Customer Reviews

Costuming Made Easy: How to Make Theatrical Costumes from Cast-Off Clothing

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you think this book would be a good inspiring source for your Halloween costume or for your kids' school show, think again.
The ideas in this book are good but it has several big problems. First, there are no color pictures. Each entity has a hand drawn illustration for the alternation and a two inches high, whole person figure, very bad quality, black and white picture to show the final result. Since most of the costumes here need at lest two pieces of original clothing of different color and style to combine with, only if you saw a lot of board way show and hopefully remember exactly how the major characters' costumes looked like, you probably will be easily confused by those illustrations. Second, a lot of material she used here is originally costume itself (or quite fancy old-style dress to say the least) but not ordinary cast-off clothing you might think you could find in nowadays closet.

I thought this book was wonderfully written so even somone like me does not sew well, I can still create a costume to die for. I am always making costumes for something, but this book has really opened my eyes to new innovative ways to create something alot nicer than I would ordinarily make. Thank You Barb for the book, it helped me alot and I am sure I am not the only one.

Even though we had never before made a costume in our lives the book allowed both me and my wife to win a local costume contest. The clear and consise directions saved my life when I had to finish my costume the weekend my wife was out of town. And thanks to Ms Rogers we not only impressed our friends, we're $50 richer!

If you need to make a costume for an event or for a theatrical performance and you don't have the time, skill or interest in sewing from a pattern, then this book is for you. It is packed with clever ideas that transform old clothing into great costumes. The woman is a genius! On the down side, it is not geared to kids costumes, so you might be disappointed if that is what you are looking for. Also, be warned that some of the costumes shown for a particular show are not period or character correct in some cases (Jud in Oklahoma for example). If you are costuming a show, you should do your own research. Overall, though, this is a great book that I refer to often.

This book might be useful IF you were working with an elementary school drama club, in a big enough city to have dozens of thrift stores and IF you had absolutely NO skills at sewing, ability to read a script OR imagination. I ordered it because it looked like it might have some useful suggestions, but it is nothing but a record of how a specific garment was changed into a specific costume, mostly with hot glue. It's not even accurate as to when various musicals are set!

Great book. It was used but looked brand new. Arrived in a timely manner. Great ideas in the book. Gave a lot of interesting and innovative suggestions.

I had my doubts at first when the author said she could assemble a costume with just glue,some seam ripping and little to no sewing. Then I saw the costumes. Wow! I just wish the pics were IN COLOR(hint,hint) so I could fully appreciate them. Now were's my glue gun?;-)