Joining the costume shop at the Alma College theatre department was not my first choice. Coming into the semester, I wanted to act. With twelve years of dancing under my belt, the stage was no stranger to me. After the auditions for their fall play, Our Town, were over and I wasn’t cast, I had to find something else to fulfill the theatre company credit. I had no interest in working on the technical crew, but there was something intriguing about the costume department. I had some hand sewing experience, so I decided to join the wardrobe team.
My first major assignment in the costume shop was to sew some lace to the bottom of the skirt of a dress. I had to pick out the lace, make sure there was enough, then use a sewing machine to attach it. This was my first time using a sewing machine, and it was exhilarating. In what would take five minutes to hand sew you could accomplish in five seconds! My excitement died down when I realized that I really didn’t know how to work a sewing machine, and upon the first complication I desperately needed help. After everything was smoothed out, I resumed attaching the lace. Everything was running perfectly until I ran out of lace. Yes, I had somehow measured the lace and the skirt wrong, and now about 3/4 of the skirt had lace. My very first project.
I ended up removing all that lace and remeasuring the skirt and I did eventually lace the entire skirt. Since then I have grown immensely. Although sewing machines still have it out for me, I have been able to wrangle them when I need to. My skills with hand sewing have proved extremely useful and have also improved as well. I sewed countless buttons in pants, each one faster than the last. Then the true testament to my abilities came about: costuming the dance concert.
The costume work for the dance concert was nothing extremely unfamiliar to me. Having been on a competitive dance team for years, I’ve made many fixes and alterations to costumes before. This was where my hand sewing skills shone. We began by attaching the corset tops to the tutu bottoms. Once all that was done we moved on to the straps. With the straps all pinned where they needed to be, the task fell on me to sew them. I sewed nearly every single strap into place. In all my years of dancing, I don’t think I’ve ever sewn that many straps, especially onto such tough corset tops. I can’t count the number of times I stabbed myself with my needle completing all those costumes. But I managed to push through the pain of hunching over all those costumes because I had to make sure that no one lost a strap on stage. Inside each costume were the initials of the dancer wearing it, all of whom I now knew from the company. None of these girls were going to have a bad strap on my watch.
Working in the costume shop has been such a wonderful experience. All the veterans there with experience are so patient and kind teachers, and the shop is such a great environment. I think that bringing a dancer’s perspective to the shop has helped as well. To my knowledge, not a single strap came undone during the dance concert. Ultimately, I’m glad I wasn’t cast in Our Town. It led me to the place I should be.
