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Gum Nut Costume

 Gum Nut Costume

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


I started this costume in July 2020
 

Peta as the Gum Nut on roller-skates!


In the original production the Australian flowers are gum nut, wattle and banksia.
a version of the original Costume design by Charades-theatrical.com

 I decided not to make the banksia and made just the gum nut and wattle costume instead.
Imagine this costume worn with roller skates and zipping around the stage because that's how the actor wore it!


I started by cutting a lot of strips of different pink fabric. 



I sewed these into tubes and turned them through.


This was my general idea


I sewed all the tubes into a fringe


I need a skirt for my gumnut so I used this metallic knit dress.


Added a tulle underskirt


I pinned the fringe to the skirt top so I could trim the ends level


I glued a yellow pom pom to the end of every tube


This is the finished skirt fringe




Once the skirt was constructed I made a pattern for the nut and cut it out of a green grey velvet.
I padded the nut shape to bulk it out. The bottom of the nut is pleated in to create the round nut shape.



The arm holes have a padded binding




Layers of net under the sparkly skirt help bulk it out.


The back is has a velcro closure.



Headpiece





The head piece gum nut is mounted on a hard felt cap. I covered the cap in the sparkly fabric from the skirt. Using the tubes trimmed from the skirt fringe and left over tubes I made more fringe. 


experimenting with different lengths of tubes


tubes with pipe cleaners added to give shape

using only long tubes with pipe cleaners.

After some experimentation I settled on using long tubes. I inserted pipe cleaners into each tube so they could be bent into a curved shape. 
I hand sewed the tubes in place through the felt. A time consuming process but I couldn't trust hot gluing them in place. 






I hot glued a pom pom to every tube



The baby gum nut is an onion shape I made with the velvet. I added pin tucks to create definite vertical lines that showed the shape and contours of the nut. I stuffed it with wadding and hand sewed it to the cap.







So many pom poms!

photo by Jason McCullough

photo by  Jaybirdy Photography

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