Hey! I’m behind on posting. Here’s what’s been going on lately.
Last week I made a dress for a friend for Halloween!
It’s not a great picture of it. The main part of the dress is a really neat, heavy matte knit that I really liked working with. My only issue was that I didn’t have the best needle for it, so when I went to sew the main hem, it was pulling the weave. So I ended up finishing up the hem with hem tape, which I ended up really liking how smooth and finished it looked. The sleeves were two layers of a silver net mesh and the neckline has fabric flowers around it.
After that I cleaned up my sewing room and then had a massive freakout and wrecked it again. Why? Because my Gryffindor robe disappeared. And I need it for the Harry Potter double feature we’re doing Halloween night.
This is almost every single item in my closet thrown in a heap on the floor as I tried to find my robe. My sweater and skirt were in there, but my robe wasn’t with it, which was weird, so I began to think it must have fallen off the hanger and gotten stuck somewhere. So I took everything out. No luck! I started digging in drawers, then bins, then in my storage chairs… everywhere! And it was nowhere to be found. I even dug into my costume closet and into all the bins in the prop room and Kevin’s bin and Chase’s bins in the garage.
The thing is, I’ve been wanting to make a new robe, so at first I was like, “oh well guess I have to go buy fabric and make a new robe for Halloween sad face” … but the thing is, I’ve been wanting to make a RAVENCLAW robe. And none of my other pieces (sweater, tie, etc) match Ravenclaw. I didn’t want to have to make another Gryffindor robe when it’s not really what I wanted. Then I tried to calm myself down because I mean really, I don’t NEED the robe, I had the rest of the costume. (Oh and Kevin’s tie was lost, too. Luckily I found about halfway through my mad search.)
But that robe is my oldest still used costume piece. That robe is from my 2001 version of Hermione. That robe is probably older than half the kids that’ll be at the showing Saturday night. I was beginning to panic starting to think maybe it got caught up in with some trash and thrown away by mistake.
Finally, after 4 hours of searching, while laying on the floor moping because it wasn’t underneath the bed, I thought, I wonder if it’s in the Dragoncon bin? I hadn’t looked in there because obviously I did not take Hermione to Dragoncon. But right after Dragoncon I’d had to dig some stuff out there, and when I moved the bin out of my office, I had just grabbed everything on the floor and stuck it back in the bin and closed it up.
I opened it up and there it was. It had gotten caught up in all that post-Dcon mess.
I also recently made a little black suede bodice. I was really just wanting to play around with the way I make bodices like this and see how much I could reduce the sometimes-bulkiness of them, just to see how slim-fitting I could get it while still retaining the structure. It’s one layer of faux suede, one of lining, and an interior of cotton with the spiral steel boning sandwiched in using boning casing instead of a second layer of cotton like I usually do.
I ended up throwing some grommets and eyelets on it to finish it off, and threw it on etsy.
It’s definitely a size SMALL or XS… here’s the etsy link.
And then, I had some green crushed velvet. I decided to make a Merida dress because I want one. It’s definitely not a serious costume since I’m making it out of crushed velvet and I don’t intend to get a wig, but just a for fun thing.
After I cut it, I wondered if I should use the wrong side (pictured above)? To me it looks significantly better than the crushed velvet side. The backside has a little bit of a nap making it almost look like suede at a quick glance. It’s not IDEAL because you can see the weave lines on the wrong side… but better than the crushed velvet maybe? I asked on instagram.
All the comments it got back agreed wrong side. So last night I got it all basically sewn together, and played around with some scraps of trim I had.
I’m pretty happy with it so far for a quick little project! I’ll have to get some more of that trim for the bottom but I know Hancock has it… I swear they’ve had that same trim since 2003 at least (when I bought it originally for Eowyn! that’s what that scrap is from!). I see it everytime I’m in there, “There’s my Eowyn trim.”
I may see if they have one that looks similar but a little thinner, to put above the larger band.
Chase put together our pumpkin last night:
And I discovered our magic bands fit nicely as a cat collar, but Luna got all sad because she thought she was gonna get to go to didny worl.
Finally, arrrrrrrt
