Annie Part II

Oliver Warbucks is invited to the White House to talk with President Franklin Roosevelt about what to do about the Depression. He brings Annie with him to meet the President. She gets all the sad cabinet members singing and harmonizing in a rousing rendition of "Tomorrow"! Annie's little blue sailor dress was made from a vintage pattern, cost me $30, but it turned out soooooo cute!


Getting ready for the Christmas celebration at Warbucks mansion, Oliver tells the wait staff to "gussie her up!" She was gussied up in a thrift store find I bought for $3.75! I lucked out and was shopping on half price day! It fit her perfectly, and she sure did look gussied up!


Finally, as Oliver and Grace become a couple, and Oliver decides he wants to adopt Annie, she is dressed in her famous red dress--this one velveteen and lace, truly a little BILLIONAIRE'S daughter!


Annie makes her journey from rags to riches, and spreading her love all the way. Grace Robertson played Annie, with charm, and grace befitting her name. She was nominated for an ARTS FOR LIFE Best Performance Award, along with two of her fellow orphans in the best juvenile performer in an adult musical.

Annie, Part III

In the story, Oliver Warbucks, the BILLIONAIRE, has a full wait staff ready to fulfill his every wish and whim. The waitstaff of men and women looked crisp and ready to do Oliver's bidding in their sharp uniforms. The women's costumes were recycled in part from last year's show, "The Producers", where I made 15 old lady outfits out of sheets I found at the local Old Time Pottery store. I had left overs, and had enough to make matching blouses to the skirts, we put an apron and a ruffled cap on them, and voila, female servants were dressed. The men were dressed in formal attire, thanks to the generosity of a local tuxedo shop!
Miss Hannigan, the overseer in the orphanage, and her sleazy brother Rooster dance with his girlfriend Lily, and sing "Easy Street", their dream of striking it rich by tapping into Oliver Warbucks' generosity. A ruse, of course, which in the end, turns back on them and lands them in jail! Lily's dress was fun to make, a Vogue pattern, sleazed up by picking the loudest fabric in the fabric store! The director was pleased with this costume! Very pleased!
The beautiful Boylen Sisters and Bert Healy, part of the radio show cast that Annie sings on and requests that anyone who might be her parents to please contact Oliver Warbucks. That brings the golddiggers out of the cesspools of society in NYC, and proves that they are all after Warbucks' money, INCLUDING HANNIGAN, ROOSTER AND LILY! The dresses were made from a vintage Butterick pattern, and the little hats were thrown together during tech week, but they turned out very darling! Blondes do have more fun, so they say. Bert Healy's suit was a plaid sportwear, he loved it, along with his little vintage skimmer hat.

This was a fun show to costume, there are so many more scenes that I could share, but these were the ones where the costumes were built by me. We bought a lot of old coats and cleaned out a lot of closets to costume many of the scenes. Do you know how hard it is to find a wool coat at a thrift store in July? Not an easy task!

Jean Sewing Machine--why that name?

For people who just started reading my blog, I want to explain my nickname "Jean, Jean, Sewing Machine".

In 2007, I began a new "hobby--career" as a costumer for local community theatre groups. A friend of mine, whose mom I had worked with years earlier, was an assistant director for a play, and she was talking to her mom about looking for someone who could costume the show she was working on. Since I sewed a lot while I was working with her mom, I was recruited. It was an easy show to costume, only 8 cast members, but it had some cute things that I needed to make. During this show, I met another theatre woman, who is now one of my dearest friends. She was cast in the show, and made her own costume. Little did I know that this wonderful talented lady had been costuming and directing and acting for over 30 years. We had another thing in common, which we discovered one day when we ran into each other at Hancock--we both had become widows in the same month in 2006.

She was costuming a large show in the summer of 2007 "Man of La Mancha", and I helped her build some of the costumes. Then I was on tap to costume "The Music Man" in October of that year. That show had 55 cast members in it! I started with all those Pick-A-Little Ladies, and each had her own unique beautiful suit and hat for their roles. Then we had about 20 kids, and a bunch of teen--age dancers (EEE-GADS!), little girl and boy stars, and of course the Music Man and his lady! It was the biggest show in terms of cast members, and quite an undertaking for my first show as head costumer. I about lost my mind finishing this one. Luckily, we recruited the local high school bands for our 76 Trombones!

As we were sitting in the theatre getting "notes" from the director during tech week, one of the members of the Barbershop Quartet came over, put his arm around me and dubbed me "Jean, Jean, the Sewing Machine"! I've borne that wonderful title ever since then! He greets me in the same way every time I see him!

I started blogging in 2008, and have posted some of the pictures of the shows I've costumed on this blog. I'm over 30 shows now, somehow have lost count. Some were big shows, the biggest was "The Producers" in the summer of 2010. That was probably the biggest job, we counted over 500 costume pieces for that show. We built over 300, and luckily, I had help, but I personally built over 150 pieces. We were nominated for 13 categories in our local ARTS FOR LIFE Best Performance Awards for 2010. We won 8 awards, I was nominated but didn't win. For the summer of 2011, we did "Annie", and we've been nominated for 12 awards. I was nominated again, but if the sequins and showgirls didn't win, what chance to orphans in rags have?

I love sewing costumes, but making quilts has been a long-time dream of mine. I've had a short break from costuming during the past few weeks, and have used this time to create several bed size and lap quilts. I have two shows to do in April, so the break will be short lived.

