Costumer Trades Divas For Dolls Woman Creates Miniature Works Of Art

If you’ve sewn Edwardian costumes for Broadway, styled Renaissance garments for the San Francisco Opera, dressed Anthony Hopkins in flowing capes for “The Tempest,” transformed Charlton Heston into Macbeth and fashioned Old West outfits for Hollywood, where do you go next?

How about Ellensburg?

Ellensburg, after all, is where Empress Eugenia of Spain, Napoleon III and Sir Walter Raleigh all have resurfaced.

The 5-inch versions, anyway.

After a 25-year career making costumes for theatrical, operatic, ballet, movie and television productions, Carole Sahlstrand moved to Ellensburg 18 months ago to be near her family.

Switching gears and dimensions, she turned her creative eye on the miniature-doll market and made the transition into a world where 12 inches in real life reduces to one.

Sahlstrand’s one-of-a-kind creations hardly can be called doll clothes; rather, she specializes in historically accurate period pieces, ranging from the 1450s to the 1940s.

Her talent and meticulous workmanship have not gone unnoticed.

“I’ve been in the miniature business for 20 years, and I’ve never seen more exquisite work,” said Vi Bronson, founder of a Yakima miniature club.

Two of Sahlstrand’s specialties are 19th-century ballerina costumes, resplendent in pink damask, lace and tulle, and men’s 18th-century French coats. The former reflect her own classical dance training; the latter are a natural outgrowth of her stint as head of the men’s costume department at the San Francisco Opera in the 1980s.

Opera, in fact, was her favorite venue during her theater days because it requires so much period clothing.

While creating those period pieces, Sahlstrand became fluent in both Italian and German, de rigueur for communicating with divas and bassos, who almost always speak one of the two languages.

Part clothing historian and part scientist - she has a dual degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Minnesota - Sahlstrand, 58, didn’t launch her couture career in opera; instead she began as a “stitcher,” or person who sews a costume together, for a British designer on Broadway in New York.

Her big break came when she was elevated to costume “maker,” an artisan who studies the designer’s drawing and devises the pattern for the costume. She, or he, takes the theater from two dimensions to three.

“Half of being a maker is organizing it so that costumes are ready at the right time for the right people and then fitting them. It’s the ultimate team sport,” Sahlstrand said.

She quickly learned that costuming is a blend of craftsmanship, alacrity and adrenalin rush - the outfit has to be complex enough to represent an era but easy enough to don or shed between scenes - followed by abject relief when the curtain comes down.

It’s also walking on pins and needles at dress rehearsal time when “makers” and actors mutually discover a sleeve too long, a hem that dips or a too-tight waist.

Being a “maker” also meant mastering clothing history: “While designers do the basic research for accurate period clothing, ‘makers’ also have to know how things were supposed to look,” Sahlstrand explained.

That knowledge now manifests in her miniature designs; depending on the era, Sahlstrand’s women are festooned with ruffs at the neck, lace “deceivers” under their bosoms, puffy sleeves, velvet chokers, corsets, hoop skirts, bustles made from pipe cleaners, pantalettes and petticoats.