Into The Woods
2016 Murray Bridge Players & Singers Production
In 2016 I joined the Murray Bridge Players and Singers as part of the costume team. This was my very first time making costumes for amateur musical theatre. Unlike making ready to wear cloths costumes often require you to think outside the box in terms of construction and closures. Actors sometimes have very little time to change and using closures in places you wouldn’t normally to facilitate this is necessary.
I was given the ugly step sisters and the step mother to costume. The director wanted pantaloons, a white corset, white chemise, decorative over corset and a covered hoop skirt.
Each character would have their own colour scheme.
Step mother played by Joanne Ahrens was black and gold, Lucinda played by Rebecca Netherway was pink and Florinda played by Lauren Gibbs was purple.
CHEMISE
For the chemise I used Simplicity pattern 9966 with very short sleeves. I made them from a white georgette with broderie anglaise lace trim.
CORSET
For both the under and outer corset I used Simplicity 5006. I drafted and did several toile fittings on each actor to get a good fit.
The white corsets are made from a recycled delustered satin wedding gown, I used the outer and lining fabric from the wedding dress. The corset is fully boned but with plastic boning not steel.
The corsets lace up at the back and the actor wore them for the whole production, adding layers over the top when a costume change was needed.
OUTER CORSET
Each actors had a decorated outer corset to wear for more formal scenes. I used the same pattern and made these a little bit bigger to fit over the base corset.
I used satin with lace overlay for decoration.
For the pink and purple corsets I was able to get the same lace fabric in both colours. For the black corset I appliquéd a gold rose brocade fabric on top.
If you would like to read how the lace was applied to these corsets pleases refer to the Galinda part 2 blog for details.
STEP MOTHERS CORSET
The step mother had a black corset with gold roses appliquéd and embroider on it.
I cut out the roses from a black and gold brocade fabric and appliqued them onto the base sating. Unfortunately the embroidery caused the black satin to shrink and it needed refitting.
Detail of the bobbin work freehand machine embroidery.
The yellow gold embroidery is done by hand winding a thick thread onto the bobbin. The work is sewn with the right side facing down. I appliqué around the rose motifs onto the black satin first so I could see where the embroidery would go. This is sort of like doing a tracing of the design and using it as a guide for the gold stitching.
To finish the corset I bound the edges with a different satin which gave the bust
curve definition.
PANTALOONS
The pantaloons where poplin fabric made using a basic elastic waist pattern. Elastic and lace was added to the cuffs.
HOOPED SKIRT
The hooped skirts were part of the characters evening wear, rather than the hoop skirt being the support structure for a large cumbersome skirt the director just wanted the hoops to be the skirt.
I Made them from metal which the company supplied to me and covered each tier in the satin fabric to match each characters colour scheme. The
Photo by Jay Birdy
Photo by Jay Birdy
The hoop skirts do up with Velcro which is hidden under the over corset.
OTHER COSTUMES
In addition to the evils I also made red riding hoods red cloak and wolf skin jacket.
Red Riding Hood played by Gabrielle King
Photo by Jay Birdy
Photo by Jay Birdy
Red Riding Hoods red cloak was upcycled from two size 6 vintage velvet skirts and a red velvet curtain. The budget was tight so I had to use some very small skirts that were not useful as skirts anymore. They were A-line and I unpicked them at the centre back seam, removed the zippers and used one for the front and one for the back of the cloak. I added the fabric from a red curtain as a wide border to get more length and blend the colours together.