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Costume College Plans!

This is going to be an interesting year for me, because I am not teaching at Costume College!  Not because I don’t love CoCo, or love teaching, but because I need a break.  I’ve been teaching there for a number of years, and while I started with one class per year, I went off the deep end and have been teaching generally about three classes for the past few years.  Not only is it a huge amount of work to prep a class, but then if it’s a demo or hands on you have to source and haul all the materials.  But what’s hardest is when you teach multiple classes, they invariably conflict with any class you want to take!  So while I really enjoy teaching, and will I’m sure return to it next year (maybe at a lower roar), this year my schedule is wide open and I actually have a shot at taking a few classes that I’m excited about!  This will be very novel.  I also plan to sleep in and generally be more relaxed.  (I was starting to think I’d take fewer costumes this year, too, just to be more relaxed, but then I started counting the Friday night 18th c. ice cream social, the gala, the Sunday tea…).

So, I’m putting in for the following limited classes:  Janea Whitacre’s fly fringe class (will have to skip the tea if I get in — but DUDE, how cool would it be to learn how to make 18th c. fly fringe???), Mela Hoyt-Heydon’s hat class (not terribly thrilled about early Victorian, but I would like to learn the techniques of wire framed hats to repurpose for other eras, and Mela is an immensely talented and experienced costumer), and Lisa Vandenberghe’s silk ribbon embroidery (she’s studied as Lesage in Paris!  And the pieces she’s made are really gorgeous).

Who knows which classes I’ll get into — if I get into the fly fringe and/or the hat class, I’ll be really happy.

5 thoughts on “Costume College Plans!

  1. This is the first time I will be attending Costume College. Sent in my money and application. How do you register for classes? There are so many great classes and I’m anxious to really get into some of them.

    Nora

  2. Nora – it sounds like you just registered? The usual process goes like this: you register, then in April or May you get sent the class descriptions. Most classes are unlimited (ie no sign up in advance), but some classes are limited in # who can attend and require early sign up. When you get the class descriptions, you get instructions on how to sign up for limited classes — basically, you can pick up to 4 and you rank them in order of priority. They go through everyone’s selections and figure out who gets into what class. Everyone gets in to at least 1 limited class; you could get up to all 4 of your choices, but usually I’d say it’s 1-3.

    Since you sound like you’ve just registered, as soon as they get your registration they’ll mail you the class info. As soon as you get it, pick your limited choices and send it back in right away! The sooner you get your choices to them, the more likely you will be to get the classes you want.

    And a caveat — if you sign up AFTER the limited class sign up process is complete (I believe the deadline to get forms in is May 9), you may not get into any limited classes — depends if there are any still with room, I believe. But you should be good to go if you’ve sent in your stuff already!

  3. I put in for Ribbon embroidery, making a fan, precious metal clay, and pressing. Fly fringe sounds awesome but I already had tea tickets.
    So you’ll teach the rest of us fly fringe after CosCol, right?
    Catherine

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