This weekend was a madhouse!
Thursday the last of my fabric came, so I got my dress panels sewn together, pleated, and attached to the yoke that night. Friday I got it hemmed and discovered my two front panels were a bit too short. At this point I didn’t even had time to freak out, just took some of my scrap fabric and made extensions. Oh well.
Friday night I ran out and got more dye, as well as some snap tape for the yoke closure. Later that night, Chase helped me dye the bottom of the dress. He stood on the counter holding the upper part of the dress while I guided the bottom into the dye.
I maybe could have gone a bit higher but you can imagine I was gunshy about getting it too high again.
Saturday was “get it finished” day. Chase had a bunch of errands to run so I spent the day finishing everything up, as much as possible. Saturday morning once it was dry, I tried it o…
It’s so much fun to walk around in. It flows so nicely. I am thinking of putting a wrist strap on the bottom of the hem so I can carry it easily to avoid being stepped on.
Then I focused on finishing up the neckline. I got the snap tape sewn into the neck opening, and reinforced the pearl buttons I already had there. Thankfully it worked well from the first get-go.
Then it was time for the scary part. I had to weather the thing š At this point I was kinda wishing I was doing the straight white clean version.
I started with the sleeves, and did some bloody sections on it just like I did for the gloves – using a wadded up paper towel and fabric paints. After I got a nice base down, I mixed up some dye that was mostly pearl grey, with a little brown and tiiiiny bit of scarlet, and dipped the sleeves into that. In the dyeing and drying process, I lost some of paint, so I went back in with a paintbrush and brought some of them back up a bit.
Next, the neckline.
I worked up another batch of dye, more pearl grey and brown and scarlet, just leaning more on the brown and scarlet than the grey this time around, but very thin. I dipped a paper towel into it and then just either dabbed the paper towel in place when I wanted the colouration, or flung it in areas so it sprinkled down onto the dress. I mostly concentrated on the neckline with that method, but then I watered down the dye even more and did some more splattering all over the dress with it.
The blood I did using what was left of my fabric paint I’d mixed up for the sleeves – this time I opted to paint it on, and just dabbled it in place with a small paintbrush. Then I went back over it very lightly with just a liiiitle bit of the paint on a paper towel.
It was fun, but like I said… scary. I was so afraid to mess it up again!
Yet another issue came up when I did my make-up test Sunday morning. I bought a little kit that came with two wounds – simple “scratches.” I was going to use the smaller of the two as the scratch across my cheek. I used some pros-aide and applied it, then did my makeup over the top of it. It just wouldn’t blend – the base colour of the “skin” around the wound was too different from my own (more yellow and darker) and my own make up kept clumping at the edges of it making the edges more apparent than they should have been. And everytime I moved my mouth in anyway, the edges of it would wrinkle up.
I decided not to mess with it. It’s more work than I want to deal with during a mostly-Disney trip. I decided I’d just do the blood instead, but then found out that both options for blood I’d bought were “non-drying.” which won’t work with my wig. Ugh. I do have some of the “coagulating” stuff, that you heat up and then when it sets it looks wet but it’s dry — it’s what I used for my Padme battle suit back in the day — but I don’t have anywhere to warm that up in a hotel room.
So I’m laming out and just painting it on with red/brown latex. Whatever. For a photoshoot I’ll do the coagulated blood and the scar and all that later on down the road.
Yesterday we had to run a gazillion errands — one of which we decided to run by the flea market and see if we could find a quick pouch to add to Kevin’s Luke belt, because there really wasn’t time to make one. Chase insisted that he’d seen plenty of dealers have that kind of stuff when he’d gone before. There wasn’t anything even remotely pouch-like, just a bunch of junk. The only decent table had a bunch of actual antiques and vintage things on it, and there I found this pretty little chalk Anne Boleyn for $2.50. So the trip wasn’t a total loss.
You can just barely make out her “b” necklace around her neck, but it’s there.
Then we got home and I started trying to finish ironing my pleats into the dress, which is the last thing I have to do. I got most of the front done:
So tonight and tomorrow night between finishing packing and everything I’ll finish ironing in the pleats. And if they fall out between now and Saturday — oh well, too bad.