Hello there!

Hi!

Just a quick word about myself as this is my first post - so be kind!

My name is Mel and I am currently a carer for my nephew but in my spare (!) time I love making costumes and corsets.

I make corsets and historical/wedding costumes from home and also hire out theatre costumes, from a theatre base in Chester. We specialise in Pantomime costumes - but have many other costumes and are constantly adding to the list!  I'm trying to work on my website and theirs, hopefully both will be up and running soon.

I hope to be sharing some costumes soon as the project I'm working on is for the Pantomime 'Cinderella'. I work closely with a local amateur theatrical group, Tip Top Productions and have started on designing and making some Fairy Godmother dresses in a variety of styles both for them and ready to hire out.

I especially enjoy working on the pantomime dame costumes and enjoy getting the script so that I can work through some design ideas around it. The writer of the script usually gives me some great ideas to work from and I love doing the research and my 'book', which is always crammed with ideas, fabrics and colours. I make sure that every colour is used, but not too many times.  The Dame for the group I work with uses 8 - 10 dresses and this year of course it'll be double for the Ugly Sisters!  I love it because I get to go  completely over the top and put colours together that wouldn't necessarily go! I love trying to be quite 'clever' with the outfits but it doesn't always work!

I not only design the costumes but make the patterns as I find it more enjoyable that way but time is always of the essence and around December I'm always extremely busy!

I'm lucky this year because one of our outfits has been used for the publicity photograph for a great friend of mine who is to be Dame in Chesterfield's pantomime 'Jack and the Beanstalk'.  He's a fantastic Dame so I wish him all the best - I know he's going to be fantastic!

Anyway, I hope you like my posts and I'll try to post often!