I recently began working at the costume shop in my school theater. I'm a quilter, not a costumer, but I've made a handful of costumes for Halloween, and I wanted to try my hand at it. So far, it's delightful, moderately stressful and it makes my back hurt. Here are ten things I've learned since my first day.
1. Thread. Gets. Everywhere.
This one isn't exactly new to me, but it's worth repeating. I don't even know where all the thread comes from, but I do know that it's the costumer's equivalent of having a cat. If you wear dark clothes, you are going to look down after work and find little bits of thread all over your chest and legs. It's a fact of life. Embrace it.
2. Pins hurt.
There were days when I would come home after work and feel my fingers throbbing from where I pricked them. Maybe I just pin too fast, or do it weirdly, but man, I've lost count of how many times I've stabbed myself with a pin. I've stepped on them, too, but at least I've had shoes on every time. (Thank God I resisted the temptation to take my shoes off to work the machine pedals.)
3. You will break at least one needle.
Ever since my mother snapped a machine needle on layers of denim and screamed, I've been terrified of breaking a needle. Last week, when I saw four layers of leather and corduroy, I knew it was coming. And hey, it's not that bad. The needle breaks, you realize that it's broken about a minute later after wondering why nothing feels right, you replace it (or get your boss to replace it because you don't know how to do it) and all's well that ends well. Any costume shop worth its salt is going to have more than one sewing machine needle, so it's not the end of the world.
4. Seam rippers are your friends.
You will make mistakes. If you're not used to heavy duty machines and unfamiliar fabrics, there are going to be some bumps in the road. If you're not trained at all in clothes fabrication, you're going to end up ripping a few seams and starting over again. It's okay. Absolutely no one is going to think worse of you. On my third day of work, I ripped the same seam five times before it came out well enough for me to leave it alone. Even people who have been sewing longer than you've been alive occasionally trip up and have to pick out stitches.
5. Don't rethread the serger. Dear God, don't rethread the serger.
This was a mistake I made just a few days ago, and it will never, ever happen again. I assumed, foolishly, that sergers (the fancy machines with four separate spools of thread feeding into two needles to make industrial hems) thread the same way as standard sewing machines. They most certainly do not. An entire panel of the machine pulls away, and four threads have to be pulled through an extremely complicated mechanism in order for the machine to work again. The smart way - and the much, much easier way - is to tie knots in the old colors and attach the new colors, and then to run the knots through until the old color is gone. Otherwise, you'll spend fifteen minutes staring at diagrams.
6. Sleeves are evil.
Sleeves are just rough in general. You have to get them pinned in exactly the right way or else they look wrong. You have to get them through the machine without messing up a seam allowance or bumping a pin. Your bobbin will inevitably run out at exactly the worst possible moment. You'll do everything right, and when you put everything on the dressmaker's form it still looks awful and you have to take it off and do it all over again. Take a deep breath, befriend the seam ripper and try again until it works.
7. If you haven't worked with fancy fabrics, it gets alarming.
Fancy fabrics are beautiful. They look amazing in person and once they're on an actual human there's nothing quite like it. That being said, they're hard to work with. They slip and slide and don't like pins and are so unbelievably delicate that seam ripping is a chore. I spent two hours one day picking individual beads off of twelve inches of incredibly fragile chiffon, and by the end of the afternoon I wanted to scream. The reward, though, is that it looks amazing and I can't wait to point it out on stage and say, "LOOK LOOK LOOK I MADE THAT."
8. Be nice to the designers.
If you're nice, and you work hard on their designs, you might get compliments, and it'll be the best day of your life. Sometimes, if everyone in the shop is slammed, they'll take some of the work off your hands and sew pieces together on their personal machines at home.
9. You're going to have to ask questions about the machines.
And that's okay. No one is going to be able to immediately know how to work a strange machine they've never seen before. Feel around a little, check it out and see if there's a manual. If all else fails, it's totally fine to ask. Don't interrupt a fitting or a meeting, but there will almost always be someone in the vicinity who knows how to thread the needle or fix a tangled bobbin or rethread the serger. No one will blame you for not knowing the answer.
10. It gets easier.
You'll learn a routine. You'll get used to how your boss wants things done. I've learned so much in only a handful of days in the shop, and I know I'll still be learning even more as I spend more time there. In a few weeks, I'll be able to stand by a stage and brag to everyone I know that I made some of the costumes the actors are wearing, and that's a feeling I know I'll never forget.
