My House Looks Like An Explosion In A Yorkshire Cotton Mill

Since we have taken the house off the market for the winter, I have been spreading out and utitlising the available space to create costumes for the School Musical.  The usual 'sweatshop' has taken on new proportions since we have less furniture and are basically camping out here. Everywhere you try to sit or stand there seems to be fabric or some kind of costume. Many essential items such as desks, sewing machine cabinets and sideboards full of sewing gear are packed up and stored in The Pit downstairs. As a result, the dining table is doubling as a cutting and pinning surface and the coffee table as sewing machine base, The Baby Angel has had to pile her Uni books in between pincushions and piles of offcuts and we haven't eaten at a sit down table for weeks. It's getting out of control....






This year's offering is The Jungle Book.
As I mentioned once before, we are using the Indian setting of the play to inform the costume design. I am borrowing heavily and unashamedly from an American production by the Goodman Theatre, whose costume designer is a genius.

Each costume is based on Indian  traditional garb, such as the churidar and sherwani, the salwar kameez and the kurta. For the bear I am venturing into Tibetan styles such as the chuba, but to be honest, the finished products are often looking anything but Indian :-)



This is my Chief Monkey. He is based on a rastafarian orangutan, which of course is geographically completely incorrect, but I loved the fabric so much I decided to overlook the anomaly.

This is Akela, the alpha wolf. I am struggling with his collar and have actually unravelled this and started again with more shaping....

Mother wolf : She also has light grey harem pants. I'm still trying to decide whether she gets a shaggy collar.

This is for the tiger, Shere Khan. He is the maharajah of the jungle.

There are also assorted monkeys and wolves and I'm working on the fat suit for the bear at the moment. There are two and a half weeks to go, so no pressure hahahahaha.

Meanwhile, I am painting sets for The Mikado. This is my cherry blossom, although I think from a distance, I'm going to need more blossom!