a trip and a lot of beading

Hi everybody!
So yeah, last week was bad. My heart hurts and doubly so for my parents.
And I really don’t have a lot of sewing stuff to show you guys today. Because it’s just been a week of non-stop beading. Which gets repetitious to keep taking pictures of.

But I do have a few things to talk about. Thursday, it was hair appt day!


Before


After

I feel like myself again! It was fun to be a brunette for a while. But I was really missing my red hair. It took just under 2 and a half hours to get me back down to it, LOL. I’m very happy.

Thursday mom texted me and asked if I needed any help with beading my appliques. She wanted something to do. So I gave her the 2 front ones I hadn’t finished yet to do the seed beads on. So once I get those back from her, I just need to do the cording.

Saturday Chase & I drove up to Nashville. I worked on getting the cording done on my appliques during the ride.


I got all the cording done during the road trip, between the 3 hours Saturday and the 3 Sunday.
I’m not TOTALLY stoked about the cord I had to use… but I wasn’t able to find anything else that looked metallic gold enough and could fit thru my biggest needle eye quick enough, as I mentioned last post. My 3rd option showed up saturday (a day too late), but it didn’t look that different than the one I ended up using, so it was a moot point.

So we got to Nashville and had lunch with Derek and Beth! Then we were able to check into our hotel early… we stayed at Union Station, I’ve always wanted to stay there!
The lobby is beautiful.

Our room looked out over the patio and the train yard.

Beautiful tile in the lobby areas.

My only nitpicks about staying there… were the weird decorating choices in the rooms? Turn of the century building, mid-century furniture in the lobby and… cow hide and framed photos of Eddie Vedder in the rooms? LOL


A little disconnected from the turn of the century look steps away LOL
And the fact that the room didn’t have a bathtub. We specifically went with this hotel because they said they did. But apparently because we agreed to a “lower” floor when we checked in since it was available right then, we didn’t have a tub. (I am NOT a shower person. I hate them.)

Anyway. We napped, I did some beading, then we headed over to the City Winery for the show – we were seeing the Dollop live! One of my fav podcasts. We got there early so we could eat dinner first. Show started at 7 and it was hilarious, and we had pretty good seats!

Next morning Chase was awake at 5:30 and wanted to go ahead and hit the road home. I made him wait til at least 6:30, LOL. Drove on back, stopped in Jackson to say hi to Mema and Daddy Bob and was home by 10:30.

Luna was glad to see us.


(Chase was trying to play his video game. Luna climbed right on top of him right in the way LOL)

I focused on beading ALL DAY. I’m really hoping if I keep digging in, I can be done by tomorrow.

Friday I did work on my Amidala wig a bit, though I have nothing to show.

Chase helped me get the proportions of the foam build-outs right. I got them covered in spandex and ready to sew in, but haven’t done that step yet. Going to work on a bit tonight again, because I’ve GOT to get this figured out. I still have Crait to style, too, but that’s not near the challenge.

And I’m going to go ahead and post this even though I was going to wait til closer to Dcon…. Frankie & Shawn styled one of my wigs for me for Dragon Con and I picked it up Thursday.
OMG you guys.

I’M SCREAMING
It’s so perfect!!!!!
I drove home like had a loose baby crawling in my front seat. It’s currently clamped up away in one of the closets to keep it safe.
The best part is I can use this with 2 costumes. One of the new surprise costumes, and I’ll be wearing it with my 60s Jean Grey, too. YAY!

Also HOORAY for not having to deal with one more wig to style LOL

So a to-do list:
Amidala:
1. Finish the appliques (by tomorrow?!)
2. Shorten collar on Amidala robe
3. Shorten sleeves on robe (they are too long)
4. Get appliques sewn on
5. Get foam inserts sewn into wig cap
6. Form hair around the inserts
7. Build center piece/ponytail piece
8. Get it all assembled

Leia:
1. Style Crait Leia wig
2. Finish Leia ring

Surprises:
1. Finish sharpie-ing tips of wig for surprise costume/get bangs trimmed
2. Finish painting the glasses

Etc:
1. Get wig box from my parents’ house
2. Get new bin for dcon
3. Do my dcon food/makeup shopping
4. TRY EVERYTHING ON BECAUSE I HAVEN’T ON ANY OF THEM
5. Pack
6. ????
7. Go to DragonCon

One new art-y thing this week.


This one was based on 2 pieces on concept art – my headcanon is that this is desert warrior Padme who stayed behind on Tatooine to rescue slaves.

While I was working on it, the design just kept reminding me of something. Finally it clicked, they TOTALLY repurposed this design for Riyo Chuchi on the Clone Wars. I’m glad I realized that AFTER I’d done the bulk of the work on it so it didn’t influence my interpretation of it.