after gathering for one show I'd go back and shop for the next show because I couldn't focus on them both at the same time.

Now,  anyone who's been here knows that there is usually fabric and misc costumes everywhere.  I make every attempt to keep everything tidy but it is impossible.  Things are coming and going so fast I would never sleep.  I like sleep.  Thus the piles of misc odds and ends.  BUT now THIS is what my couch looks like...   This is Mrs. Potts, the Beast, the Wardrobe and Cogsworth.  The foamboard will be transformed into Cogsworth and the Wardrobe... if all goes as planned!  Ha!

This is what the stairs look like...

One returned colonial costume on top of bags of trims and fabrics.  See that red?  It will be the Dynamites dresses.  See the pink sequins at the bottom of the bag?  Tracy at the end of Hairspray.  See the polkadots - you can barely see them through the white plastic bag in the middle.  That will make matching dresses for Tracy and Edna.  Um hum.  Lots of work!  But aside from shopping, I also got a good start on building!  Here's what I've done so far...

Papa's Coat... but I'm going to change the buttons.

LeFue's coat... still needs buttons

Lumiere's pants. (Cogsworths knickers are behind them.)

This is where I sew...

See the idea board in the back?  It's funny because it's Hairspray and B&B all mixed up.  :)  

This lovely box of feathers will be Babbette...

See the pile of floral fabric?  It is actually circle skirts that will be dresses for Hairspray. 

Here's what I see when I sew.  In this case, I'm working on Lefue. 

So that's it for this week!  Tomorrow starts week 2, and much more will be built.  I'll do my best to keep you up to date on what's going on.  Oh, and along with the shows I do alterations (prom season!) and private rentals.  I am also building a wedding dress for a super cute girl!  Maybe, if I'm energetic enough I'll get Cogsworth and the Wardrobe sketched out tonight.