I spent 2 hours in a fabric store yesterday and it was awesome.
Lemme ‘splain!
We were shopping for fabric for costumes. I don’t know fabric–I have always avoided any kind of textile work because it seems tedious to me–except for that one time I made a Nightcrawler plushie.
So we’re trying to find fabric for six costumes that won’t look cheezy, will be just the right pattern and shade, won’t be too hot for the actor, and won’t be too expensive. I had the opportunity to be that annoying director who doesn’t know what he wants, but will know it when he sees it.
After a few years of running VBS skits I found what every other performer probably already knows, which is that stage/film performance is a collaborative effort. This is the first year that we haven’t just pieced costumes together from what we can find at second hand stores. Mrs. Pastor made the first two costumes–the ones for the heroine and villainess. In my specifications for the villainess’s outfit I specified that I wanted it to be black silk/satin with black embroidered patterns. That fabric wasn’t available, and she tried to send me pictures of what was available, but I couldn’t see them. She just went with her gut and picked a fabric that was black satin with wide-spaced gold patterns.
When I first saw the costume, I thought, “I was expecting black on black.” But I quickly realized that what she had made was actually better than I requested, and did more to convey what I really wanted from the character–that she was a woman who was rather vain and who liked to spend money on nice clothes because she deserved them.
Anyway, we found all of the fabrics that we want to use, and all the fabrics we won’t use because they are crazy expensive ($18/yard). Now we just have to find some more patterns for our male costumes. Apparently there are only three Asian/Oriental costume patters produced in the last 40 years and we already located and purchased two of them (thanks to several hours of googling by Allison).
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