But what?
I pondered it for a while, thinking about the Biblical descriptions of angels...what few there were. "Man in shining raiment" seems to be about the summation of it. Not much help.
But I eventually landed on the idea of angels dressed as knights, with a rampant Lion crest.
I even found a pattern to use.
I chatted with our incredibly creative Children's Pastor, Pastor Dave, who also happened to be something of a scholar of all things chivalrous, just to see if he thought it was a good idea. He loved the concept and said he had some sources for me for swords, armor, etc.
With the assurance that I wasn't totally off the wall, I began a search for suitable fabric.
A trip to Sir's Fabrics up in Fayetteville, Tn netted some very unusual fabric. They had a bit of thin white poly knit printed with a pale gold foil. It was subtle...and I suddenly thought it would look fantastic under stage lighting. As I recall, I bought all they had left. But it was kind of sheerish, so I also got a knit w/ a kind of burnout ribbed texture, thinking it would show through the goldish top fabric slightly and give a look of depth, movement, hinting at multiple dimensions. I figured I'd make the trousers and top from the two of them paired up, and bought some snow white poly woven for the tabbard, as well as some gold lame' for the crest.
I took it all home and, by piecing it a bit, managed to get two shirt/pants sets from the gold knit and the lining, and easily got the two tabbards with a good bit left over from the white. I bagged it up and began playing around with a lion crest, intending to put red beads in the paws and side. But I was having trouble getting it right, and then I got involved with other stuff and the bag of cut out pieces just got shoved to the back of the sewing nook.
Where it stayed for the next 6 - 8 ish years... Since this was costuming, I didn't add it to my yardage or note when I bought it. So I don't even know. To be honest, I kind of even forgot about it. We weren't doing productions at church and it just dropped off the radar.
Ok, fast forward to October of this year. Our original script idea was to have two lady angels do the basic narration of our Christmas production, but after the auditions the decision was made to switch to guys...and we had two guys who were sharing one of the roles; one would do the role for the two morning performances and the other would do both evening performances.
My first instinct was to put them both in blazing white tuxedos, but in our first costuming meeting that idea was rejected; Pastor Dave had worn a white tuxedo (with a fair amount of red accent pieces, but still a white tuxedo) as the Angel of Christmas Past in both our productions of The Gospel According to Scrooge 15-ish years ago and they didn't want to repeat that concept. They actually wanted something a little modern, a little jedi-like, even.
Suddenly I remembered those cut-out things from years past. That would work...or, rather, I could make it work...if I could find them.
They were interested, so I came home and began digging. The bag turned up fairly quickly, and I did a quick construction of one of the trousers...no elastic waisline and no hem...and took it in to see if that would work.
The fabric was a hit, and I had the green light.
But I didn't have a lot of chunks-of-time. I worked on them off and on for a couple of weeks, and got the bottom layer, the tops and trousers, assembled to the hems...and brought them in for the guys to try on. I pinned up the hem for the guy who would be playing his angel character all weekend, but one of the two double cast guys needed just the edges turned under. His alternate actually needed some hemming. BUT...they were going to wear gauntlets that were being made by another lady on their forearms, and we decided to have them wear painted army boots, so the legs could just be stuffed into the tops of the boots. Sleeve and leg length became much easier at that point.
One of the angels could wear the tabbard pretty much just as it was; but the other needed a wrap style, with a bit of shoulder emphasis. I had enough of the white fabric left over; I cut the front that I had in the bag on an angle and shortened it to the short-tunic length of the pattern, then flipped it over and cut out a mirrored piece for the other side and cut two football-shaped pieces for the shoulder extension. I also made an obi waistband from the white, with a gold overlayer made from the remnants that I had saved. I had JUST BARELY ENOUGH.
Brought the costumes home and found that my sewing machine did NOT play nice with the fabric when the right side was out. The right side was almost sticky...definitely kind of tacky...and my sewing machine does not have a variable pressure on the presser foot. I did a lot of unsewing. I knew they would be hidden THIS time, but who knows what will happen in the future, so I wanted them, well, at least, not horrible.
I had to have them done for a photo shoot that was scheduled for Dec. 7. It was a close squeak...but I got them done. (Then they decided not to use the footage with the angels but have them do that scene live).
Poor hanger shots before delivery:
After the folks saw the costumes on them, they decided they weren't quite edgy enough and ordered some white overgarments from a trendy online vendor (yes, they were MENSWEAR). We also added a long tie belt to the one on the left, which had to be pieced from several scraps, and an actual purchased Jedi-costume belt to the one on the right.
I looked at the result at dress rehearsal. I felt like the amazing shimmery fabric was just so covered up it wasn't even really showing. One angel had on a long kimono type garment...only with short, non-kimono sleeves. The other was a cascade-type jacket with long sleeves. As I looked at them the day before the show, I suddenly realized that I could remove the sleeves from the toppers. I approached the director, who said she liked the longer garment just as it was, but gave me the ok to remove the sleeves from the other one.
I hung out about an extra half hour after the rehearsal and performed a double sleeve-ectomy. I could live with that.
Here are the morning-performance angels in makeup (although you can't see the gold glitter on their faces in the gym / backstage lighting), courtesy of Wayne T., who is the angel on the right:
The guys did a fantastic job. And I'm delighted they weren't in nightgowns.
And a fantastic job you did Lisa!
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