Sunday 2 March 2014

Maid from pillowcases...

After starting back at the school I work at after 6 months maternity leave I was thrown back into the craziness that is a school production.

With my sewing skills I usually end up on costume which gives me the excuse to sew during the work day which is never a bad thing in my book.

One of the many challenges of this production was the fact that we had zero budget to work with. And no materials to speak of...

I discovered in the drama props cupboard (known fondly as 'The Cupboard of Doom') a couple of white pillow cases and a couple of aprons I had thrown together for a previous production so thought that those would make a good base for whatever I needed to come up with.

The play itself moves through many time periods so the costume needed to reflect that. In a couple of scenes there was the requirement for some servant costumes so that is where I started.

In 1880 the maids cap was quite small and perched on the persons head... Using part of the pillow case I had found earlier I started fashioning together some sort of head piece - sewing the fabric carefully on an ancient and clunky sewing machine!

And this was the finished result... I am currently finishing another maids headdress but for a different era ... I will post that one too when I get it done... Who would have thought that a pillowcase would make excellent headwear?
P.s I had to buy a polystrene head for this project but found it quite difficult. I recommend Amazon for this as they are certainly the cheapest by a long way...

No comments:

Post a Comment