FIRST AND FOREMOST…… Chase and I took the last big load of my costume stuff out to my parents last Monday night. And…
I GOT IT ALL IN THE CLOSET
Guysssss… that is like 80% of my costumes all shoved into one closet. I mean I can’t GET to anything, but i can’t believe I got it all in there.
Kept a few things out I’ll need over the summer for ABC and possibly as far out as Dragon Con. And I’ve found a few straggling things that need to be taken over – a wig box that was for whatever reason in our closet. My aurora jewelry that was in my jewelry box. A few swords and my Wasp wings that were in a corner of my office. But all of that will still fit. There’s still some room at the top LOL
The rest of the week was packing. There is so much packing. OMG we have too much stuff.
For May the 4th I FINNNNNNALLY got the Leia bun video Chase took of me a while back uploaded.
It’s up over at my Patreon, it’s a public post so you don’t need to be a patron to view it. It covers my clip-on ponytail version I’m currently using it, the wefted version I did for aaaaaages and the alternate sock-bun wefted version.
I wish I’d kinda written out my talking points. I’m not used to narrating as I’m doing stuff and I kinda repeated myself a few times and probably left some info out. But I’m glad to have it done. I’ll have it posted over here soon, too.
Also on Friday we headed up to Jackson for the weekend. Saturday ran a few errands there in Jackson… I got 2 more LOTR blind boxes and got my first double. I now have 2 Pippins. But I did get a Frodo so that was nice. Going to give the extra Pippin to somebody.
Had a lot of fun with the Chewbacca filter on Snapchat. Here’s my granddad as Chewie.
And me..
I got my Leia hair and makeup done as soon as we got home and we headed over to the stadium for Star Wars night! I wore my new dress, which I’ll have thoughts on posted below. The nice thing was that I could go in normal clothes and put the dress on inside. So no walking past a huge crowd in full costume on the way in. Yay!
It was rainy all Friday and then Saturday morning. But it cleared up by the afternoon and we had really nice weather.
Ok now some Leia thoughts.
The good:
1. The fabric of the new dress is SOOOOOO much lighter. It was super comfy to wear. I usually get a little overheated at this event in the old dress. Didn’t at all in this one. The higher side slits helped with that.
2. Being able to fit the dress over my buns because my keyhole is finally long enough!
3. Back of the collar looks nice. There’s a pic below.
4. It’s not as short as I thought it was.
5. It moves beautifully.
Only shot I got of the back.
The bad:
1. So I think the problem I was thinking was “too short” is actually more that the hem is crooked. I think is due to me constantly monkeying with it and sewing/undoing it/redoing it 3-4 times. I’m not sure this is fixable, as I don’t think there’s enough room on the inside to fix it.
2. I apparently totally forgot to iron out the fold line up the front. D’oh. At least that’s an easy fix.
3. The hems are drooping a bit because I didn’t do the understitching on this one. I was going to go BACK and do it, but then I was like, why go to the trouble if it’s too short and I’m just going to remake it? But….. it would look 10x better if I’d just go do it.
4. Collar needs interfaced. It was pretty droopy. My old one didn’t need it (heavier fabric), so I didn’t even think to put it in this one. I really don’t want to have to take it apart but….. depends on what I decide to do.
5. I think it’s too wide thru the torso.
6. My side slits look AGGRESSIVELY high but I think that’s just due to my old boots being a bit too short. I think once I have my new boots done to the proper height they will look correct.
So up until Saturday I was 100% just going to scrap this one and totally remake it. Now I don’t know. I could open it up and do the understitching, add the interfacing to the collar, take up the side seams and that would fix all but #1 of the “bad” problems above. It may even help that uneven hem problem? Maybe? I don’t know.
I think what I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and do those fixes. And then wear it once more and see what it looks like. If I still think the uneven hem is bothersome, I’m going to sell it and remake it.
I’ve also got the new belt and boots to tackle… mom found a pair of ankle boots in her closet that she was going to toss but texted them to me to see if I wanted them first… and I think they’ll be a good base for my new boots. Yay! I just need to repaint the sole. I’m going to strip most of the upper fabric and rebuild it off the sole. Heel height and toe shape is good. This should be an interesting project. And like I’ve said before, I have everything I need for my belt except white leather dye/paint, I just need to get it and get started.
And in the non-fixable “bad” side… gosh I just looked old in some of the photos. I didn’t even bother with some of the photos because I hated how I looked. I guess I just need to transition over to TFA/TLJ Leia and accept I’m not 20 years old anymore LOL. Paaaaart of it is how bad my skin has gotten. In some of the shots where I had a lot of direct sunlight on one side of my face it really showed how bad it is right now. The worst of it cleared up when I got off that bad brand medication, but I still have a lot of little bumps and redness and annoying stuff going on on my cheeks. I’m going to make a dermatologist appointment soon and see what can be done.
Thank god for Snapchat filters LOL
Speaking of TLJ Leia, I did get the new mockup pieces cut out but never got them put together over the weekend. Maybe tonight or tomorrow. I had wanted to do it yesterday, but we got home later than planned, and then got to packing. We went HARD at the master bedroom closet and got it pretty much totally cleaned out. YAY. Bunch of stuff in the bedroom and my sewing room too. Making another storage unit run tonight.
Dad’s birthday was tuesday so we went out to dinner with my parents last night… was going to come home and watch Westworld but we were too tired!
Last night was weird. First, I was on the couch and saw a sudden flash of light outside our kitchen window. Looked like a flashlight or something. Which our backyard is fully fenced in and looked so there shouldn’t be a flashlight back there. Chase went and looked and didn’t see anything. He said he thought there was some smoke in the air so maybe a firework? Now that I know storms were started to roll thru last night, could have been lightning. Or a neighbor in the yard with a light and it just came thru the fence slats just right. But it got me in a weird headspace because I’ve been waaaaaaaaaaaaay too into everything on the Golden State Killer/EARS/ONS lately.
Then I woke up around 2 to the sound of thunder. Only the sound of thunder never stopped. It was a constant dull rumble and it would go up every couple of minutes into heavier thunder. With lightning flashes interspersed. But in the dead of the night it was so weird and the constant rumble was so strange I almost woke Chase up. Never heard rain. Eventually just fell back asleep. And then this morning everything felt weird. So just a weird start to the week.
ART STUFF!
Only have 2 more to add since last post. Both Clone Wars Padmes so nothing to compare them to.
The grey/gold with the crazy hair:
And the red sorrow cape:
I think I may go back and do some kind of design on the underdress because it just looks super plain. In some images it looks like there’s maybe a paler pink stripe down the front? I tried that but it looked so much like Belle’s “Something There” dress LOL. So I think I might try to draw on a subtle all-over design… that might help it look a little less shape-less, too, maybe?
(edit: the version you see above is a later, tweaked version where I went back and added some dress detail.)