Friday, June 22, 2012

Jackie and Me
The new show!! This one is about a boy in the present day who travels back in time to 1947 to meet Jackie Robinson for a school report. He learns about discrimination (which he faces at home as a Polish boy in the neighborhood), anger management, and inspiration. I spent about an hour last week reading it, and my next step is to write a summary, and maybe some basic history around the time. I wont really get going on this play till I come back from vacation the second week of July
work so far: 34 hours
I have a bit of catch up to do from last week.
Murder on the Nile
   This project I am officially calling done. I looked through my work and I think it was about 10 hours of work all together, although I did not keep as careful track of the hours as I would have liked. I learned from this project that I really love research. I did not want to design but I really enjoyed putting the clothing together with the time period. I am still not sure if the play is going to be set in the 40s or the 30s, but I am glad I got to do the research for both side by side. I did all of my research on the internet (for easy access and ease of sharing the information). Although I would like to break into some other types of sources (which may be more interesting and more accurate). I would like to improve on the accuracy of my research, including distinguishing between American fashion and English fashion of whatever time I am working with. Research is definitely something I would like to continue in the future. I am excited to be at the beginning of my own collections of research. Probably the two most frustrating aspects of this project were trying to find images of Cannons and trying to figure out how to organize the entrances and exits in the most helpful way. It seems to me that each play will have to be organized differently depending on the number of characters, scenes and quick changes. I look forward to the challenge again with the next show. I am going to try to get up to the Peninsula Players at some point this summer and see this show!

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

MacBeth
Today I spent 6 hours finishing the last two murderer capes

Hours: 6
Running Total: 43
Yesterday: Tuesday June 12
MacBeth
I spent two hours finishing one murderer cape and three hours at Alverno helping with fittings for the first time

Hours: 5
Running total: 37

Monday, June 11, 2012

MacBeth
Today I spent 4 and 1/2 hours finishing belts for MacBeth.

Murder on the Nile
I spent a half hour yesterday doing some extra history research.

Hours today: 5 1/2
Running total: 33

Friday, June 8, 2012

Yesterday, June 7
MacBeth
I spent 6 and 1/2 hours with Ellie in her apartment doing a series of repairs, adjustements, closures and labels.

Murder on the Nile
I think all the research necessary is already done (for both the 30s and 40s), and most of the paperwork as well. I will add a bit of research about what was going on in the world at the time. Please let me know if there is anything else you need

Hours this week: 13 and 1/2

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Murder on the Nile
Saturday I realized that although the play had been published in 1949, Agatha Cristie wrote the play in 1938. So I did an hour of extra research on the 1930s for the show. Apparently the director has not yet decided when to set the show so I spent 2 hours today finishing research on the 1930s and 1940s. Finding  research on Canon clothes has been the hardest part. But I did find out that clerical outfits are interesting and enormously varied. Canon can also mean 2 different things:

Briefly about Cannons:

All canons of the Church of England have been secular since the Reformation, although an individual canon may himself also be a member of a religious order. Mostly, however, they are ordained, that is, priests or members of the clergy. Today, the system of canons is retained almost exclusively in connection with cathedral churches.


MacBeth
Today I made the pattern, cut, and sewed the three capes in one go. It took me 4 hours. The surger broke part of the way through and it took Ellie 15 minutes to fix it. I made one cape without surging, which Ellie took to a fitting today. She also took the belt, which unfortunately I had not started, but she is painting it tomorrow in Pewakee. So I will have the day tomorrow to work on my own stuff and will spend the day with her on Thursday.


Here is the first cape:

Hours this week: 7

So I did not finish last week's post, so this is for Friday.
It was a good week. I did take on some extra work for next week for MacBeth, 3 capes and a woven belt. But I did not do any actually do any work on Friday
Hours this week: 12
Hours so far: 14