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My seventh season at the Brownville Village Theatre brought my biggest challenge to date - designing the musical The Hello Girls which tells the stories of the female telephone operators during WWI. A key plot point in the story is that the women are not very well known, to the point of having to fight for their veterans rights and status (which was eventually granted in the 1970s.) Because of the nature of the show, I knew we would need to pull of an incredible feat - building five matching specific uniforms for a variety of body types. I love to sew, but cutting/draping is something that always makes me nervous. (Once you cut something, it is hard to go back! If you sew something wrong, you can seam rip and do it again. Scary!!) I conquered my fears with the help of some great patterns from Etsy. Another major hurdle we had to cross was that the fabric we originally ordered weeks in advance did not arrive in time. I waited as long as we possible could before going to JoAnn’s for the poly-cotton blend we ended up using (pictured here.) The other fabric arrived the following Monday. But, with the help of my friend and colleague at the theatre Bella, we cranked out these uniforms and had a few fittings along the way! I did a muslin mock up for one of the Girls to check for fit accuracy with the pattern. Then, we did a fitting of the shells before we put on the finishing touches. I am so proud of how they turned out!