Category Archives: Teaching
Early 20th Century Sewing Instruction Books at Hathitrust
I had the good fortune to get funding to purchase 25 sewing machines to loan to students who are stuck learning online with my Sp 2021 costume design class. I discovered last March when we went on lock down for Covid-19 that only 2 of my 30 students last Spring had sewing machines at home. One had purchased one before the lock down, and another did so as soon as we were all sent home for the duration of the semester. All the rest had none.
Links To Pages of History of the Newsboy Cap and Flat Cap
The cap that originated sometime before the 20th century but became popular in the early 20th century amongst men and young boys. It was believed to be worn amongst all social classes, mostly middle and lower, but in upper classes, it was worn by wealthy golfers, drivers, and people for leisure activities like sports.
Costume Class Project: Dollar Store Witch Hat to Early Victorian Bonnet
What you will need for this project
- Velour Witch Hat in Adult Size
- Recycled plastic tub for frozen strawberries, cottage cheese, or other tub about 5″-6″ across the mouth.
- Hot Glue Gun and Glue
- Scissors
- Artificial Flowers
- Trim of lace or braid
- Black thread & Needle
- Spool of Wired Ribbon
- Plastic hair comb
- Fruit Bag net that looks like hat netting
Costume Class Project: Suit Conversions With Paint
What you will need
- A suit jacket with a smooth surface texture (male or female)
- Fabric Paint(s)
- Tailor’s chalk or marking pencil
- Brush(es)
Background: When I worked at UAF we were blessed years ago with a donation of a box of old white 50’s tuxedos, and were annoyed when a coolant leak in costume storage stained them all with beige splotches. It proved a blessing in disguise, since it made it “OK” for us to paint and dye them. See all the pictures below, and then do this:
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Costume Class Project: Designing in Cooperation
The “Lecture” (please read):
One of the first points that should be made about costuming is that it is part of a social organism. The organism may be part of a University theatre program, or part of a film production company, community theatre, Renaissance Faire producing group, television series producing studio, or professional repertory theatre, etc. However in all cases, costuming exists as a piece of a much bigger pie, in which costume is not the center, but a support to a larger whole. This is the key to understanding what we do. We exist as one of the heads of a multi-headed beast trying to create ‘ art.’ If we don’t talk or get along with the other heads, if we try to pull in the opposite direction from that which the rest of the beast is going, we trip over our own feet, and go nowhere at all.
Therefore, lesson number one: everyone must talk to each other, get to understand how one’s cohorts think, trade ideas, make suggestions, and then, when all the heads find a consensus on which way to go, go, go, go…..GO with commitment in the direction chosen, even if it means going over a cliff in one’s individual opinion.
This is very hard to do.
Continue reading Costume Class Project: Designing in CooperationCostume Class Project: No Color Designs
Color is such a useful trick for establishing character and group identity in plays that often designers forget that pattern, texture and especially silhouette can also be more effective design tools. One of the best exercises one can do to force oneself to rely more on these tools, so as not to get rusty, is to design a show periodically that is either monochromatic (uses only one color) or de-saturated (uses only gradients of black and white). It is the latter that you will do here.
To see an example of a show done in this manner see my designs for a low-budget student production of The Seagull done in Russia some years ago.
The Project:
10 characters from a Shakespeare Play that you will render using only black and/or white or gradients of the same. Using silhouette, line, and other means still left to you, delineate the characters and their relationships with one another. You may set the play in any era before 1916, in any culture, or you may costume them totally abstractly, but do not set it any time in the last 100 years of Western civilization’s clothes, or you will get unduly distracted by your modern mental associations with certain garments.
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Costume Class Project: 6 Renderings for “The Contrast”
6 Renderings for “The Contrast” Project
Step 1: Using the data you found in the Historical Research Project incorporate your research into colored designs for 6 of the characters in Royall Tyler’s The Contrast.
You need not follow the research slavishly, but the evidence of your sources should be apparent in your drawings. Then label your drawings something like this:
Costume Class Project: Six Renderings for “Patience”
6 Renderings for “Patience” Project
Step 1: Using the data you found in the Historical Research Project incorporate your research into colored designs for 6 of the characters in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience
You need not follow the research slavishly, but the evidence of your sources should be apparent in your drawings. Then label your drawings something like this:
If you have difficulty drawing figures, you can print out some of the outline sheets below, and do your renderings on these sheets. Printing the sheet onto card stock will allow you to use watercolors without having the paper wrinkle
Another way of Making rendering easier is to make a “Dancing Man”:
Make this out of heavy card stock, connect the pieces with brads as shown in the center, and lay it on your paper to make different poses for your body-outlines.
Step 2
Scan and post the images you drew to your files section and post a notification on the message board that you have done renderings for this play and would appreciate feedback from the other students.
