Inspirations & Alterations: "The Light in the Darkness" A Marching Band Show

photo by Beth Sison

My youngest daughter was a member of her high school marching band's color guard for 4 years. And like many high school activities, parent volunteers were needed in a number of areas. I started as a chaperone during her freshman year and then helped with uniform fittings and making costumes.

The first project I helped out with was making modifications to the color guard uniforms for a marching band show called "The Light in the Darkness." A show based loosely on the story of "Little Red Riding Hood." Uniforms were purchased for the guard - black unitards with removable red hooded shrugs. The coach's vision was to have the guard dressed in these uniforms with a few wearing long red circle skirts in the beginning of the show and then all transforming into wolves by the end. Everything we made had to be easy to take on and off quickly.

Idea - A black zippered vest that looked "wolf like", a wolf mask, fur somewhere on the arms and legs. Long red circle skirts that opened on one side, lined in black, for a dramatic effect when the kids performed. We needed to make 15 wolf sets and about 8 skirts.

And here is how we got there:

The vest was made from black spandex with a front zipper. Each vest was trimmed in fur, front and back. Half of the vests were trimmed with a black/white fur blend and the others in solid grey. Masks were made using a basic black face mask found at a local craft store. Ears were made from sturdy felt, trimmed in fur to match the vest and then stapled to the inside of mask.

The next step was to figure out how to add fur to everyone's arms and legs. We made elastic fur cuffs for the wrists - easy to take on and off. The legs were trickier - first thought was to make them as we did the wrist cuffs but they were hard to slip on and off the legs and didn't fit very well. So we decided to attach fur to a strip of elastic, wrap it around the leg and secure with velcro. Easy to take on and off, and it could be adjusted if needed.

For the circle skirt, I used a pattern. I know there is a mathematical way of figuring out how to make them but I like using patterns, I just do. I used a circle skirt pattern from Jalie Patterns:

https://jalie.com/jalie3457-circle-skirt-pdf-pattern

The skirts needed to be floor length so I just added additional inches to the pattern piece. The skirts were two layers - red spandex for the outer layer to match the shrug and the inner layer was a lightweight black spandex. The skirts were more like "circle wraps", they were held together with velcro at the waistline.

We had a dress rehearsal at practice... to make sure everything fit. Love this group!

The guard trying on their "Red" costumes

The wolves at band camp practice

I have to say, it was a challenge for the kids to change into wolves in a short period of time. I can't remember how many "counts" or "beats" they had, I'm pretty sure it was under 15. I volunteered for the shows and had to turn my back because watching them change made me too anxious. For the first few shows of the season, some went out with wrist cuffs and no leg cuffs, some went out with no masks but by the later shows they all managed to transform into wolves, successfully.