The Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild Presents:
Costume Academy 2010

Saturday, March 20, 2010 - 10:30am-5:00pm
Bay Area Christian Connection, 810 Clay Street, Oakland, CA

Instructor Bios

Bridget Bradley-Scaife

Bridget specializes in patterning and making reproduction clothing for historical reenactment. She started costuming at the age of 12 when she got involved in Renaissance Faires, since then she has expanded her love of costuming to all time periods as well as fantasy. Bridget teaches regularly at Costume College in LA and for the GBACG. She is an active member in the GBACG as the Guild's Web Administrator.

Mercurio 'Bunny' Ekaterin

Bunny has been a costume enthusiast since her first (and most disastrous) role as the sheep in a school play. With a bachelors degree in architecture and many years of thrifting as a starving student, Bunny has become most interested in recombining and transforming thriftstore finds into costuming pieces. Although equal-opportunity to all styles and periods, her current passion lingers in the late 18th century.

Ariyana Kylstram

Ariyana Kylstram is a professional performance artist when she isn’t working at her day job. She’s danced, acted, and flown through the air all over the Bay area, as well as such exotic locales as New York and Berlin. Her passion for performance has fueled a desire to create costumes that are polished and complete. She firmly believes that accessories, hair and makeup provide the details which sell an overall look.

Thena MacArthur

Thena obtained a degree in History and has been looking for any excuse to use it ever since. Her favorite period for costume is the Bustle Period (actually, all five of them) and there isn’t a hat out there that she doesn’t like. She is the owner and one of the milliners for Madame Grey and Compay, a business designed to provide great reproduction hats based on antiques and to offer SASS ladies authentic period accessories.

Lynn McMasters

Lynn has never stopped sewing after she was taught to sew by her grandmother, mother and aunt at a very early age. Other hobbies such as stained glass, woodworking, ceramics, silver jewelry casting and porcelain doll making might have taken her away from sewing but never really could. After discovering the Dickens and Renaissance Faires and that there where people out there that made and wore clothing she had only seen in movies she stretch her sewing talents and joined them with her talents for computer drafting to start a line of hat patterns, "...out of a portrait, hat patterns." To view Lynn's patterns check out lynnmcmasters.com. Lynn also loves to share her knowledge with others and teaches classes on costume subjects whenever she can. Lynn is a Graphic Artist/Scientific Illustrator by profession.

Perian Sully

Perian is a cultural heritage nerd, devoting her life to helping libraries, archives, and museums make their collections available to researchers and the general public. Then, because playing with antiques all day isn't nearly enough fun, she often comes home and makes splendid 18th or 19th century confections.

Lynne Taylor

Lynne Taylor is an accomplished Milliner who enjoys creating new hats and restoring old. About a year after her son Adam was born in 1998, she started school for millinery. By 2000 she had developed a fondness for sewing, wearing, and researching historical costume and millinery. Teaching others soon followed. In addition to attending as many costumed events as possible, Lynne served on the GBACG board as the Workshop Coordinator from 2002 through 2006. During her time as Workshop Coordinator she created Costume Academy. Currently, Lynne shares her vast knowledge and expertise by teaching workshops on millinery and other costuming topics as well as doing custom hats on commission. She lives with her son and two cats and several dust bunnies in Sacramento, Ca.

Feather Tippets-Rosica

Feather Tippets started sewing at the age of 3 and hasn't stopped since. Her maternal grandmother was a French Milliner and Feather believes this is where her creative drive comes from. Growing up in a northern suburb of Los Angeles, and attending design school, she interned at California Institute of the Arts in 1979 in the Costume Department, which became a springboard to her career. She has created costumes for film, television, theatre and private clients. Enjoying the research, her focus has narrowed to the historically accurate. She gives demonstrations and lectures on historical dress and holds sewing classes in Los Gatos and Morgan Hill where she draws on her extensive experience to teach modern sewing techniques and professional shortcuts used in the garment industry. She resides on a ranch in Morgan Hill, with her husband John, three Horses, a Beagle (a hound - thank you!), two Dogs, a herd of Belted Galloway Cattle, numerous Ostriches, two Camels, one Mule and a Cat.

Katie Vardijan

Katie travels around the US as an Independent Education Consultant for Elna, Inc., has taught numerous sewing classes here in the Bay Area, and does custom historical costuming. After studying with milliner Rose Cory in London she is currently fascinated by the fascinator and looks for any excuse to wear one.

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