In-Depth Post #2

Over the past couple of weeks, I have met with my mentor a few times and so far it’s been going pretty well! I’ve had 4 costume meetings but only 3 were with my mentor. Every Tuesday and Thursday the costume people meet up and sew for the duration of the musical rehearsals that go on at the same time but I only go Tuesdays. There are 5 or 6 girls that work on costumes including my mentor and so far they have all been super nice and willing to help me learn the skill. During the first three meetings I didn’t do much work with the costume creating but mostly just helped sort costumes and clean up the costumes room since Charlotte wanted to wait until after semester break to start any new projects.

This past meeting was the first time I got to start making some costumes. At the start of the meeting Charlotte explained how to take measurements and record them all. After that, she explained how to translate measurements into a pattern size. After we figured out the sizes of all the dresses we needed to make she got me to iron out the pattern since it had gotten crumpled. Then the 5 of us took the very long piece of silky material we were using and we started to pin and cut the pattern pieces. We had to make 9 flowy white dresses for the greek chorus ensemble. All of us were chalking, pinning and cutting this one large piece of fabric at once and since the material was very silky it was very slippery on the floor. This made it nearly impossible to cut the pattern pieces out straight and the slightest movement of the fabric caused me to cut a jagged line. This fabric was very unforgiving with fraying. The sewing seems like it will be pretty straight forward we just have to get it all cut out properly. We only got 5 or 6 pieces of the pattern cut out so we still have a long time left for cutting. There are 5 different pieces to one dress and some dresses require 2 of one piece. We need to cut out 27 copies of one piece for the dresses so needless to say we will be cutting for at least a couple meetings.

My mentor Charlotte gained her experience starting in the same place as I did as an in-depth project so it’s cool learning from someone who started in the same place as you. As for progress, I’m learning a lot of the skills I wanted to get through in just a few meetings. I knew the basic of chalking, pinning and cutting patterns but I needed a quick refresher. I have also started to learn how to take measurements and use them to assign a pattern size. I think so far I’m doing really well and picking up the skills quite fast.

Until next time!

-Hailey