I think I mentioned this in part 1 of the series, but we got pretty lucky with the ensemble costumes.  In our costume storage we had several grey dresses and aprons that were clearly made for another production, probably Annie.  Luckily we had enough that mostly fit us, though they were pretty short for dancing.  I was able to make them fit better, as well as add a bit to the 1920’s vibe, by adding length with a white stripe and swish with the inserts. Myself and my sewing help probably spent wayyy too long on these, but hey, we saved some $ I guess.

There is one scene where the ensemble plays reporters, and I got very lucky for this. I was able to pull 3 of the dresses from storage and found two shockingly at the thrift store. Here’s a place where being in community theater is a little imperfect, some of these dresses feel a little too 60’s vs 20’s, but with a $1000 budget and lots of other costumes, there’s only so much I could do. You can see a few of these dresses in photos below.

I also showed up as the superintendent of the building at the end.  For this, I used coveralls we had in storage that I bought originally for Spring Awakening.  I also decided to make a little inside joke by embroidering a martini glass and “DC” on the hat I wore.  Truly don’t think anyone else noticed but me, but it made me happy and I got to practice some embroidery skills, so that was nice! I don’t have a photo of the full look of this, but here’s the hat!

In professional shows, the ensemble usually appears in the finale as pilots or guests who go to Rio instead of maids, but there’s a level of “does it matter” when working with a tight budget like this.  We also didn’t have that much time to do a quick change as we were already quick changing 4 people into wedding dresses so it didn’t make sense to have another costume for the end.

These two characters were “gangsters posing as pastry chefs.”  We decided to go fairly standard with this, buying new chef jackets from Amazon. I found pants at thift stores and altered them so they were more like golf shorts, and we gave them a little fun by the argyle socks. These costumes aren’t my favorite but they worked. Had I had more time, I would have dyed/ distressed the tops to make them a little less glaringly white and so they felt more used.

Even though Trix is on stage for maybe 10 minutes total, her costume is one of my favorites.  It’s clear and obvious that she is an aviatrix.  And it was very quick and easy to put together, with the actor providing their own pants and shoes, a jacket and shirt from thrift, hat and goggles from Amazon, and a tie that I made.  I also embroidered the T on it to give it a little something special which I really loved.

For Mrs. Tottendale’s fancy dress, we found a pretty standard Victorian gown from Amazon and then embellished to be fancy. I’m very proud of those cream gussets I added so that the skirt was wide enough to fit over the big hoop we had underneath. The bows and lace really take this over the top.

While I don’t have a photo of it, Mrs. T’s wedding dress is also something I feel really good about. Unfortunately I have no photos of the wedding scene (other than the blurry images you can see of Janet and Drowsy with Trix). But we found a dress in costume storage that was PERFECT for the character, but it was several sizes too small. Thankfully my friend Leah performed some magic and made it work. I’m so grateful to her!

Even though Drowsy is the titular character, I feel like her costume didn’t really live up to what it could have been. I couldn’t quite decide what I wanted here, and so it’s a little bit of a mess. I do think the wide pants and silk blouse feel like the correct time period, but there’s something not quite right about it. She did get put in a wedding dress at the end, and that was a little more glamourous, but this was kind of a bust. I definitely spent too long on Janet and didn’t really get to work on other things as much.

For the engenue Kitty, I found this cute lace drop waist dress, which I think fit well within the time period. It was originally a light cream, but I dyed it teal so that it didn’t feel too wedding-ish. I also LOVED the romper I made her for the pool scene (“Show Off”), you can see that in the photos with the pastry chef above. Overall I think she could have been a little more garish to match with her character but its a good period look.

I have definitely saved the best for last here.  Janet was my piece di resistance. I mean, just look at her costume plot. Ok ok, most of her changes were in Show Off but she’s the star here and is an actress so I really felt like we needed to go all out.

I found several great dresses in our costume storage which amazingly fit our actress, and so was able to go with a pink/orange color scheme for her which worked really well.

The Show Off number was where I really got to showcase some of my skills. I made the romper she wore for most of the number, and then was able to get my tearaway moment with the skirt! I found this fabric with the leaves, then was able to make it into a skirt which had strategic magnets in it, and then it also attached to the romper via magnets. The fabric was black, so I spray dyed it green, which definitely is imperfect, but it matches a bit better and the black would have been way too dark. You can see the pull away effect (as well as most of the costumes in action!) in this video here.

I don’t even have a photo of my favorite costume of hers, which is the orange dress she wore during her mental breakdown during “Bride’s Lament.” It was this gorgeous orange dress with a built in cape that just worked AMAZINGLY in the scene.