Which shouldn't be surprising, since I locked myself out of the house...barefooted, in my PJ's...at about 1 AM, and had to be up at 5:15 AM to take the janitorial keys to the team coming in to work at the church, as my son the janitor contracted a stomach virus and was up all night doing the purge stage; I wasn't about to let him try to drive in to work for any reason and My Sweet Babboo is off on a camping trip.
But, since he was actually up being miserable at 1:30, he heard me banging away in the sunroom and let me back into the house.
I'd just finished the last three poppy skirts to the hand sewing and went to bed about half-past twelve, then suddenly remembered that we'd left the screen door on the porch open for ventilation, since the Flute Player had to spray paint a pair of cheap shoes green.
So I went down to shut the door and did not notice at the crucial moment that the door into the house was locked; I was trying to keep the kitty from following me onto the porch. I got out just fine...but couldn't get back in.
And I really did not want to walk around the house in my jammies, barefoot, at one AM, to ring the doorbell.
But all's well that end's well, and I got back into the house after a mere 20 minutes or so of banging and yelling and got a wee bit of sleep.
And now that it's less than a week to opening night and all the costumes have been approved, I have liberty to post photos that I couldn't take today.
So I will substitute photos that I took earlier and couldn't post... ;-)
When last we left our heroine, she had just reassembled the first skirt with wire around the edges of the top layer of petals. The wire (22 gauge floral wire) was couched around the seam allowance with a zig zag stitch; I broke a total of 9 needles wiring these puppies...er, poppies...The wired skirt in doughnut form:
The skirt was then taken to school, where it was placed on one of the actual Poppy actresses/dancers, along with the as-yet-un-painted fernery that will also be part of the costume. The crinoline underneath made the skirt beautifully poufy, however, obtaining more square-dance-costume crinolines in the proper green turned out to be prohibitively expensive, so the decision was made to use the existing red crinolines from the wardrobe and just make them work as best we can. This was the go-ahead to proceed with this plan.
So I took a break from sewing the skirts to develop the prototype hat petal pattern, modeled here with great anticipation; based on email-viewing of this photo, the prototype was approved and mass cutting/assembly of the hat petals commenced. We used almost 40 yards of interfacing in the 60 hat petals; a crew of ladies came in Thursday night and we got all of them made and handed off to the Hat World crew.
So, today, for the first time, I saw the skirts with the red crinolines, green tights, painted fernery, black leotards and the Hats. O Mi Gosh. The Hats...fabulous, just fabulous. Only three were done, the skirts were more pinned than finished and some of the tights came in too small; we still need to add some sparkly something to the plain black leotards, and the skirts will be painted a bit, so it's still not the finished product. The crinolines were too long and not full enough, so we paired them up, putting one inside another...and two or three amazing ladies pinned the skirts all up so they would be bunchy and shorter and still not be altered. I'm guessing they used about 60 - 100 teeny safety pins per crinoline...but we're going to get that pouffy look that we need.
The director was delighted. The girls were twirling. And I don't think I've ever done teamwork quite like this before.
And... I have NO POPPIES at home now! I could sew something for myself...if I could find some energy...I'm just a little short on sleee....zzzzzz....
Oh those are turning out fabulously! What a wonderful job. Congrats! g
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