Costume Mending In Progress

Miss L Cubed and I worked yesterday bringing down items that needed work and actually made a bit of progress in a room that just kept getting colder and colder all day (in direct contrast to the oven heating up outside). Not sure why, but I will NOT be wearing a sleeveless top and sandals in today!

We've found some interesting things...but I think the one that takes the cake was a robe that Miss L Cubed repaired. The first year we made costumes, we cranked out a lot and asked the folks who were wearing them to hem them, please (I wasn't lead costumer then...this was our first go at it...we weren't real knowledgeable or real organized!). Several were 'hemmed' with Stitch Witchery, which is now coming unstuck. Plus, not all the seam allowances were finished, and there's a good bit of raveling out going on. The afore-mentioned robe was one of these; Miss LC pulled out the rest of the hem, zig zagged the edge, then topstitched it back in place. The first sleeve was cut on the cross grain, with the edge on the selvedge, so it only needed to be stitched. But the second sleeve...not only was it not cut on the selvedge like the first one, but it was about 2" longer. Strange. Stranger still was the fact that this sleeve had been turned up about 4" and fused down with another strip of stitch witchery. The extra length was safety pinned in place (thank goodness it didn't get cut off!)...which meant that sleeve 2 ended up being about 2" SHORTER than sleeve 1. We just looked at each other and laughed. I don't recall any cast member being obviously asymmetric; I've no idea who pinned it up/ironed on the second batch of fusible. And I hadn't noticed it before, so I don't know how long it's been that way or why no one who's worn it has complained.

Well, the sleeves are even now. We'll never know what happened there. Weird.