Eureka! My costumes in the news!

I’ve been terribly neglectful of my two-year-old project, but I figure it’s only worth posting when I’ve got something worthy of posting, if you know what I mean. And since I haven’t been sewing lately (bad Rebecca), here’s the next best thing: two of my Ancient Greeks costumes in the Yorkshire Post!

The Ancient Greeks workshop is on as part of Playfest, which the Yorkshire Post covered for National Playday last week. Thanks again to my colleauge Ross Reynolds for making the breastplate and tabs!

Stick with me folks – more to come soon!

Going Greek! Part 2: Himations & Tunics

Yassou! Kalimera! (That’s out of our Ancient Greek script, and they mean “hello!” and “good morning!” in Greek.) Welcome to Part 2 of the Greeks, in which we explore ancient menswear.

First, the tunic! Or chitoniskos if you want to be technical about it. A chitoniskos is basically a big Ancient Greek tee shirt, as seen on vase paintings like this:

I went about constructing it based on the handy Ancient Greek costume manual that I mentioned in my last post:

The instructions didn’t give exact measurments, so it took a bit of trial and error with my ever-patient model Ben to work out exactly how long and wide the sleeves should be.(Off the top of my head, I remember that the finished length was 40″, and the sleeves were 3″ deep and 10″ long. The overall width of the garment has escaped me, sorry!).

After we had established the correct measurments, I sewed trim along the top edge of each piece before stitching them together at the shoulders. I then stitched up the sides, finished the sleeves with a zig-zag, and then hemmed and trimmed the bottom edge all in one go.

Here you can see Ben in the chitoniskos, demonstrating step 1 of How to Drape a Himation. Again, that took quite a lot of trial and error but we cracked it in the end! A himation is essentially the Greek version of a toga, but it is different as it’s a lot less complicated with fewer folds and less fabric.

Going off the manual, I made a rectangle 4.5 m long and 1.5 m wide (which also involved some cobbling together). I used some calico that we had lying around the museum and that one of the enablers, Michelle, very kindly dyed for me. I chose an orangey-rusty-terra cotta colour as it’s more interesting than white and also corresponds nicely to the cartoons of Archimedes we have around the museum, which depict him wearing orange. (Archie’s our Eureka! mascot, as that’s what he famously shouted after working out that stuff about displacement and density).

If anyone’s interested in steps 2-8 on How to Drape a Himation I can certainly post those, but as WordPress and my wireless are both being temperamental today, I’ll have to upload those another time. For now, here’s Ben looking very stately in the finished product:

Adio!

EDIT 20/12/2014: How to drape a himation: a photographic step-by-step guide…

1: Drape himation over shoulder so the back hem hangs at calf-level (or thereabouts)

2: Wrap front end around the body and bring it back over the shoulder so the front and back lengths hang equally

3: Tuck long drape under shoulder wrap

4: Spread out fabric at the back

5: Spread out fabric in front

6: Adjust diagonal wrap to hold spread out fabric in place. Tuck excess fabric over arm.

7: Look baller

I am either missing a photo or don’t know how to count, since I have 7 photos for 8 aforementioned steps – apologies! This is not necessarily historically accurate, but it’s what we arrived at after considerable trial and error, and I think the result is pretty convincing. Good luck, and I’d love to see the results if anyone else has a go!

Going Greek! Part 1: Hellenic Chitons

Good news guys! I recently got the opportunity to design and make the costumes for Eureka!’s latest school workshop, The Ancient Greeks. Woohoo!

In the past Eureka! has sourced all of its costumes for special events and workshops from a fancy dress company called Smiffys, so I was chuffed to be asked to take on the project.

I found this handy website, essentially a manual on ancient Greek costume construction and draping. It all looked so simple, and I thought it’d be a breeze. That is, until I realized just exactly how much fabric you need to make a 2m x4m rectangle for an Ionic peplos (or Hellenic chiton, as I prefer to call it).

Yes, that is the single piece used for one Hellenic chiton, taking up the entire living room floor. Or rather, two pieces sewn together to make correct-sized rectangle, as fabric these days just isn’t woven to be 2m wide (back in the day Greek ladies did all their own weaving, and could make fabric just the right size for their draping needs). To get the right size, I bought 8 metres of fabric, cut it into two 4 metre pieces, and sewed it back together. Possibly some of the most shocking straight stitching I’ve ever done in my life, but meh, who’s looking that closely?

A note on the fabric: it’s imitation silk polyester, so it was cheap (£3.50/m) and had the exact draping quality I was after (thank you, Bombay Stores!). I wanted something colourful to help dispel this myth about the ancient Greeks wearing pure white garments, which is what people believe because of the faded marble statues. Greek fashion and sculpture were in fact very colourful – you can read about it here if you don’t believe me. So, I was after colours that were bright but that didn’t look artificial, and this teal matched pretty nicely with my Minoan colour reference image.

Once I had fabric the right size and shape, Ben (my ever faithful model/assistant/lifesaver) helped me drape it properly. This was no mean feat – we spent about two hours experimenting with it, and at one stage it looked so bad  that I wondered why I even bothered in the first place, but eventually we got it to something that looked more or less right.

As you can see, at this stage it was way too long and also looking a bit Statue of Liberty-esque. Next came the time-consuming task of finishing the raw edges and trimming the edge of the fold and the hem. Again, it sounds simple enough, but it gets a lot more difficult when you actually sit down to sew on 8 metres of trim. But I slogged through, and after a few late nights and some minor backache, we (I have to say we, because Ben really was instrumental in this) had our finished product:

And then I made another one! The second chiton is made in the same fabric, just a different colour. Here are two fabulous members of the Eureka! workshop team, Gillian and Tasha, modelling before the first workshop last week:

Next up: Going Greek Part 2: Tunics and Himations. Stay tuned!

Playing Teacher

Greetings! Apologies for the long hiatus, but I was waiting until I had something really good to write about. So, without further ado…

Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit a primary school and talk to a group of 5-to-7-year-olds all about costumes! After a few months in the closet, my bustle dress got taken on an outing and introduced to the Year 1 and Year 2 classes at Hebden Royd C.E. Primary. This came about thanks to my part-time job as an Enabler at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum. One of my co-workers left Eureka! to become a teacher and is currently doing her placement at Hebden Royd. As her class topic was clothes, she asked me if I’d like to come along and help give a lesson. And so I did!

Fortunately for me, I bought a dress form recently and used that to show off the bustle (otherwise I would have had to model, which would be uncomfortable and a bit awkward for showing off all the different layers). I started with the form fully dressed, and took all of the pieces off one by one to show the children how costumes are made and also how ladies used to dress 125 years ago. I had some of the children come up and feel different parts of the costume, like how heavy the skirt is and how solid the steels in the bustle are. I also showed them them the combinations and corset, which was followed by lots of “But how did they breathe?!” queries.

I also spoke to them about my work as a dresser, and about how costumes work in the theatre. That led to lots of brilliant questions from the children about who chooses the costumes (“Does the director know all about the clothes, or do they have to get someone to help them?”) and how costumes are designed. They had loads of questions and I could have talked to them for ages, but then the bell went and it was going home time!

All in all, I had a brilliant time and I think the students and teachers were equally impressed – apparently I’ve got a knack for speaking to children. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more theatre in education/workshop opportunities in future!

Photos thanks to Mrs. Leese at Hebden Royd.