May Day 2015--Queen's Dress

I love building dream gowns and this was one of those kinds of dresses.  Edyn came to me with a basic idea of what she wanted: something that looked like Queen Emma with dramatic hemlines and wide necklines with lots of embellishment. Edyn's Kumu wanted the dress to be form fitting so her dance would have more expression and would be emphasized. Edyn's mom wanted drama and rich colors.

Here are some of the inspiration images:

And here are some of the original design sketches:

And some of the first fabric options:

But this is what we finally came up with, the final design sketch:

The final fabric choices.  Gold for the body and Raspberry, Vanilla and Olive accents for the floral embellishments:

And the dress:


Back view but she is holding her train up.  The train is 8 ft long and is removeable so she can dance without it.

In action:

After the show:

Edyn on the right and me on the left

May Day 2015--Ladies in Waiting

My daughter watches me make dresses year round for other people and I rarely have an opportunity to make one for her. When she made May Day Court this spring the thing foremost on her mind was the dress that I would make for her.

My daughter (left) and her friend.

My daughter and the other representatives for Molokai.

 I made the satin dresses for the Island Ladies in waiting with the exception of the yellow and red dresses.

Laie Elementary Fall Break Play 2014: Night at the PCC

I finally, FINALLY am getting around to posting the pictures of the elementary school fall break play Night at the PCC. THEA 141 students made a great contribution to this play, designing costumes, making patterns for some of the costumes and constructing others. Great job team! My students put in about 30 hours of work between the 5 of them. I put in about 12 hours of prep and planning and then 10 more hours during play week. I had numerous parents put in hours there at the school and a few who took projects home to work on. I am so grateful for all their help. They really made things special. We ended up spending $107 to costume 115 kids. Enjoy the pics!

Tiki warriors

Rapanui heads. Cardboard helmets designed by Christina Smith and Mandy Veech.

Food dancing to "Be Our Guest". Pineapple, Banana, roasted pig, poi, and coconut drink. Inspiration for these costumes found by Taimi Kennerly, Eseta Clanton, Christina Smith, Nhil Banda, and Mandy Veech.

Oyster Shells dancing and singing to "Pearly Shells".

Security Guards dancing to "Happy"

Koi fish. hat inspiration from THEA 141 class.

Bobblehead hula girls dancing to Price Tag.

May Day Queen 2014

My sewing project this week was this beautiful dress for May Day Queen Jordyn Tuliloa, a near replica of the dress worn by the actress portraying Princess Kaiulani in the movie of the same name.

Queen Jordyn as she walks onto stage

Back view after being crowned and receiving her lei's

 The skirt was changed to mermaid style to accentuate her hula and fabric was changed for the same reason. The dress was made of Ivory taffeta and gold lame contrast and lace trim. It is fully lined with a built in corset and petticoat and an invisible zipper down the back. The double poofed, off-shoulder sleeves are supported with a net interior lining. The large rosette at the front and 3 mini rosettes at the back are hand made. The front rosette is made from one 45" long bias strip. All rosettes have silver beads at the center.

Back view of dress in movie

A little over a month ago Jordyn's mom brought me these two pictures, clips from the movie, and asked if I could replicate it. I looked for a pattern that was similar but found nothing so I set out to make it from scratch. The entire pattern was hand drafted and fit to Jordyn. Due to other engagements I was unable to do the bulk of the work until the week before May Day. I was grateful that the Tuliloa's were understanding of my schedule restrictions and trusted me when I said I could get it done.

Front view of dress in movie

When all was said and done I spent over 50 hours on the dress. This includes the time I spent researching, shopping for fabric and notions, making patterns and mock ups, constructing the dress, conducting fittings and hand finishing the whole thing.

I loved working on this challenging project and was so pleased that it was received with rave reviews by her parents, extended family and community.

I love my job!

More Muu'muu

These two loved their white Muu'muu so much that they came back for more. 

Enjoyed working with these beauties!

Costumes: Laie Elementary Fall Play 2013 "Once Upon a Crime"

 The past couple years I have been heading up the costume crew for the Laie Elementary School Fall Play. This play is put together in the course of ONE week with close to one hundred elementary school students. My job is to get each of those kids in a costume for no more than $100. That's total! So for less than $1 per costume we do a lot of pulling from kids closets, borrowing from the community, reusing from years past and frantically building only what we absolutely must. Here is a small sampling of some of the costumes from this year's play.

