Our Costume Shop

I took pictures of our Costume Shop, here at Columbus State University, and I thought you might like to see our facilities. We have a huge space that is about 2 to 3 times larger than most costume shops and it is located on the second floor with windows and natural lighting, when you never find. Often costume shops are located in the darkest most cramped corners of the basement, but we were lucky because our professors had input when they were building the $35,000,000 Theatre On The Park Facility. The built in cabinets and cutting tables we had custom build. Though we have more then 15 Bernina sewing machines, a dry room, two laundry rooms, and a shoe closet, the best feature of out shop is the undisputed best view of the Chattahoochee River.

Though it's not really part of the shop we also have costume storage that runs the length of the entire building in the basement to store all of the costumes we make on site. In one year we put on anywhere between 7 to 10 productions and we make about 85% of the costumes; the other 15% are bought, like blue jeans, or rented.

 This is the view when you walk in the door.

 A little bit in the doorway

 Once you enter, to your left

 Upstairs laundry room

 Dry room where we can dry our own fabric

 Student work tables 

 Custom shelving unit and one of the custom cutting tables

The other cutting table 

 Sergers, patterning paper, and thread wall

 Costume Shop Assistant's tables and machines and the ironing table and board

 The Nook, where we relax and you can see the Chattahoochee 

 You can kind of see the view, though this picture doesn't do it justice

  You can see that we have some costumes that we doesn't want to put in storage set up in the window, it's funny how many people walk by and are scared by the lemon

 Fitting area and belt rack in the shoe closet

 Shoes to the left and scrap fabric to the right

So that is our shop and where I spend upwards of 16 to 18 hours a week in between my classes. It's a little messy because we've jsut finished building our two shows for our first Summer of the Columbus Repertory Theatre, Blue's Clues Live and Nunsense, so things haven't gotten put away or in their proper place. As you can see on the first cutting table, there are a few of the pieces for Blue's Clues, there is Blue's body, Shovel is lying down and the Birthday Cakes's hat is sitting there. So that is a peck into were I live most of the time. 

Enjoy!

Mending and Alterations

After helping Phillip move out of his dorm, I was able to grab a pair of jeans that he hadn't worn for nearly a year now because they badly needed hemming. I also snatched up two pair of shorts that were very worn. They both had holes on the back side where the pockets has started to pull away. One pair also had a large tear across the front of the leg, which kept getting worse every time he wore them because he pulled at it and the other were cargo shorts, so on all 6 pockets the upper corners had pulled away creating a hole.

 The jeans that I cut off about 5 inches and then folded and pressed a double hem. Then I pinned it in place and edge stitched it from the inside with a heavy duty needle.

 For the holes in the pockets, I cut a small square of scrap fabric and pinned it on t e inside, backing where the hole was. Then I used the darning stitch across the hole in a few different directions. The darning stitch is a strong repetitive stitch that is used to sewing up holes.

The darning can look much neater, but my life was made hard by the multiple layers of very thick fabric on the corners of the pockets, which I would of liked to be able to see through but when I tried I broke a needle and decided that it wasn't a good idea.

Enjoy!