Well mine never started because I didn’t even watch last night’s GOT finale. I haven’t really watched much of GOT the last 2-3 seasons? And for this last season I got spoiled so didn’t feel like watching it. Well, I got partially spoiled, then dived on into full spoilers because why not. LOL.
But I keep seeing people talk about Sansa’s costumes from the finale and I want to see them but nobody is posting pictures. I may have to skip through it and see them.
Anyway speaking of costumes Jedi Leia is finished! Well mostly.
Using my old Padme Snowbunny white suit for the pants/keeping the dress from being see-through. And for the boots…
You guys KNOW I’ve been wanting to make my own ANH Leia boots from scratch for a couple of years now, I keep my eyes peeled for boots or shoes I can steal the sole/heel from, but I’ve never bought anything or really dug in and acted on it. My old, too-short, inaccurate 2004 boots were not going to work with this costume, so I used an amazon gift card from Christmas and bought these off amazon.
I’m actually pretty pleased with them. They’re obviously “costume quality” with a vinyl exterior and a foam interior. But they actually fit pretty well. I assumed they’d be way too big around the calf but they fit great.
So the part that’s NOT done is the belt. It’s the ceremonial belt – I finally found mine and got it to take stock of the situation. It’s missing one of the button covers (that ONE has always been a problem child), and it only has 5 plates instead of 7. There were holes punched for #6, but back in 2007 I told dad to hold off making the last two plates and attaching them because A) I was in a hurry, and B) in 2007 the belt closure would have been right on top of plate 6 because I was so small. (My ANH Leia belt was overlapping as well during that time period).
Well that’s not the case anymore LOL. I’d also used sticky-back velcro for the closure and wanted to replace it with snaps. So I got a knife out and scraped the velcro off. It left a ton of nasty goo behind so I ran that spot under warm water and… well I did manage to get all the goo off, but all the dye on the belt underneath the goo also came off. LOL.
Anyway, yesterday I took the belt over to my parents and dad made 2 new plates for me!
Here’s where he patterned out the cuts on the craft metal, after measuring the existing plates.
And here’s the shape cut out.
Flattening the edges. Dad has a serious collection of various metal cutting and bending tools.
The plate bent into shape around a base made of illustration board.
Two new plates in place on the belt! And you can see the spot where the dye rubbed off.
Last night I dug around in my dye and paint boxes to see if I still had the silver dye from the belt. I mean, I keep everything so there was a good chance. I found a leather paint that looked close and painted it on… it’s not quite it. But it’s REALLY close. I’m going to look at it today in the daylight and see if I need to just go get another bottle of leather dye/paint and try again.
I mean it’s on the back so if it’s a 95% match I should probably just live with it but knowing me I’ll be going to Tandy tomorrow after work.
Anyway once I get that settled, we’ll get the last two plates riveted in place and then get the snaps in. And then Jedi Leia will be ready for some pics! And Dragoncon.
So since Leia was pretty much down now I cleaned all that up, hung her up in the closet and looked around for my next move. Still waiting on new contrast fabric for Crusher, so I decided to pull out my old Crait Leia cloak patterns and get the fabric I bought back in April cut.
Well guess who couldn’t find half of the patterns?
I found the back panel – only because at one point I’d sewn it around a baby gate while we were living at my aunt’s last year – the baby gate had a big gap in it Luna could have gotten through so I grabbed the first piece of fabric I had at hand – the back panel pattern and hand sewed it around it. It was still on there in the garage. So I had that. And I found what MIGHT have been the sleeve pattern? It wasn’t marked which I wrote directions like “back, cut on fold” and “front left, cut 2” on all the pieces. But it seemed like it worked so maybe I forgot to write anything on the sleeve.
But the front panels were missing. And I know they made the move, because I had them at my aunt’s house the whole time. And I just took all that fabric I had there dumped it in a bin and brought it home. I’m GUESSING that when I cleaned out my fabric while unpacking I maybe threw them away. THough I don’t know why I would, I knew at that point I wanted to remake it. I guess I thought maybe I’d repattern them but why would I want to start from scratch?!
ANYWAY. I had to repattern the front pieces. And I went ahead and repatterned the sleeve too. Used some scrap white fabric in my stash – started out by laying the front panels flat on the fabric and cutting around them leaving some extra space. Then pinned them onto the actual piece while it was on the dressform and worked it down.
New fabric pieces cut! It’s all just pinned onto the form.
The main things that needed changed were the collar – I raised the back edge and the edges of the front panels so it’s all even. Was able to cut the back on the fold like I was supposed to in version 1 but didn’t have enough fabric to do that. And slightly changed the shape of the sleeves… but they’re probably still too long so I’ll be playing with the length when I get started on them.