The woodsmen. Their costumes were pulled completely from their own closets and then they built their props out of cardboard.

Our 1980's era Material Girls/Dancing Princesses used flower tutu's from last year's production, and bright clothes from home. We had to make a few new skirts and headpieces/wristbands.

Red Riding Hoods Cape, Snow White's outfit, and Hansel's costume were all made brand new for this production. Was so glad we found a large muu'muu for the Big Bad Wolf.

Our detectives were so excited to get these fancy felt moustaches to go with their all black from home outfits.

How do you turn a kid into a pig for cheap? Dress him in Khaki and pink and give him some ears and a snout. So grateful to the moms who put this gear together.

More princesses. This time with their favorite fancy dress from home and a few beautiful flowers on their heads.

My costume crew had a fun time putting together these fun masks for our wolves. I found the templates online and they whipped them up in no time.

The Fall Play is so much fun for the kids and parents and community to participate in every year. It is always a whirlwind in a week to get it together but so worth the efforts. I am so grateful for all the volunteers who come in and help with the production, coordination, and organization of this project.

Children's Hawaiian Dresses

These lovely little ladies had a special part in their ward's Primary program this year. To honor them their mom and dad ordered them custom dresses to match. They looked lovely and I have heard through the grapevine that their performance was flawless. It was such a pleasure working with these talented and adorable girls.

Freshening Up Old Jeans

Kids grow so fast and clothes are so expensive. That's why I try to make things last as long as possible. I repair. I rework. I resize. Today I was doing a little of each with some old pairs of jeans.

These jeans still fit around the waist but had become too short. She wanted to turn them into capris. To give the new hem a little pizzaz I triple stitched the hem with three different colors of thread giving it an ombre effect.

Another set of new shorts made from last year's holey school jeans. The back pair are double stitched with two colors of thread to match the topstitching around her pockets. The front pair have a fun cross-stitch look to them.

These jeans had a small stain on the backside. For fun we decided to applique this heart over the top. Looks so much better.

Another appliqued heart on a different pair of jeans this time covering up a tear over the pocket.

Laie May Day Costumes

Last year's May Day I worked on the 6th grade costumes. This year I worked on the 2nd and 4th grades.

 For the 2nd grade classes I made the patterns for the circle skirts. The pattern was the easy part. The difficult part was computing how many yards of red material would be needed for the ruffles. There is a lot of fabric hanging from those cute little hips!

The 4th grade classes combined to represent Scotland. Every student needed a kilt. For some strange reason plaid flannel is very difficult to find on the island so the choreographer ordered the plaid flannel a month or so ahead of time from JoAnn fabric online. A great idea but . . . not quite enough had been ordered. This put my patternmaking skills to the test. I had to create three different style kilts out of three different colored plaid and I was limited to the yardage that had been ordered.

Well, I love a challenge. I was able to create three very different styles (can't tell so much in this picture) that were very easy to make and we had just enough fabric to go around. Literally I think there was no more than 2 yards left over. WOW. A lot of credit goes out to those moms who did so much sewing and so carefully followed my cutting instructions.

Tear Repairs

Jenny has three active boys and a penchant for keeping things looking good. Needless to say she is one of my best customers. I stitch up holes in seams, rips in pockets and snags in the body of the garments. Here is what she brought me this week all from her son Austin's wardrobe. 

Top pair: crotch seam repair. Middle pair: tear through the bottom of a patch pocket. Bottom pair: a hole in the front of the leg.

 Finished results

Some simple darning with a stabilizer on the backside of the fabric. Did it in a slightly contrasting thread to give it that distressed look the kids like so much.

Surprisingly the original top-stitching thread was still intact through the seam. I just stitched the seam back together and threw in some reinforcing stitches across the seam to keep it from tearing out again. Unfortunately not super pretty but it is for a little boy and it is in the bottom of the crotch seam.

Like the first repair this was done in a contrasting thread to give it a distressed look. Stabilizer was stitched into the backside to make sure this well used pocket stays hole free in the future.

Simple repairs like these are just $5 each and I can usually get them repaired and back to you by the next day.