Review – Wind In The Willows by La Boite Theatre Company

wind-in-the-willows-la-boite-theatre-company

We were invited to attend Wind in The Willows at the La-boite Theatre Company. I took along my two children 5 and 7. Let me start by saying the play was great! Luke Carroll was great!

I recommend the play, but don’t take young kids. From 8+ onwards depending on their maturity would be ok, and they would need to know the story of Wind in the Willows to truly grasp the character changes. (My daughter read the book a few days before in preparation). I feel the play was misrepresented and here is why :

I had seen a few different advertisements around for the show. Obviously the write-ups were taken from the media release. Most had the image shown above of Luke Carroll. He did not wear this costume, he did not have whiskers on, he was not as cute as a mouse (as in the image). He was just a man in dungarees and changed in and out of a coat to transform between characters (hard for my usually concept grasping 5 year old to grasp this time).

Several write-ups (including this one at Creative Drinks and havenmagazine.com) had written that the costumes were magical and the sets meticulous. The costumes were creative and imaginative: at one point a towel on Luke Carroll’s head transforms him into a judge. Yes, very creative but really would kids get it? By the noise of children chattering and fidgeting around us I am guessing no. It clearly states it was aimed for 4-12 year old’s or anyone who enjoys playing in boats. Um there was only a few sections where the boat was used. I can see some boat loving kids rocking up for a “boat” themed play and being hugely disappointed and we mum’s trying to console them afterwards. Oh the pressures of being a mum, do they have any idea what false promises can do to children.

I personally found the acting very fast as it was hard to follow the lines at times and I am worried how children could follow. There were some fun bits where the audience participated including becoming a sock puppet at a party and making the chugging sounds of a train. These were towards the end which was good as the children who were getting restless and bored or distracted were brought back in again even if they had no idea what they were doing it for.

Check out this review by Rachel and this one too by Absolutetheatre which covers more of the actual story line.

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A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere.

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own.

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to.

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag.

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]

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