The Wholebackstage Theater produced the musical Evita recently.  This show required a representation of military uniforms suggestive of the 1940s era in Argentina.  Creating this look on a budget posed some challenges.

It turns out that stage magic will make the optical illusion of matching costumes work to create the enhance the dancing talent of the military characters in their appearance as synchronized marching enforcers.

In another number, the military characters play a game of “musical chairs” with the character of Perone winning the final chair as a symbol of his rise to political power.

The military hats were created starting with authentic US Army and Navy surplus hats that were donated to the WBS over the years.  A simple canvas cover was created out of an appropriate color to make the hats match the color of the available uniform jackets.  The pattern for the hat cover was created using the valentina software and is available for download at my-pattern.cloud. This and other patterns are available to registered members of the Valentina Forum.

Decoration of the military hats was accomplished with a combination of authentic US military hat ornaments and whimsical touches such as red grossgrain ribbon.  What made the Evita show military crew special was the talent of the actors.

The first part of a costume designer’s job at a community theater is always to create the best look for the lowest cost.  It is a blessing to work at an organization that is so well established in the community that there is a wealth of raw material.  In this particular production, we had several items of “raw material” that fit the lead actress with few modifications.

The donations room had a simple off-white women’s pantsuit, with both the (1980s style) blazer and matching pants fully lined.  The jacket had nearly 6 inches extra around the torso for our actress, which gave plenty of room to make design changes.  I stared for weeks at the inspiration picture before I had the nerve to actually cut the beautifully made original (even if plain and outdated) blazer.   I looked at buttons and black velvet fabric to help see the designer look we needed.

I took one more look at the inspiration picture… and made the first cut into the jacket.

After the cut has been made, I had to step back and inspect the situation.  I was able to use the well constructed shoulders and sleeves.  A small hem at each wrist would make the finished jacket fit our diminutive diva.

I tried pinning the bottom of the cut off blazer to the top and looked at the inspiration picture and gave it some time.  My initial plan had been to move the buttons on the top to create the double breasted fit and gather the old jacket bottom to fit at the waist and flare at the hips like the inspiration picture.  It was clear to me that the fabric in the old jacket bottom would simply not be enough.  This costume needed to show well from 360 degrees because the actress would be moving and dancing in it.  I realized I would need to make a peplum and that I would need to piece together fabric to do that.

In the past I would have made several attempts to draw a pattern and chase the actress during rehearsals to make the test costume fit.  With Valentina, I was able to make a pattern for the peplum and adjust it on the screen to make it fit.  This was one of my very first real world projects with Valentina and does not show the many capabilities that the program contains.  But even the limited portions of Valentina that I used made this costume project a success in the small time I had to work on it.

I cut apart the bottom of the old jacket and cut off the legs of the matching pants.  To make this project work, I would need every scrap of fabric.  The grain line would be important to making the costume hang well and move with the actress.  Attention to detail was important.

After finding all of the pieces of matching fabric I had to work with, it looked like there was enough.  Just barely enough.   I needed to find a way to piece together an eliptical shape of fabric that had the grain true in the critical places so that the finished garment would hang right.  I made a use of Valentina that was probably beyond what the designers had intended.  I used it to map my piecing of the fabric.  This screenshot shows the final layout I generated.

I used the on screen picture shown to guide me as I planned to piece together the fabric to create the eliptical donut.  I created a paper pattern that was the shape of the finished peplum and cut it out of an old sheet and basted it to the jacket top to check fit.  Once the concept was proven with the “test peplum”.   Then I arranged fabric pieces and cut the paper pattern into segments that matched the available fabric.  With some pins to help me keep the grain straight, I was soon able to make pieces with seam allowance and check to see that I had everything ready to sew in place.  (I was able to reuse the pieces that had been the lined and faced edges of the original jack to become the left and right edges of the new peplum.)  Carefully I made interfacing pieces to match each fabric piece.

After everything was sewn together, I had the actress try it on and I added many velcro fastenings.  The velcro makes the on stage change scene a bit more error proof.

The actress wears this well!

The largest challenge for costume creation for Evita was duplicating the look of the Dior original suit made for Eva Perone and her “Rainbow Tour” of Europe.  Evita was photographed in the original and it was used in this stage play as an icon for the Rainbow Tour

This is the social media promotion used before the show and featuring a reproduction of the white suit.

The white suit began as a simple women’s business suit donated to the theater (see http://www.wholebackstage.com for information about the theater).  My next post will show the process of transforming the suit.

Over the last few years I have developed a passion for creating costumes for a local community theater in northern Alabama.  The most recent show that I have been involved with is the musical, Evita.  Evita is a story about Eva Perone, the first lady of Argentina for a few years in the 1940s.  Evita was a beloved icon to many of the people in Argentina.  The stage play offers many challenges to a costume creator.

The show opens with the announcement of the death of Eva and from there is a narrated “flashback”, illustrated in live song and dance.  Sometimes the intent of a costume is not to stand out, as shown in this crowd scene of the ensemble song “Requiem”

The story progresses and the young Eva wears a bright red floral print custom made from a commercial pattern.

The ensemble appears in several scenes and one member of the chorus needs a dress from a custom drafted pattern to fit her body and match her style.  The chorus member on the far right in the black and white 40’s (ish) style dress with the sweetheart neckline fits visually into the ensemble and her voice adds to the overall beauty of the show.

The custom drafted pattern was done by hand with a pencil, ruler, french curve, and medical exam paper to create the pattern.  This way is cumbersome and time consuming.  A second, similar dress was drafted for the same actress with Valentina and future blog posts will illustrate how a resizable pattern for chorus members will be developed.

I’ve always wanted to create my own sewing patterns and printing them just makes more sense to me. Every so often, I browsed the internet looking for some way to do this digitally and, in February 2017, I found Valentina.

I had no idea that it had been in the process of being developed since about 2010!!!

I was so pleased to have found it, I immediately downloaded it and starting figuring out how it works. Within 12 hours, I’d drafted my first basic bodice block (without sleeves). By the end of the week, I’d added the sleeves and other alterations and facings, defined the layout and printed the pattern. And this, all while I was doing all my daily duties, like work.

This was all done by reading the helpful tips on the screen and asking questions on the very friendly and helpful forum.

I must admit that I have been teaching myself to operate programs for many years and have mastered a few graphic programs during a phase of doing digital scrapbooking, so Valentina wasn’t totally strange to me. And I’ve been sewing all my life, so this was a really nice find for me.

One thing that keeps on surprising me is that there is a tool that will do anything that you’d like to do and sometimes, there’s a choice between 2 tools – 1 that will do a more precise job than the other. I have written a number to tutorials about the tools while I was learning to use them and I remain amazed at the care, thought and knowledge that went into the creation of Valentina and that still goes in to improve it, daily.