Costume Portraits

More production photos from Four Acts / One Night can be found at:

http://www.annquilts.com/costumes/One%20Acts/Tifles%20-%20The%20Rocker.html

Costume portraits of each character are at:

http://www.annquilts.com/costumes/One%20Acts/Costume%20Portraits.html

A few stories, and examples of the teamwork involved to put on a show:

The Aloe Plant

Here's the story of the bloom on my aloe plant:

May 9

Animals of the Fen

As promised, here come the animals to populate the fen quilt.  

My friend, as I said earlier, specified particular species of each animal.  It wasn't hard to find photos of each via google.  I also found info on each animal's size, so I could reproduce them somewhat in scale.  

I put each photo into Illustrator (I imagine any program would work somewhat the same, but I'm nowheres near a computer expert).  I drew a box the size I wanted the animal to be, and scaled the photo accordingly.  Then I printed them out, traced each onto paper, pinned them on the quilt, and checked it out with my friend.  I posted a photo of the quilt with paper animals in place in a previous post.

When the sizing was all set, I used the tracings as patterns to cut the fabrics for the basis of each animal.  Again, the fabrics were all stabilized with iron-on interfacing before I cut.  I stitched the animals in place, using a zig-zag with invisible thread.

Quilting in the Fen

My current art quilt project is a major one.  I've been working on this quilt for longer than I'd like to admit.  So this rather lengthy, photo-filled post will serve to bring you up to date with an overview of the steps I've taken so far.  This is a very condensed version of the process.  There were many detailed decision points and adjustments along the way, of course.

A friend of mine from college days, who is a zoologist, asked me to create a quilt depicting the fen in upstate New York where she does her fieldwork.  She sent me many photos that she has taken there.  Here's the overview shot that became the basis for the quilt.  In it, you will see three bog buckmoths, one of the creatures she studies there.

In The Theater

Our lovely show, Four Acts / One Night, has opened and closed.  Here are a few backstage highlights.

Here are our dressing rooms, at a pretty well organized moment.

Blue Shoes

The Blue Shoes.  We found these shoes for one of our actresses.  They are to go with a sort of royal blue dress, and we figured we could take them somewhere to be dyed to match.  Well, after much research, it seems that the only shoe dying folks will do these days is either black or –– or black.

So we did a bunch of brainstorming, and decided to decorate the shoes somehow with some of the same blue and maybe some pearls, because the hat that she'll be wearing with the dress is blue with some pearl trim, and silver lamé.  The character is a diva sort, the era is the 1940s.  In other words, she needs to be very well "put together".  

Log Cabin Blocks

I am part of the Thin Ice Theater costume crew.  Thin Ice is the theater program of our homeschool group.  There are 4 other moms plus myself.  Between us, we have a wide variety of sewing, costuming, and fashion experience, which adds up to having a plain old good time learning from each other and creating together.

Our next production is Four Acts / One Night, a set of four one-act plays.  We are in the homestretch - performances will be June 9 and 10.  Those of you who live nearby - show times and directions to the theater are at:  http://thinicetheater.com

One of the plays is "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell.  It requires some log cabin blocks, an important part of the plot actually.  Well, of course, I am the person who volunteered to make them.