Ok this post is going to be whiny! Only because sewing was a pain in the butt this past week and then I had a DISASTER in my sewing room. But as usual let’s start at the beginning.
Last Monday we got Kevin’s bed assembled!
I’m hoping to paint it (the room not the bed) sooner rather than later. And get some curtains up in there – his room is one of the few that has a window on that side of the house and it gets WARM in there in the afternoon.
Tuesday I got these in the mail!
I haven’t had a MST3K shirt since the 90s. Back when I ordered my weird tshirts from catalogues and they never had women’s sizes (duh) or even smaller sizes. SO I was this tiny girl walking around in men’s large or XL. I had a Crow and Tom tshirt that was so big it came to my knees. I slept in it for years. I’m guessing it’s probably in my parents’ attic somewhere.
So, it’s nice to have one that actually fits cute.
MIRROR ATTACK! AS in we attack the mirror, not the other way around.
So we have this mirror/counter in the corner of the living room. It used to be a wet bar but the sink was removed by the previous owners ages ago (tho the plumbing is still under the counter). The mirror seriously creeps me out (I don’t like seeing movement out of the corner of my eye when walking through the living room at night…) so this was one of the first things I requested Chase do now that’s he’s done traveling for work.
Taped off
BOOM!
So Chase is going to be sanded these areas down and repairing them, and then we can paint over it. Thankfully the previous owners left alllllll the paint they used so we can paint this area to match until we get the whole living room/entryway painted eventually.
Altho Chase said the wall behind the mirrors was previously painted, and dang it that’s about the colour we want to paint everything. Haha.
Speaking of which we are now on paint tester #4 and #5 trying to find the right grey. The first 3 have all looked totally neutral in the store but look BLUE on our wall. Trying to edge warmer.
I only put one costume on this form last week and that was Mon Mothma. Only to realize at the end my box of costume jewelry pieces (including Mon Mothma’s necklace/chain thingie) is all still at my parents.
SO. Sewing for the past week has MOSTLY been screaming over Chase’s suit.
And I have basically no pics of this except for
Because it mostly just looks like a wad of white fabric on the floor at all times. I don’t have a form to put it on!
I think I’ve about got the body of the suit down – minus the pockets (why do guys need so many pockets on a jacket, there are 4, some jackets of mine have ZERO this is clear favoritism in the jacket market). Mock-up #1 has made it to the phase where the facings are sewn in. The collar looks like CRAP but that’s because A) I have no interfacing in this version, and B) I didn’t understand how these pieces were connecting/how it was going to turn out, so I didn’t take much care sewing them together. Once I flipped it and was like OOOOOH I see, I now know where I need to slow down and maybe do it by hand to get the seam line correct.
I have not yet done the sleeves, or the one alteration I need to make to the front edges of the suit – I’m planning on doing those next and finishing the bottom edge this week. I’m also going to tackle the pockets one more time as the pattern calls for… the way this pattern wants me to do welt pockets is ridiculous and was making me scream last week. The way I learned to do them for Peggy is just one piece of fabric creating the welts and the pocket! This pattern calls for 4 pieces plus a flap and it’s just so many moving parts that my first FOUR trial runs of it all looked like crap. I’m going to try one more time, if it doesn’t work, I’m going to make my own pattern to create the pockets the way I know how with one piece of fabric.
Speaking of which. this pattern’s directions are absolute trash. It’s like… imagine if you had the transcript of an instructor showing you how to make something. So you only had the words h/shee was saying, but you were missing out on the visual of seeing them actually make it. It’s literally like these pattern directions are missing major nuances. And the illustrations are NO help at all. This is why I was wanting to buy a book on men’s tailoring so I had a sort of back up set of instructions — like I’ve had for my 18th century dresses and Jean Hunnisett’s book. But do you know how rare books on men’s tailoring are?! The only ones I could find on amazon were WAY more than I could spend on a book, library had NOTHING, and if you remember, the one I bought ended up being a women’s tailoring book (but you’d never know that from the cover or description).
One direction was attached 2 collar pieces together, matching notches. OK that’s simple enough. THERE WERE NO NOTCHES. I went back and checked the pattern piece, had I forgotten to cut the notch? Nope. There were no notches. I had no idea which way these two pieces were supposed to go together. I finally went and got one of Chase’s jackets so I could compare and thankfully that actually worked – his jacket was similar enough that I could see the shapes of the pattern pieces I had and figure out which way they were supposed to go.
So anyway, I’ve got fabric ready to go for mockup 2, which will be fully finished and wearable at the end. Making it out of some Star Wars cotton I had in my stash. Just have to get thru mockup #1 first… and… then… pants D:
Ok so sorry for the giant wall of text. I just can’t remember the last time I’ve been this frustrating and stonewalled by a sewing project.
Saturday we ran some errands and took Kevin with us just because. Like I said we went to Joann, I got the interfacing for mock up #2, some more muslin for finished mock up #1 and some thread for my dress.
