Beauty And The Beast Costumes

So as per usual I didn't take photos of all my costumes made for the production of Beauty and the Beast at Lincoln Drill Hall, or of the ones made for the production of Peter Pan that was over in Skegness and Retford. I am usually just sick of them by the time I have finished, and things never look quite as good on a hanger as they do on a person, and I certainly don't fit into them haha!

As luck would have it I managed to get hold of some of the professionally taken photos from the dress rehearsal.

Beauty and Percy Peapod

So I made Beauty's blue pinafore dress which was made to look like the existing villager girls' costumes but in the iconic blue colour. I made the yellow overalls, two of the dark green shirt, and appliqued the hat for Percy. The shirt pattern was a men's Simplicity pattern but the rest of the costumes I made from my own patterns, or by taking measurements from the existing costumes. (Beauty's, a few of the Peter Pan costumes were copies to make up the correct amount of costumes needed for the set.)

I can't SIA where I'm going!

The SIA inspired costume, which I dubbed the "Moo moo Muu muu" was a swing dress shape, with wide sleeves, self drafted. The sleeve hems and the dress hem had plastic boning in to exaggerate the shape. The bow on the wig wasn't properly attached in these pictures, but in the proper performances it stood upright completely.

Be Our Guest

Other than Beauty's dress, I made the dress for Dame Dusty Doorknockers, we dubbed it the "Liquorice dress". It is from a basic princess seamed block I have made up specifically for lovely James (Dusty), and the consists of a striped yoke (front and back) with an overlaid shaped ruffle hanging over the bust. The main body of the dress is in the lilac polka dot with sleeves and ruffle in pink. The pattern piece for the sleeves is huge! You really do have to gather  down a lot of fabric to get that exaggerated puff sleeve (which you can't really see in the action shot). The apron has a functional pocket and ties in a delightfully large bow in the back.
I am incredibly pleased with the way this dress came out, it fit perfectly, looks exactly how it was imagined to, and really pops on stage.

You can't kill a beast without a cape!

Pictures are Gustave and a villager wearing capes, I made a lot of capes for this production! Gustave's is a longer cape pleated onto a collar, Luke's cape is basically a hi-low hem 3/4 circle with a drafted hood. I made 4 of the hooded capes, and two children's ones that were the 3/4 circle without the hood. All of them were fully lined in a "gunmetal" grey colour, the ties were a mixture of ribbons and twill tape. They would have all been twill tape but I forgot I had it when I made the first few!

Marcel

So very unexpectedly I made the waistcoat and trousers for the character of Marcel due to the original costume provided turning out to be much too small and beyond the scope of alteration. I adapted a Simplicity pirate costume because I was very time limited and did not want to mess around drafting crotch curves and taking a billion measurements. The actor was larger than the patterns went up to but since I used them only as a rough base it wasn't hard to increase the measurements. The waistcoat is lined and I did it in a bit of an arse about face way because I was rushing and didn't sit down and think it through first. The trousers are cuffed with elastic, and are purposefully baggy as requested because of "trouser acting" apparently....I just did as I was told!

Ruddy mysterious in these parts!

And here we have Marcel again sporting his cape. It was made in the same fashion as Gustave's and is white because it was involved in a blackout sequence with lights to make it glow. The hat was trimmed with white twill tape for the same reason.

So as far as original costumes are concerned, this was pretty much the lot for Beauty and the Beast, although one of my own dresses was used for Dame Dusty (a strawberry print dress I had made for Tea and Tents festival in 2014, I was going to give it to the charity shop but offered it to JMP as it had more of a costumey feel to it). I also did the usual alterations, adjustments, re-jigging, and repairs but no pictures bar a couple of rubbish instagram shots.

It is a bit weird thinking about the fact that thousands of people have seen my costumes on stage, yet this is not a career I have worked or studied for, it is just my hobby! I guess it is a nice counter to my own garment sewing of black wardrobe staples!

Disclaimer: None of these photos belong to me, they are just being used to document my costume work to the 3 people who look at the blog ;)

Panto Prep

I had meant to post up the second part of my embroidered Ginger Jeans next but I haven't got round to any photos yet.

So one of the reasons I was not blogging over the winter is because I was busy beavering away with preparations for a panto which really eats away at your time *insert oh no it doesn't joke here*.
One of things I love most about being involved with a theatre company is the fact it throws you curve ball after curve ball and no request is ever too weird!
Do excuse the terrible photos, many of which were just taken off my instagram feed.

There was copious amounts of blinging to do, costumes to make significantly bigger, collars to make, and a million miles of ruffles to be made and added to a flat looking costume.

Mop caps and bonnets were two of the completely new to me tasks! Needless to say I had to work it out on the fly, but the results were fine.

Bloomers were made based off of a pj bottom pattern, I made them looser than intended and elasticated the leg holes.

One of the more unusual tasks was to take a comically large jacket (think Lurch from the Addams Family) and make it into a regular sized jacket and a matching tie. This is one of two ties I made for that character, the other was in a fetching blue sequin fabric.

This is a picture of it in action! I chose to keep the collar of the original jacket and work the smaller one around that. Guesstimating the sleeve cap was a bit nervewracking, I didn't have enough fabric to re do them if it went tits up, so I was relieved when it went according to plan!

Making two copies (copy shown above) of a dressy type of shirt was probably the second most nerve-wracking thing! I literally just had to spread out the fabric on the floor, draw round each piece of the existing shirt as best I could whilst it shifted everywhere, and hope for the best! Collars, facings, elasticated cuffs....not perfect results, but perfect enough for panto!

I sadly don't have pictures of everything I made, but other bits off the top of my head are:

* 28 tabard style knight costumes edged in handmade gold lame bias binding (not my idea of fun!)
* sashes and cummerbunds galore
* cropped trousers
* harem style trousers
* tutus
* sparkle tanks
* ballet costume style bodices
* ruffled poncho

I'm sure there was more, but I started with it in October so my memory isn't exactly fresh!

Stay tuned for the next part of my panto recap!