Hectic times!

With the show opening two weeks today, it was all go. With our makers all occupied with principal costumes, the fairy dancers cannot be allowed to be left behind with the pre-dress parade approaching so myself, Grace, Jess Milham our buyer and helper Elly Harris spent the morning working on tacking the textural detailing to the body suits. This is a long task, as each panel of the textural work must be placed, pinned, and then tacked so that it will be firmly attached while still being able to stretch to allow the actors to put the costumes. I was working on the body suit that Jess began earlier this week as today she was buying for us and we would rather have as many hands working as possible and get things done sooner then have a mad rush at the end.

This will undoubtably happen anyway - such is the way of the industry - but this way there will be LESS to do when that time comes!

 

Pre-tacking (started by Jess Milham)

Post-tacking (tacking by myself)

Tacking in progress

The front with the top pannels completely tacked on.

At one we all moved to the Studio Theatre for a production meeting, the second to last before we open. There was very little to discuss on costume as I spoke to Ken yesterday about the new costume requirements, the main one being the pottential change of Hippolyta's dress. There are concerns that it may not read as regal enough, so myself and Grace have decided that we will be hunting for pottential alternatives over the weekend, though if we are unable to find anything and it passes inspection at the pre-dress parade we will hold with the current dress with the pottential for 'dressing it up'. The only new thing was for myself and make-up to tell the rest of the production team who were not there about the wig meeting and fitting yesterday. The production is going very smoothly so far after the problems earier in its inception and I hope it will remain this calm for a while to come!

 

After that I went to the dye room to make up the paint that we will be working into the fairies with to create the graduated effect of the texture growing out of the suits as on the designs. This meant mixing and watering down set paint as after discussion with my makers it seems that this is the best thing to use when painting into lycra, as dye will not take when painted on.

The set paint that we have is Roscopaint.

I made up the three main base colours for the graduating effect - a red tone, a brown tone and a green tone. These will all need to be used in a watered down form to build up layers in order to create the graduated effect needed.

 

Green Tone

Roscopaint Burnt Sienna

Roscopaint Chrome Yellow

Roscopaint Emerald Green

 

Red Tone

Roscopaint Burnt Sienna

Roscopaint Chrome Yellow

Roscopaint Burnt Umber

Roscopaint Ironred

 

Brown Tone

Roscopaint Burnt Umber

Roscopaint Burnt Sienna

Roscopaint Chrome Yellow

 

We will be begginging to paint into the body suits on Monday, in the hopes of getting two of the fairy dancer costumes completed in time for the pre-dress parade next Wednesday.

Over the weekend I will be sewing together Helena's headress, now that our buyer Jess has brought us the ribbon I will be sewing the ribbon in half to make it half the width and then sewing on the flowers made by our maker Helena. This is a small job but one of many so we are trying to get them done when we can.