Malotke Sews

Tunnel under the Neuschwanstein Castle Happy Halloween Everyone! I am a huge fan of Halloween and the whole fall season. I love supernatural related stories, movies, the leaves changing colors, spooky decorations, black cats, giving out candy, costumes (of course), and more! Spooky inspiration is all around us. Every year I want to create my own costume but then it's October and I never have enough time to make one from scratch. Does this ever happen to anyone else? Hopefully next year I will get my act together for 2019 and actually make my own Halloween costume. I would love to do something that looks easy but has a ton of details like one of the Sanderson sisters looks .  I currently have a few projects I want to start working on, however I also want to snag some on sale Halloween printed fabric for some basic vintage inspired silhouette dresses. So not entirely sure what my next project will be!

Here are a few pictures from the show's dress rehearsals. I'm not sure who the photographer is, but they were shared on Parkland Theatre's Facebook page without details. Interested in reading a review of the show? Check this one out from the News Gazette here in Champaign. I'm still waiting on the professional shots, so once I have those I'll post them with details on costumes.

For Dinah's apron I purchased a purple full front apron, cut the top off, serged the extra and then stitched it down. I then added a little touch to the apron by choosing a heart stitch on my sewing machine and stitched along the waistband. On the inside of Dino's jacket he needed a pocket to hold his silverware. Instead of choosing any old brown fabric I chose this fun patterned duck cloth for the inside pocket. I wanted a pattern in case the audience was able to catch a glimpse of it while the actor was using the pocket. Since the jacket is vintage I finished the edges of the pocket and then hand stitched the pocket to the inside of the jacket. While I was in the zone hand sewing I fixed a few minor holes in the jacket and lining.

I have been away for a while and apologize for the lack of posts. I was not prepared enough to make a bunch of posts to automatically upload while I was gone on vacation. I am currently not working on a show but have chosen to focus on some personal sewing projects. In the next few days I will wrap up my progress posts from my work on "Servant of Two Masters." I have yet to receive professional pictures so my online portfolio has yet to be updated. Once that's taken care of I will consider myself officially done with the show. Stay tuned for some really cool & colorful projects coming soon. I want to do a few more detail oriented posts, not quite step by step, but something along those lines for a few small projects.

Before Buttons Sorry for the delayed posting, it has been a crazy busy couple of weeks. The weekend before the Costume Parade I was finishing up a green men's short sleeve, button down collared shirt. I am in love with this avocado green and it looked really great on the actor.  I followed the directions for the pattern but I thought it was a very odd way of sewing a men's shirt, especially how they had you sew the collar. It turned out okay, it was actually about 4" too big for my actor. The sleeves are kind of weird but once I took it in and hand stitched the sleeve hem it didn't look as odd. Stay tuned for actual show images to see the shirt in action!

Wednesday was our Costume Parade and it went really well! A lot of the notes were hem related, which is great since I had switched out a few items. It was wonderful to finally see everyone in costume and see the colors come together!  The Do Wops are so bright & I think their looks turned out really well. The 3 girls shirts, bottoms, and scarves were made, along with the guy's shirt. I also bought them colorful headbands, saddle shoes, & ankle socks to pull their looks together. The sweater and textured pants tone down the guy's bright green top, but for a few scenes he takes the sweater off and the shirt really pops. I loved seeing them in their looks. We also added petticoats under the 2 skirt looks for a more full skirt appearance.  The cast will be doing full dress rehearsals starting Monday evening. We'll actually be getting pictures taken Tuesday night, it'll be nice to have some professional shots instead of my meh looking ones. The idea is to g...

The three Do Wop girls for Servant of Two Masters have very basic looks that consist of a white collared short sleeve blouse, colored bottoms (2 in skirts & 1 in capris), a multi colored mesh scarf, saddle shoes, white lace ankle socks, and a solid colored headband that doesn't match their bottoms. For example the girl in the orange skirt gets an aqua headband & the girl in the yellow skirt has a green headband. The Costume Parade was set for Wednesday night but come Tuesday the 3 shirt weren't finished yet. So my Tuesday evening was spent sewing this lovely top for one of the girls. My serger was not cooperating, so the inside of it looks like a hot mess, but ti turned out pretty well. It's actually a bit too big for the actress. I will be adding 2 back darts so it has more of a fitted look for the actress. She tucks it in to her skirt so the length is fine. Sometimes I do wish I had a better female mannequin because I use my menswear mannequin for ev...