Fun with Feathers!

Today was spent working on Pirates of Penzance costumes. Overall, it was fairly productive.

We dyed the ostrich feathers for the Pirate King's hat and Ruth's hat. I decided to go with yellow of the Pirate King. Ruth's feather is a very interesting (though slightly desaturated) mix of yellow, orange and red. It's very cool, I think. For the yellow feather we used tumeric, which worked out fairly well, though it didn't give as much colour as I expected it too. I expected it would produce a slightly more golden yellow, but what I have is nice, so I'm not complaining. Ruth's feather was dyed using Tropical Punch kool-aid and a little bit of tumeric thrown in for the hell of it. Heh. It was a sciencey experimenty day, obviously.

The flower headband spares are all completed. I put pink flowers on one of the hats for the main daughters, but I'd like to add some more frills and ribbon, which will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm also going to put together some medals for the Major General... which reminds me... I want to paint some buttons tonight for those! Heh.

The mock-up of the Pirate King coat is finished now. Today I finished sewing all the pieces together, made the skirt inserts and put together a sleeve. It's a slightly gathered sleeve, which looks a little stupid on me, but that's because my shoulder is too narrow, so it sticks out oddly. I still need to add a cuff, but that'll be quick and done tomorrow. I'm trying also to decide if I want to add a slit up the back of the coat. I think I'm going to wait and see how it flows on the actor before I can make the call though.

And that's about all. Not bad for a day.