IT’S ALMOST DONE!!!!
Ok so wow I haven’t posted in a week. Let me play catch up.
I got the lining reattached to the embroidered piece. I pleated and repleated and rerepleated and rerereplealted and rerererepleated it all onto the yoke about 500 times. I got the trim sewn on the tunic Wednesday night.
Friday I had the day off! But… I had a hair appointment I was getting cold feet over. I had decided to dye my hair brown so I wouldn’t be a red-headed Bespin Leia. I mean hey it’s taken me 10+ years to do this costume and 3 months of non-stop work I want to do it right, okkkkkkk? I was all excited for it because I’ve played around with going a dark brown for several years… I mean the first time I dyed my hair in 2002 I was going for a dark chocolate brown and it turned out dark red and I liked it so I kept it.
But then I started rethinking it. Mostly because I started thinking about the fact I’d have brown hair in all of our Disney photos before the con. And I was all, “but i don’t wannnnnna.”
I went through with it though and when I saw it dried and finished and I don’t feel bad about having brown hair at Disney anymore. I looooooove it.
(Also, there’s my Holtzmann glasses!)
I mean it’s actually what I was thinking of when I first tried it in 2002. And it was what I almost did in 2009.
It’s a demi-permanent dye which means it’ll slowly fade and I can go back to red pretty easily over the summer, which is probably what I’ll want for DragonCon. But I may go back to this permanently after that.
Kevin came too and also got his Luke Skywalker trim:
So cute.
Then we had lunch and I went home and worked. Got the trim sewn on the collar while watching RPDR:
Chase was out of town so I had planned on staying up really late to work until I was exhausted so I could fall asleep with out flipping out over every little noise. But then around 8:30 mom texted and asked if I was ok by myself, and that I could come stay with them if I wanted. So I got finished with the trim, made sure Luna had food, packed my bag and off I went. (I would’ve taken Luna with me if I had like… a travel litter box. And also if she weren’t such a jerk.)
And also it worked out well because Saturday morning I needed to go with mom up to the school to help finish off some of the play costumes. So we all went to get breakfast Saturday morning then up to the school for about an hour – sewing on snaps, hemming some pants, etc. Then I went back home to do more sewing.
I got the embroidered piece hemmed, and then finally got it all pleated onto the yoke in a way I was happy with, and started hand-sewing the cape into the lining of the yoke.
BTW I had thought my lining was too opaque but after sitting there on the floor, pinning the hem, with the light shining through it I realized it’s actually pretty good.
Mom texted and said I was welcome to come out and stay with them again, so since all I had left was hand-sewing, I packed up and went on out there. Got to use my old workspace of their dining room, haha. Laid the cape out on the table and started stitching the cape into the yoke. Though when I was done I wasn’t happy with the back, cut it out and repinned it again.
Sunday morning Chase called, his scooter had broken down on his back from Nashville, so I went ahead and went home to make sure the cat had food and to drop my stuff off in case I had to drive out and rescue him. Thankfully he was able to get it fixed and I didn’t have to go out there. (I also had a massive allergy attack Sun morning. Haven’t had that in a while. Itchy eyes, runny nose, stuffy head. Took some medicine and it helped.)
So anyway, sewing… I got the ribbon trim sewn onto the lining, got the excess cut out of the top interior of the cape and the armholes shaped. Put some bias tape on the top edges that are hidden just to keep them clean, then set about hand-sewing everything in place.
It’s wearable!!
OMG!!!
So now…
1. I need to sew the trim onto the cape.
2. I need to fix one issue down on the hem of the embroidered piece.
3. I am thinking about sewing small weights into the hem of the embroidered piece. Played around with sewing a coin in there and liked how it looked. We’ll see.
4. I want to do another line of sewing the cape into the yoke if I have time, just to be safe.
5. One of the shoulders of the yoke sticks up higher than the other side, I think I know how to fix it but have to be careful since I already have the trim sewn on. If it doesn’t work I’m living with it.
6. I think I may pop the snap tape off the back of the belt and put big heavy duty snaps instead. I bent over while wearing it and it snapped right off with these tiny snap-tape-snaps.
7. One sleeve on tunic still needs trim sewn on.
8. Need new extensions
9. Press everything
10. Sew snaps onto Kevin’s tunic
11. Get Chase to fix his belt
12. Need batteries for lightsaber
And I need to pack!!!
It’s coming right down to the wire but it doesn’t look like I’ll be still embroidering in the car on the way down, which was my nightmare LOL (seriously did I tell about the dream I had a while back? I had a dream that we were at Disney before the con and I realized I’d never finished the embroidery and I was trying do it in the hotel room while crying the whole time and calling my mom asking her to fedex my ANH Leia to me because I wasn’t going to be able to finish the embroidery… LMAO)
Oh and I have a throwback for today.
Everytime I go to my parents house I go to the closet in my old room which I never cleaned out. I took my clothes and left everything else when I moved out in 2008 LOL And it’s a time capsule. It still has posters on the wall I hung in like, 1999-2000. Books I haven’t read since then. So everytime I go over I stick my head in there and find a few things to take home. I figured if I did this often enough I’d eventually clean it out. (But that’s not really working. I’m going to have to just go over one day this summer and take everything out.)
ANYWAY, this time around I grabbed a photo – our photo-op with James Marsters back at Dcon 2003. I didn’t have a scanned copy on my computer anymore and I figured it was appropriate to rescan it with the 20th anniversary this year (What!).
We had this photo-op Sunday morning of the con and Ash was wearing her Ghost of the Robot shirt, so I decided I’d just wear regular clothes instead of a costume since I didn’t have anything Buffy-related. I did decide to curl my hair that morning so it would look nice for the photo. Then we got down there and they were doing the photo-ops IN the dealer’s room in the bottom of the Marriott, in the far corner back where the celebs used to sign. And they made us line up outside. So my curls completely fell out of my hair. But James Marsters was super sweet and gave us both hugs. I had this hanging up in my closet, though it slowly got a few layers of other posters and things over the top of it. It was still under there when I looked for it.