–MASSIVE JOANN FABRICS RANT SKIP AHEAD IF YOU THIS BORES YOU–
I needed to get a few things at Joann Friday. Lots of stuff actually. I wrote up a long list on Wednesday – the satin for the lining of the Crait Leia sleeves, interfacing for the front panesl and the collar, black thread (I was out), and then all my Dr Crusher stuff besides the basic fabric, interfacing, piping, zipper, etc. So friday night we ran out that way – keeping in mind it’s nearly a half hour drive because our ONE FRREAKING FABRIC STORE IS NOT CENTRALLY LOCATED. Get there and it’s pretty dead in there which is why I like going at night… the quilters have already come and gone. LOL.
Anyway. It was… not great. Bolts on the floor. Aisles pushed askew. Half empty shelves. Like… their Coats Dual Duty thread? They had NO BLACK THREAD. I had to go dig around in one of the bins by the cutting table to find some. There were a ton of other empty spaces in the thread shelf, same deal over with the zippers. I needed a 22in invisible black zipper. Pretty basic. They had none. They had none of a lot of stuff.
I ended maybe getting 1/3 of my shopping list. I did find some grey satin for the sleeves, but there wasn’t hardly anything on the bolt. It looked like it was maybe enough for one sleeve so I decided to get it and buy some more online… looked at the bolt to take a pic of the info to match it online and… no stickers in the bolt. Just a hand-scrawled price. I tried to find it online in the car and no luck. So I’m returning that. I’m going to guess it was already returned once.
Like, I feel like I’ve given our Joann a huge benefit of the doubt the last few years. Since Hancock closed they’ve gone downhill, but I think most of that is just corporate BS like not scheduling enough employees to take care of the store and customers at the same time. And not treating them right so there’s a huge turnover. And low stock could mean they were waiting on a truck. But… I could drive another 15-20 minutes further away, go across the stateline into Mississippi and the Joann THERE is a huge improvement. Their store is always cleaner, better stocked. So is it corporate or is it management? I don’t know. It’s just so freaking frustrating. I was planning on writing an email to Joann that evening and never did, but overnight they sent a customer satisfaction survey which I filled out and was BRUTALLY HONEST. I doubt it does much.
Anyway I’ve decided the Memphis Joann can go jump off a bridge and I’m just going to drive across stateline to buy fabric from now on. WHICH IS SO FREAKING STUPID BUT I GUESS THAT’S POST-HANCOCK FABRICS LIFE.
–END MASSIVE JOANN FABRICS RANT–
Anyway. My point was I didn’t get most of what I needed and had to go to Hobby Lobby (ugh) the next day but at least THEY had zippers. Also got some black lining for the back panel of the Crait cloak while there since I didn’t see anything I liked at Joann.
So Saturday I started assembling the body of the cloak.
Pretty much done except the hem. Not going to do that til I get the sleeves done… ordered fabric online for the lining so hopefully it’s here before next weekend. 3 day weekend so lots of time to sew!!
Saturday I got something REALLY FUN IN THE MAIL!!!
It’s a bound copy of all 100 of my Padme art pieces!!!!!! AHHH!!!
Turned out pretty good overall. Some of them have the very tops of their heads clipped off a tiny bit – totally my fault.
BUT! The whole reason I got this is just to GIVE IT AWAY!
So if you’d like to have this go to my instagram post above!
A few previews…
In house news, I got the last of my small costume bins home!! I still have probably one more car load of stuff to bring over… miscellaneous helmets, small fabric storage cubes, a few normal size bins. And all my hanging stuff, but I have nowhere to put the hanging stuff yet so it has to wait.
And we got a quote for getting the skylights in my sewing room tinted. Well not really tinted, but having some heat-reducing film added to them. My sewing room’s heating and air is on a different system from the rest of the house, so to save energy, if I’m not in there it’s not on. But now that summer is approaching and temps are going up, I’ve noticed the heat in my office in the afternoon getting up close to 90. Basically same temp as outside, which isn’t good for my sewing room at all. The biggest reason for the heat is the skylights, which gets hit with the morning sun and sun keeps pouring in them until late afternoon. All the other windows are pretty well tree covered. The heat-reducing film won’t reduce my light at all, but should help us see a big decrease in the heat build-up in there. And I won’t have to run my AC like crazy in the afternoon to get it back down to livable temps.
Chase rigged this up this morning to help keep the temps down…
Going to be watching it on the nest app to see how high it gets with them blocked today, should be interesting LOL.
I think I’m also going to have to start keeping the door open and just keeping the floor cleaned up. Keeping the door open means Luna will be up there constantly (she LOVES being in there) so I have to make sure there’s nothing left out she’ll want to eat. But keeping the door open also helps air keep circulating and helps it from getting so hot in there.
Anyway plans this week and this 3 day weekend:
Crusher fabric will be here today! Get all the pieces cut out and start assembly? I think I want to baste the whole thing together first and check the fit. I cut it out based on my size but my experience with spandex costumes has always been cut smaller. But since this isn’t a commercial pattern I’m not sure I should. So baste it all and check fit, take it apart and go from there.
Get Crait Leia sleeves assembled and attached and hopefully finish whole thing this weekend??
Get cotton for Belle ordered so I can get moving on that thing again.