Hi! I actually did costume stuff this weekend! I am here to tell you about it!
But first let’s start with Friday. Both Chase and I worked a half day Friday – why? Because Chase’s documentary Finding Tobey had its first screening that night!! He has been working on this for FOUR YEARS, and it’s finally done. We decided to both take a half day so we had plenty of time to get everything ready – we were able to get into the screening room at 4 so we had some time to kill beforehand. Went and had lunch, and then went over to the art store (I got some dye), and then to Cooper Young to Burke’s, 901 Comics and Two Rivers bookstore.
Then time to set up the room!
The movie wasn’t until 7:30 so we had a good long time to get everything set up and do sound tests and whatnot.
(And I wore my Finding Tobey shirt too of course)
One of the interviewees is also an artist and had some of her art on display – we ended up buying this one š
We expected around 90 people based on the RSVPs. Set up 86 chairs. Ran out of chairs by 7:20 and had to bring in the backups. More people came and it ended up being standing room only!
The former mayor came by, too! So awesome!
It got a roaring round of applause at the end and Chase was so relieved and happy. And I’m so proud.
The only hitch was one of the speakers went out – it was the one right over the front right section which is where we and my whole family was sitting. So thankfully we think the only people the speaker outage effected was my family who can easily see it again so that was lucky! LOL.
Saturday was errand running and I woke up with a migraine š Boo! Still have it today, it’s dogged me all weekend (saturday storms caused a pressure change.)
Went to Joann — my goal was originally to find base pink fabric for the Big Pink Ruffle Monster I’m working on next. And I completely FORGOT to do that. Got distracted by Leia. But it was ok because my fabric samples for the Pink Thing got delayed — still aren’t here yet — and I really wanted those with me so I’m going to go back next weekend.
So the only thing I got was some blue fabric I was hoping would work for the underdress for TFA Leia. The colour wasn’t quite right but not a bad starting point. (I’m going more for the onscreen colour than the more muted offscreen/display look). Also got a yard of Lion King fabric for making a pillow case for Chase and two patterns (butterick patterns were $2):
With that blue fabric – I figured if I couldn’t get it to dye, I’d be making a Wonder Woman blue dress from the new movie, LOL.
First dye test did nothing. Didn’t have the water hot enough. Round two with hotter water and 10 minute stuck:
Yay! So that’s a go. I need to cut the green a little and add a little grey I think and it will work well. Only problem? To get this to work I had to keep the water on a boil the entire 10 minutes. I don’t actually have a dye pot – typically i just get the water boiling in my 2 biggest pans, put them in the sink and dye the fabric in the sink. So I knew I was going to have to actually buy a dye pot for this, but that’s a Sunday story.
After dinner we ran up to Hobby Lobby because I need different dye, and Simplicity was on sale there, soooo
Buncha stuff I don’t need.
Onto Sunday!
I got a dye pot!
I think I actually need a cauldron I can put on our fire pit in the backyard but this will do for now LOL. Or I can make 100 tamales. Who knows.
I also conducted an experiment I’ve been meaning to try for a few months now. Remember last year when I messed up my Edith dye job, freaked out, and completely redid the dress part in new fabric?. Yeah so I still had all those original panels. I had tried colour remover back then, didn’t come off, just left it looking streaky. I’ve just had them folded up in my fabric drawer ever since, but I’ve wanted to try removing the colour again to see if I could use them for… something else.
It worked MUCH better this time around. Not sure what the difference once. Here’s 4 of the panels soaking in the sink in the colour remover….
And then I realized I forgot a panel so that went in a few minutes later, but you can see the colour difference:
I let them soak in there for a while, then hung them outside to dry. I was COMPLETELY blown away by how well it worked this time, especially in comparison to how poorly it worked a year ago. Maybe I had a bad box??? It’s basically back to white now.
Oops. I guess Padme lake dress Mark 5 is coming.
This is just the 5 Edith panels — still hemmed! — pinned together to see if it was going to work. I think it is. The sides might be a little short in the back, and it’s going to have to have a seam on each side back but I think I can make that work. Obviously the train section needs trimmed down.
I also pulled out the outer dress from Lake Dress #3 – it doesn’t have the inner dress anymore but I saved the outer dress because it’s a really nice silk blend I thought I could mayyyybe use as the inner dress on the next one. Look how wrinkled it is! LOL.
Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to work as the inner dress. I’m going to take the sleeve gathers apart and iron everything out and try again but I don’t think there’s enough vertical pieces. So if that doesn’t work I think I’ll go back to using some nice white spandex like last time, because that was very nice and comfortable.
I also pulled out my original mock-up pattern pieces for the outer dress from 2006. This was some cheap fabric I bought at walmart specifically for mock-ups. Now I’m thinking about maybe using it as my TFA Leia outer dress?? The pattern pieces are just big squares and there’s more than enough. I’d have to back it in something because it has a stretch. I dunno. Still thinking about it.
So that’s it. Tonight I’m probably going to do another test dye on the under-dress fabric and maybe play around with the lake dress some more. I’m hoping my pink monster fabric swatches finally show up today, too.