Shadowing Day 4

I was able to have yet another great day of shadowing and learning more about the dance costume shop. Today Jocelyn and Savannah were gluing rhinestones onto gold dresses to add a little more sparkle. They had the sleeve portion of the dress propped up so it was easier to add the glue and the rhinestones in larger batches, rather than having them lying flat on the table. 

The glue they were working with didn't dry super fast so they were able to add multiple dots of glue before then sticking the rhinestones onto those dots they had just applied. They put a different amount of rows of rhinestones on the neckline, sleeve lines, waistline, and hemline.

Claire was organizing the costumes each dancer would have in a graph using google sheets. She included the name of the dancer, which numbers they were in, and what costumes they would be given. This way, she will be able to print them out later and put them in their garment bag.

Camille was sewing fringe onto the ends of Spanish shawls for the Christmas show. She had matching shawls and fringe for each color, so had to coordinate each set.

Camille would line up the fabric with the edge of the fringe and sew along the edge. When she got to the corner of the shawl, she would lift the presser foot and leave the needle so she could rotate the fabric without losing her spot, to then continue sewing the fringe onto the next straight edge. Once she got to the starting point of the fringe, she would slightly overlap it so it stayed secure.

The finished product ended up looking amazing, with the fringe going all along the edges of the shawl.

I was able to catch up with Sister Knight today as well, and saw that she was looking for a specific fabric they needed for the Christmas show. They needed a slightly stretchy red fabric with sequins for sparkle that was a good quality and would ship to them in time to work on the dress before the show. This meant she had to shop more local online stores so it would arrive sooner. She would end up needing nearly 200 yards of this fabric.

I was also able to witness another fitting. This time they gave jumpers to a group of female dancers, and needed to find the exact spot to sew on the shoulder strap, and to hem the bottom. Each girl lined up and put on the costumes and Sister Knight and her team worked together to safety pin the straps in place for each dancer, then Sister Knight pinned a couple of the girl's jumpers so they would be uniform with the rest of the dance group. This would allow the team to sew them into place so they looked fitted and cohesive for their dance.

To finish off the day, since it was a little bit slower of a day overall, I was able to help by steaming one of the tutus using their steamer. I had to lift up the different layers of the skirt to make sure each layer was free of wrinkles. It was a slightly more difficult task, but I was able to finish the one tutu before the end of the day.