Amanda Olsen

Background

About Amanda Olsen

Amanda Layne Olsen is a costume designer and sewist from the Merrimack Valley. She has a special interest in historical dress, and is primarily self-taught. She utilizes both hand-stitching and machine sewing techniques, and has experience with industrial sewing machines and sergers. Since the close of theatres in March of 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Olsen has been sewing from home, both making masks for sale or donation and fulfilling personal commissions for small handicrafts and live-action role play costumes. She has also been sewing linen garments on contract for Cloak and Dagger Creations since spring of 2022. Ms. Olsen has also been researching various historical periods of dress and creating elements from a variety of time periods, including Viking age Scandinavia, Renaissance Germany, and Late Victorian England, with plans to continue into Tudor England, Renaissance Italy, and Georgian Colonial America. Ms. Olsen has contracted extensively with the Firehouse Center for the Arts in several areas of their wardrobe department, including costume design and wardrobe supervision for their mainstage performances, and leading a theatrical costuming workshop for the drama club at Guillmette Middle School as part of the Firehouse's educational outreach program. Ms. Olsen's first production as costume designer and solo costume team was "The Keeper of the Tales" with Village Theatre Company in January of 2017. Her first personal costuming project of note was a recreation of Buttercup's infamous red riding dress from "The Princess Bride", the pattern of which Ms. Olsen hand-drafted after extensive research on the original's construction.