Jean, Jean the Sewing Machine will continue with her craft as long as the sewing machines stay happy, the thread holds out and she can lift a scissors. This is a great tradition passed on to me by my own mom, her sister, and cousins. We were all sewing machines, and love the craft.

UFOs

It seems that many quilters have things stuck away they call UFOs, otherwise known as unfinished objects. Piecing is fun, but the next step of putting the backing, filling and top together and quilting and binding it is a challenge, and often is a roadblock deciding which a method to use to do this.

This one is unfinished because I've just have not had time to finish it. I call this one "WILD THING". I never thought it would turn out this bright! I said, I didn't know if you could sleep in the same room with it, because it might glow in the dark! The batik collection was called Tonga Treats, Lollipops. Whew, it's BRIGHT! But I do like it.


This one is unfinished because it has a ripply border. I need to rip it off and try again. If it doesn't lay flat, it is a challenge to quilt it. Some time!


My hangup with finishing my quilts has been how to do the quilting. So many quilts that are exquisitely quilted take months to complete, I don't want to spend that kind of time on them. So, I've taken to either "stitching in the ditch" technique, "stitching across the ditch" by using a decorative stitch on the lines where the pieces are joined, or a simple bar tack at strategic places. They have all worked out. I tried "stippling", which is a technique of free motion quilting. My lovely quilting machine was very picky and stubborn on this and wouldn't cooperate with me on doing it with the thread I was using. So I gave up and need to explore using different thread and see if that makes the picky machine happier.

Hope I can finish these at some time this year.

More quilts

The month of December was very busy in the sewing room! I costumed the play "A Christmas Carol" and made these quilts. Busy, busy, busy!

I made this one for our director of "A Christmas Carol". I had the entire cast and crew sign the backing, embroidered the title and date of the play on the back, and gave it to her for a remembrance of the play, which she adapted, wrote, directed and designed the set. She is also one of my dearest friends. We hope our love for her keeps her warm, as well as her lap quilt.
My other dear theatre friend got this quilt. She loves the color blue, and she decided to make it a wall hanging instead of a place for her doggie to shed on. I think the batiks in this were so pretty!
My 6 year old granddaughter loves peace signs. I've been trying to get a quilt made for her for over 2 years, so this finally came together for her. She gave her seal of approval on it--this is one picky little diva! Glad she liked it!
I couldn't wait to try this pattern. It was from a tutorial from Missouri Star Quilt Company called Double Slice Layer Cake. Layer cakes are fabric collections that are precut into 10" squares. You slice the squares into offset pieces, sew them together randomly, and then cut them in half, and sew them together again randomly. I made this one for my guest bedroom for my son and his wife.

It has been fun trying different quilt patterns and different fabrics. Luckily, the fabric store nearest to me has had some fabulous bargains on fabrics. I sort of overbought on Christmas fabrics, so I'll get a head start on next year. It is so much fun to piece these beautiful fabrics to create the different designs.

Monthly quilts

I've made baby quilts in the past, but never regular bed size quilts. These are my first attempts at making them for my bed.
October started it, I swore I would never make a Halloween quilt. However, I saw this sample in my local fabric store and fell in love with it. They had some handwritten directions, I took them home and purchased the fabric and had the quilt top finished by 10:30 that night! Wow, I was excited! The pattern is called "lightning", and it is all half square triangles. Very easy to sew and put together. I call this "The Wicked Witch's Bed"!
So after Halloween, why not Thanksgiving? Again used the lightning pattern.
I diverted from my favorite overnight "lightning" quilt top for this one. This pattern came from a book called "24 Hour Baby Quilts". Since this is bigger than a baby quilt, it took longer than 24 hours to make, plus about 4 trips to the fabric store to make it big enough for my daybed. However, I did make one red and green lightning quilt for Christmas, plus this one, plus one more. Lots of Christmas Quilts around my house this year! I'll post the pictures of the other two when I find the pics.
Snowflakes for January, I purchased these fabrics in November, and it's a good thing I did, because in January, there were no more snowflakes to be had anywhere! I am making another one right now from the leftovers for a friend who loved this one.
Still using half-square triangles, but in a different arrangement. I used a book called "Big Block Quilts". It has simple patterns using half-square triangles, fence rails and 4 patch blocks--you choose the size. One pattern was this big heart. The book has about 150 different patterns using these simple blocks. The small hearts came from a tutorial on a website, which I've learned so much from.

This is a wonderful website, Missouri Star Quilt Company in Hamilton MO. They have wonderful deals on fabric, great tutorials and they have become like family to me. When I have a question to ask or a sample to share, I send it their way. Great company! The heart pattern came from inspiration from one of their tutorials plus a design in the Big Block Quilt book.

As you can see, Al the cat loves this quilt, he was up on it in about 2 minutes after I made up the bed! He has embellished all of the quilts with some lovely blonde cat fur!

On to March, rainbow theme, then I have to think up more stuff--because my goal is to make a theme quilt for every month of this year. Think I can do it? I'm going to give it the old college try!

Back to blogging

Well, I'm still sewing, this time I'm into making quilts. I've made 6 queen size quilts, 3 twins and 4 lap quilts since October. Can you say "obsessed" when reading this? I'm trying to post pictures, will do soon. Hope to keep at this with more regularly than last year!