(I'm splitting this up into two parts: the first focusing on costumes, the second, focusing on the day of the show)
The title of this diary comes from the phrase that I found myself muttering over and over and over again at tech to people I had just passed out costumes to everyone only to find out that the fit wasn't well...workable. I think I need a t-shirt for this next show with that on it; it might save my vocal cords!
My February Repo journey began a long time ago. Wayyyyyy back in December when I got a text from Ashley asking if I would be willing to make the Blame Not My Cheeks dress. That behemoth of blue satin? I mean, I could sew (amaturely) , sure, but...really? Well, why the hell not, I'll give it a shot! I'll count on my $100 sewing machine and my OCD to figure something out! Besides, I'll be able to focus solely on that and the gentern dresses and I have, what? 2 months? Pshh, it'll be great! And so I started about a month of researching patterns, discovering that NO ONE made panniers anymore (panniers are the schmancy term for those big hips) and that I'd have to look at old pictures of french clothes from the 18th century to figure out a pattern! Finally, after 2 rough drafts (one made of bamboo...long story) , I had finally made hips I was happy with. And, I had another month to finish the actual dress! Win!
And here's when it all came crashing down.
About now is when I found out that a ton of costumes from the last show needed to be remade/ refitted/repo-ed/refixed. My reaction? See the title.
Jessalyn came over about once a week to help me with sewing. I taught her how to use her own sewing machine so that she could work on stuff at home, which was great! As the show crept closer, I was in pretty good shape except for one thing: The Sanitarium Square bubblegum dress from hell!
While this dress looks like a mu mu with little poofs on the bottom, as I started to make it and sketch it out, I realized that there was WAY more to this dress than meets the eye! For starters, the pattern on the dress was really hard to find in a store! Trevor drove me from store to store looking for this pattern (thanks, babe!) until we finally found something that was workable. About 2 weeks before the show, the realization set in that we needed more baubles on the bottom of the dress. I enlisted the help of some of the crafty cast members (THANK YOU Justin, Elisabeth, Coralee, Trevor, Ashley...umm...I know there are more of you!) and started to crochet my ass off. But due to logistics, I wouldn't have all the flowers from the cast members until tech! Ack!
Tech came and while we were waiting around for Ashley and Art to get out of the mud (no, really...I'm glad you guys are safe but damn! what a story!) I enlisted the help of people for sewing tasks. Coralee and I started to sew on the flowers to a strip of white felt and Kitty sewed on a crapload of snaps to various costumes. As it turns out, I'm a crappy handsewer. I mean, just terrible! So when I got home to finish things up, my side of the dress where I sewed the flowers on looked like crap while Coralee's side....well, kicked ass and was exactly what I wanted it to look like! I decided to take a gamble...hoping that a.) Coralee would be there tomorrow to finish it up and make it look good and b.) she would be willing to do so! I mean, worst comes to worse, I could do it, my day would be a little more frantic and we'd still get SOMETHING on stage, right? So I focused my energy on fixing the fit of most of my other costumes and went to sleep around 5am.
To be continued...
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