Meet the Costume Shop Employees

Cindy Guthrie: Cindy is the costume shop manager. She works an average of 60 hours a week and has been the manager for 7 years. She learned how to sew as a young girl and has been sewing every since.

Allie: Allie is a costume shop seamstress. She has worked in the shop for two years. She averages 15-20 hours a week.

Kristin: Kristin in a costume shop seamstress. She has been employed for one month.

Bethany: Bethany is a costume shop seamstress and also teachers her own clogging class. She switches between her costume shop hours and her dance teaching hours.

Niki: Niki has been working in the costume shop for almost two years. She learned how to sew when she was 10 but did not have true experience until she got a job in California working for a custom dance costume shop.

Introduction

When I tell people what I do for a living they seem somewhat amazed. I'm sure their shock and surprise comes from the image they get of me crouched over a sewing machine for 12 hours a day, packed in a tiny room with 5o other people...a sweatshop, in other words. But my experience as a seamstress has been everything but that. I have had the opportunity to work with incredible people and learn amazing life lessons.

Being a seamstress feels completely normal, nothing too extravagant or unbelievable about it. I started working for a company called Tericloth after my first semester at BYU Idaho. It was my first experience using industrial machines. They were a little intimidating at first but after about two weeks I fell in love. Because of deadlines I learned how to sew very quickly, laughing and enjoying time with my coworkers on the way. This is where I learned all the basic and complex areas of sewing. We mainly focused on dance costumes for local studios, but there was the occasional alteration. It was an amazing day when my boss handed me a set of costumes and I knew how to put it together from the picture only, no other direction required. My favorite part of the job was seeing the dance teams in the costumes I had made. Sadly, after a year of working I had to leave to return to school.

I was fortunate enough to get a job working for the BYU Idaho Dance Costume Shop. For the

last year I have worked 15-20 hours a week and gone to school full time. I love my job as a

seamstress and wish to share with my readers the different aspects of my job. My blog will

include pictures, videos, a step by step on basic sewing, interviews, events and costume shop

humor.

Right now the costume shop is getting ready for a huge performance called Extravadance.

Stay tuned and join me and my coworkers as we get ready for this big event.