How cute is this fabric?
Didn’t get any of that but I did get a yard of this:
So LAST weekend I started on my dress for our Victoria and Albert’s dinner.
(I mentioned this a bit last week but had no pics yet). I ran out of red thread last week so I got some at Joann Saturday. That night I got the hem of the lining finished and then finished the hem of the ruffles to get them attached. The hem of this lining is roughly 180in, I’m not sure how long the ruffle pieces were prior to gathering, but there were 3 pieces so I was going to gather each down to roughly 60in. I decided to first try just gathering them with a running stitch from the machine. I had almost gotten them down to the right length when the thread broke. UGH.
So forget that. I had gathering that way, anyway. I decided to instead just pleat them directly onto the skirt, at the stitch line indicated on the pattern piece. It took a while to get them all pinned on and then sewn in place, and…. when I held it up to see how it looked…. almost the entire way around the skirt had gotten hitched up under the needle causing a giant burble and uneven hem all the way around.
OMG.
So I unpicked it. Which also meant I was unpicking the pleating. I tried to save them by pinning them as I unpicked but it was useless. So I sat down and did it again, this time pinning horizontally instead of vertically, thinking that was what caused the problem. I sewed it again.
And it happened again.
There was much screaming involved.
I seriously spent 3 hours on this Saturday night only to basically get nothing done. I was so frustrated I sat there and unpicked it AGAIN, tearing a little too much and causing holes. Not great. Don’t sew when you are mad, folks. And then I called it quits for the night.
So Sunday morning we got up and ate breakfast, and then I went up to get started on this thing again and walked into this:
I had to just stand there for a minute and wrap my brain around it. WTF.
Basically everything on the top shelf of the built in was now on the floor. Including Dressing a Galaxy, and every single one of my glass bead jars. Shelf was still in place.
(That one is clickable, so you can make it bigger and truly take in the chaos.)
Almost all of my glass jars had shattered into a gazillion pieces. On the white carpet. Mixed in with tons of tiny beads and sequins.
The ones that didn’t shattered were cracked and trash. Only a handful survived. Mostly the ones I had in glass cat food jars and not the fancy ones from Hobby Lobby.
Destined for the trash can
Everything Chase and I were able to scrape up just went in one container. I’ll separate it later. Maybe. One day.
A lot of the smaller tiny stuff just got vacuumed up after we were done. We both got stabs from tiny pieces of glass. At the moment I’m scared to walk over into that corner since I’m ALWAYS barefoot in my office and I just know I’m going to find an errant piece of glass with my foot.
So, that sucked. At least it was nothing I was emotionally attached to; like, thank goodness it was not my Anne Boleyn figurine or my teapot and teacup.
Chase examined it – the shelves are set up on a hole/peg system so you can adjust them as you want. The peg on the outer left corner had come loose. Chase said it looked like the wood around that hole had been damaged and the weight of the book on that corner had forced the peg out (we found the peg on a lower shelf), and everything had just tipped and slid off when it gave way, and then the shelf just settled back into place since it still had 3 working pegs. Chase fixed it for me, though I’m not going to put Dressing a Galaxy back up there. Even though I was so excited to actually have a shelf it fit on š I may rearrange the shelves so it can sit on the bottom.
So anyway. Back to sewing hell.
So what I did was I pleated/gathered each of the 3 sections into 60in lengths, separate from the skirt. I got them sewn in place and THEN sewed them onto the skirt. It actually happened again, but only in one little like 10 in length so I was able to fix that without too much more frustration. The only issue this time was the fact that some how despite all my measuring, the ruffles ended up too long and I had to add some gathers into the already gathered pieces, which ended up a little lumpy, but at least it’s DONE.
I may still go back and redo the hem of the lining AGAIN (3rd time) because it still didn’t turn out great. May do it by hand. Depends on how much time I have. And the ruffles ended up a little uneven but OH WELL.
At this point I was SO DONE WITH THIS. It should have been a simple afternoon project but the world was against me finishing this quickly. Or finishing it nicely.
I did get some fabric for the outer dress this week — but apparently only took a pic on IG and not on my regular camera roll. But last night I got the skirt panels and bodice panels cut out.
I got a peachskin and I’m really very happy with it! And I’m really glad to see the skirt sits over the ruffles pretty nicely.
Tonight I’ve got to get the lining cut and I can assemble the top. I may try to split my time – an hour on the dress and an hour on the suit jacket. So I don’t lose steam on either.
I only have one art piece to post today.
And it’s another thing that caused frustration.
I went back and forth on this one ALL LAST WEEK on what colours to use. Nothing looked right. It still doesn’t look right. This was an alt version of the parade gown — I didn’t want to use peaches or pinks, so I tried to go purple/silver. I’m still not happy with it. But it’s done and I’m moving on.