Uncle Motti Tells a Story (Or Three) VERSION 01 Being caught up with Felsic Current and general Balticon chores all the way until Memorial Day I was unable to help with this production until June rolled over, and I'd warned them of that. That's why the other costume designers shouldered most of the elements for this play, but I announced I'd be able to take on the sheep vests, the pig ears, the wolf ears and (most importantly) the Little Red Riding Hood cloak. I totally jumped at the opportunity of doing that last one. I would've been happy to do nothing but that for this play. But this being the JTW I knew I had to work by their rules of budgetting. So I acquired petty cash from them and went shopping. Sadly the best velveteen I was showed would've put me beyond the allotted cash. So I went down a notch and settled for this less impressive red. It was still quite lovely and MOST definitely velveteen. With all its ups and downs. My living room swarmed with velveteen bunnies for days afterwards! And I'm sure my sewing machine is still quite clogged with them. Still fresh off my Peacekeeper uniform making a poncho-like cloak was very instinctive. But this time, thanks in no small part to Michael Caine's costume in 'Quills', I FINALLY figured out the proper way of making a capelet. I felt like such an idiot when the answer revealed itself to be far simpler than anything else I'd ever tried. I'd gone out of my way to create the desired effect and it turns out that a lesser effort would've done a much, much better job. Isn't life special sometimes. I then added a hood (on account of it being Red Riding *HOOD*) but kinda messed it up at the top. I re-opened it and added an extra piece to make it fall in place better, except now it had an extra seam visible. First I decided to live with it, then later I used extra fabric to build a second hood going across the front of the first one to hide my unsightly mistake. Then there was the bottom part: I effectively made a circle skirt so it would pleat nicely. I then added a length of sew-on velcro to keep it shut (and save on time and expenses by not getting a slew of buttons). I also made little fingerless gloves and pointy shoes. I was so worried about the shoes being too small but they not only fit, the actress loved them. I have to say this outfit was even more challenging than my Elizabethan dress for 'Inspecting Carol' in the sense that I not only didn't have measurements for the actress, I'd never even MET her! And her being a child, she could've been ANY size! I'm so proud that it all fit. I also got tons of muslin to the sheep and two extra bags of cotton swabs to add to the half-used bag I already had. I first made the individual pieces, fully lined. I only had enough muslin to make the front pieces barely cover the clavicle and come down to the flank. On the oversized one (for the wolf in sheep skin) I didn't even have any muslin left to make that: I had to use thick black elastic straps. But before attaching all these pieces together I spent two days sewing row after row of cotton swabs onto the back pieces. Seams both horizontally and vertially. I think each of the four small vests had sixty-something swabs and the fifth one had over a hundred. And the whole time I had to make sure the swabs formed a checkerboard pattern of horizontal ones vs. vertical ones. So much work, and yet such a chance to take, because these four small vests were for actors with the shortest attention span I'd ever worked with. Five-year-olds. Basically the worse kind of person you'd want to give a highly delicate piece of craftmanship. But to my great relief the vests survived through the whole run! I can now pride myself on having created the most water-absorbent sheep ever! After a day-and-a-half of Little Red Riding Hood and two days of sheep, it's ironic that this next piece, which earned me the most praise, only took half an hour. I folded lengths of wire to make a headgear that went over the head and around the back and hooked over the ears like glasses. I added tie-wraps around the top wire to provide support for the ears (just like on my Wolf's Rain wolf/wings). The ears themselves I made out of black vinyl (for the inside) and leftover fur from my first attempt at Tsume. I made sure the fur triangles were bigger than the vinyl, so the fur would wrap around the edge and be visible from the front. I then hooked in place on the wire, over the tie-wraps and hot-glued them shut. In order to hide the wire hooks over the ears I hot-glued more pieces of fur. I hot-glued yet one more piece around the back, where the two ends of wire meet up in a big knot, to protect the head from any sharp bits. Finally came the pig ears that I had to do rather last-minute because I forgot about them. Making them was a piece of cake: I have so much leftover pink vinyl from my initial and unused Lego Indiana Jones purchase. Then, ridding wire frames to slip inside those ears took a bit more time. I also connected the ears with another piece of vinyl (black for the three little pigs and gold for mama pig, so that it'd match the kids' hair) and I carefully hand-sewed the wires directly onto that middle vinyl piece. The machine just wouldn't fit there, and I risked destroying many needles, so I had to do it by hand. Very good results though. I was only tasked with building the ears themselves, not the rigging to apply them to the kids' heads. They told me some headbands were coming for that. I only got to see the finished product during the live show, and sadly those headbands looked pretty sub-par and too loose, as the pig ears kept falling off the poor kids. But on a still picture they looked great. I especially loved how different and personalized the three pigs and the mama wore their respective ears. And for the pre-show I built a pair of fox ears and bear ears, using the exact same technique as the wolf ears. Well, almost the same. Because I was out of tie-wraps and knew I'd have to use wire to the ear support, I tried improving on the design by having one single piece of wire go over the head, bend up and down to make the ear shape and go onto the other ear. That wasn't a great idea. I left them that way but I wouldn't do it again. You lose some strutural integrity by doing it that way, and it's impossible to move the ears around once you've committed to their position. Anyways, it still did the job. For the fox I used some old brown-red I had from my llama costume, with white vinyl inside the ears. In retrospect I should've added some black around the ears, too. I also decided to glue an extra piece the wolf didn't have: right down the middle between the two ears, to give the fox a kind of widow's peak. Very fine touch. And helped to visually set the ears apart, which were too close together. For the bear ears I used some 'sherpa' fabric leftover I had from probably Madmartigan's boots. That's the perfect fabric I would've needed for the sheep vests. If only the fabric store had had it in stock I could've whipped those out in fifteen minutes each. Still, at least I got to learn the name of that fabric and make these bear ears. For the inside I used black vinyl, and for the hooky part around the ears and the back of the head I actually used some sheared-down Toboe fur. So the bear headpiece was a combination of cropped wholly-looking fur around the ears and longer hair further down its face. - J-F Bibeau