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Cup Cake Costumes

CUP CAKE COSTUME

Cup Cake Costume

In June 2020I started these costumes, the first ones for the production. I created 5 cup cake costumes for Priscilla Queen of the Desert. There is a scene which 5 dancing cupcakes and other green costumes feature.
For these costumes I used a commercially available kids costume as the basis of my design but changed the patty pan so it was 3D.

I used mint green lame and brown taffeta from DK Fabrics in South Australia, tinsel mesh, glitter tulle, green net and trace'n'toile from Spotlight for construction. 


Finished Costume

Priscilla Queen of the Desert Amateur theatre production September 2021. 
Murray Bridge Players and Singers





Photo by Jason McCullough 
Concept drawing done on Pret-a-template

The director of this production had bought a child's cupcake costume as a sample of what was needed. The original costumes used on the professional production were not feasible for me to make so I needed something easier to sew. I used the Childs costume as a basis for my design 


 Childs costume



Test run Adult size


Sample test run of the patty pan design

Patty Pan


The patty pan is a concertina sandwich of lame and Trace'n'Toile interfacing. Trace'n'Toile is a non woven fabric designed for pattern drafting and made by McCalls. It is available at Spotlight in Australia. 
I cut 4 metres of T'n'T 50cm wide. I chose this width because it was half the width of the lame so I would conserve fabric.
It took 4 metres of lamé for each cupcake and this way I would need 12 metres rather than 20m. Unfortunately the T'n'T was only 90cm wide so I had to use 20m of that. 

I used a cutting mat and quilters ruler to draw lines spaced 2" apart for the full length of 4 metres. I safety pinned the T'n'T to 4m of lamè so it was flat and smooth. I used a matching thread and sewed over every line to transfer the markings to the right side of the lamè.


Marking the T&T

To create the concertina effect I had to fold the fabric along the straight stitching then sew a line of stitching 3mm from the edge of the folded fabric. I did this on the wrong side for every other line, then I flipped the fabric to the right side and sewed the remaining lines. This created alternating pleats in the fabric which made it concertina. 
A total of 800 lines of stitching for 5 cupcakes or 4 km of sewing!






pleats sewn to wrong side only 


looking at the fabric from the right side



Pleats sewn to both sides of fabric



This is 4 metres of fabric squashed together.


To make a patty pan I had to secure the position of each pleat evenly spaced apart and sew it to a base. I used a chocolate colour taffeta strip at the top of the pan. This was meant to look like the top of a chocolate cupcake. 
I also sewed the bottom of the pan to a strip of the green lamé to hold the bottom circle in place.  





the bottom edge of the patty pan

The resulting size of the patty pan had a circumference of 200cm at the top. I tried on the patty pan and decided that the bottom circle however was too small. I spaced out the distance between where the pleats were sewn to the lame strip to allow for more range of motion for the actors to walk. 

The patty pan would stand up by its self but I added a strip of metal corset boning to the top to maintain the shape of the top circle. I had sewn a casing for this purpose. 




First attempt was too small






Second and final version 

FROSTING

For the frosting I used the T&T as a base with gathered layers of tinsel mesh and green tulle.
The tinsel mesh is a horrible fabric to sew with as it is made of thin strips of metal woven through a stretch base fabric. It catches on everything! It's spectacular to look at which is why I chose it. 




I cut strips of the tinsel mesh and stitched it to the T&T. I did this because the tinsel mesh is stretch and I need to stabilise it first. 
I cut long stripes of the net and tulle and gathered them on both edges. The costumes are a combination of two kinds of tulle as I ran out of one and couldn't get more. 



Stitching the gathered tulle onto the tinsel mesh base

Now I had a lot of gathered frosting I sewed the strips together to make a bodice. The bodice was sewn to the patty pan. To shape the cup cake the first row of frosting was sewn to the patty pan. I sewed some small pleats along the top edge of this first row to reduce its circumference. the next row was added and I repeated the process with even more pleats. The neckline and back opening were cut from the top row and I free cut the armholes. 

The sprinkles were cut from a bonded lurex fabric that wouldn't fray and sewn on by Heather Richards from the costume team. 



Pleats in the frosting 




Neckline opening

The tinsel mesh was quite scratchy on the skin so I bound the neckline with a layer of the net over the mesh.


Finished Cup Cake












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