Sewing the skin for “The Light Fandango”

sewing1Today we began the monstrous job of turning 120 linear feet of theatrical scrim into the vehicle’s skin.

We worked with the guys at Rose Brand to choose “Celtic Cloth”, a fairly strong, lightweight and slightly flexible fabric that gives off a soft glow when lights are placed behind it. The beauty of it is that you can put any color light you want behind the stuff – from a theatrical floodlight to the Chinese-made RGB LED light strips that we’ll be using.

The first task was to sew a curtain-rod sleeve into the top edge of the fabric – 120 feet of 10-foot-wide cloth. Biomass here is helping move the fabric across our dining room table so that I can feed it into the sewing machine in a straight line.

Here’s a 3-second video slice of that chore – which took about five hours.