Keren Huyter has turned a lifelong love for sewing and design into a booming business, all from the confines of her home studio.
Huyter House Sewing and Design offers sewing services including custom costuming, which is becoming a large part of her business.
Huyter is self-taught, having had no formal training outside of a semester of sewing in Grade 7. She has learned through constant practice and trial and error.
“I just costumed Shuswap Theatre’s I Had a Job I Liked. Once and also Just for Kicks just wrapped up this year and I do their dance costumes,” Huyter said.
Huyter is also in the process of designing costumes for Opera Kelowna’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, a project that she said will be among her biggest ever.
Huyter will be designing and sewing costumes for seven main characters, about 19 supporting characters and a 33-person chorus for the opera.
“It’s going to take me all summer; the show opens in Kelowna at the beginning of August,” she says.
While working with tight deadlines for her costume work, Huyter also regularly does dress alterations, a particularly busy occupation in the weeks leading up to high school graduation.
Huyter also pitched in for the local relief effort for Syrian refugees by making maternity dresses for one of the refugees.
When asked what her most challenging project in the past has been, Huyter said it was making puppets for Shuswap Theatre’s production of Little Shop of Horrors.
“It wasn’t a lot of sewing, it was making puppets, it was a little outside my area of expertise, but it opened up a lot of opportunities for me.”
Another challenging but rewarding project Huyter referred to was the costumes for Just for Kicks dance studio’s ballet production of The Lion King.
“It was a little unconventional, their main lions, we did them romantic ballet style, but with the supporting characters we went completely Disney,” Huyter said, removing colourful Timon and Pumba costumes from their hangers. “It was a little interesting to watch them trying to figure out how to dance in them.”
Huyter’s studio is packed with costumes and other previous projects. Huyter’s collection dates all the way back to a Helen of Troy costume she made when she was in Grade 11 from a sheet and curtain.
Many of the costumes on Huyter’s racks are Halloween costumes she made for herself, her husband and four sons. Past Huyter family Halloween costume themes include Lord of the Rings, Ghostbusters and classic movie monsters.
