So my big plans for sewing all weekend and getting lots of stuff done were foiled by fabric! Namely by the fact I can’t buy/find the fabric I need locally anymore EVER (*cough*Joann*cough*) so I have to buy online and hope what comes is what I need – either that or pay, wait 2 weeks on a fabric swatch, go back, buy fabric, wait another week on fabric and ain’t nobody got time for that.
So, let’s go into the saga of my Crusher contrast fabric. That is, the blue/teal for the science/medical uniforms.
First fabric I got was pretty good, but a little thin and a little lighter than I would have liked. It wasn’t expensive so I decided I’d try to dye it and see if I could get it a little darker and then double it to make it for how thin it was. I figured if the dye didn’t turn out I could buy another yard since it was cheap.
Dyeing didn’t go well. It was the first thing I’ve dyed in the new house and it was a disaster, turns out we don’t have a stopper in our kitchen sink, I didn’t have a hose in the backyard to spray everything down, etc etc, one problem after another. The fabric ended up not taking the dye at all except for in dark streaks in spots. And since it was only a yard, I couldn’t get enough clean cuts out of it that wouldn’t have those dark streaks on them. (and, oddly, ironing made the streaks show up more?! I had a clean cut of the front panel and ironed and giant streaks appeared all over it. wtf.)
So I just hopped on amazon and reordered the exact same thing from the same seller – you know, “order this again.” It took a week to come and arrived and… it was green. It was not the colour I got last time. I don’t know if I received the wrong the first time or the second time but this is the second time this same issue has happened with this seller and I need to stop buying from them. I didn’t even take a pic of it, just returned it.
In frustration I now went to find an alternate spandex and I could hopefully have in time to work on it this weekend. Bought another yard from another seller on amazon that was marked prime only to get the confirmation saying “Arrival: 5/28” which was SO not prime. Tried to cancel it to no avail; but it arrived Friday so crisis averted. I also bought another 2 yards on mood of a teal spandex. It came saturday.
From left to right – the amazon fabric that came early, the unusable “streak” fabric, the mood fabric.
The mood fabric actually looked pretty good in this lighting, but it was super light and more of a “cloud blue”. It’s pretty but not even close. The amazon fabric was too green and I decided that’s the one I’d try to dye.
So Friday night I bought some dye and Saturday morning the dye pot came back out and I set about dyeing the amazon fabric a little darker and a little more blue.
Mix of Graphite and Kentucky Blue
Straight out it looked pretty good. I let it dry outside for a bit before getting impatient and putting it in the dryer.
It’s… ok? In some references this looks pretty good. In some it still looks too green.
I made the decision to just go with it. I didn’t feel like going back to shopping, buying more fabric and continuing beating myself up over the tone of this fabric.
Saturday we spent a huge chunk of the day running errands so Saturday afternoon was dyeing. Saturday night I got it ironed and started cutting out the contrast pieces and messing with the front panel. That’s as far as I got – doing the darts on the front panel. So I don’t really have any pics.
Sunday we had more errands to run (getting ready for Monday cookout) so once we were home I had to go do MORE dyeing. This time for Crait Leia. After not finding the dark grey satin at Joann the week before I ordered some that looked good online (from that SAME place that has now sent me the wrong colour fabric TWICE I HAVE TO STOP ORDERING FROM THEM), but it arrived and was just… bright silver. Which meant I was going to have to either buy something new or dye it before I could continue on with Crait. I opted to dye it.
I was fairly happy with this one thought; graphite and some chocolate brown to warm it up a bit.
I didn’t get to do anything on it til Monday, though. Started messing with one sleeve.
I knew I needed to do some shape tweaks to the sleeve from version 1 but thus far hadn’t done them (I dunno why I didn’t in the re-patterning phase, I just left them long to figure it out later). Yesterday afternoon I started taking it up a bit and figuring out how much I needed to lose off the bottom edge… you can’t really see it in the photo but I have a pin line marked out on there that is going to be my cutting guide. Tonight I’ll find the courage to actually cut it.
Once I do that I’ll cut the other sleeve panels down, get it assembled, and then get the sleeves attached. That was the hardest part in version 1, but the trick last time was hand-basting it in place first, so I’ll do that first this time. Then it’s just hemming it and… I’m so tempted to top stitch it. This thick fabric just doesn’t want to lay crisp… see what happens when I iron it again.
In other news I did finally buy something for lake dress version FIVE… under dress fabric, and I have a swatch for outer dress coming. Yay.
So what else is new… we saw Aladdin Thursday and it was fun. I liked it. We did a lot of little house stuff over the week and weekend. Lots of pictures going up…
Put this on the back patio
Finally got this up in our bedroom
My Indy art by Marisa in the living room!
Lady and the Tramp in the kitchen
This mouse painting my Mema did in the 70s in the laundry room
Disney transportation in the entryway!
We also got our big castle photo up in the living room, some more disney stuff hung on the stairs, the corner where the mirror used to be finished (well, until we get the shelves put up), and new end tables in the living room! But I forgot to take pics of ANY of that, so I’ll update on those next week.
So the next saga is the saga of the FedEx package.
So on May 4th, right before we left for the symphony event, we realized FedEx had left a package on our front porch. Got it in and it’s not for us. Not our name, not our address. Total mis-delivery. Brought it on and Sunday morning used the form on FedEx’s site to let them know. I set it back out on the front porch so they could pick it back up.
Days go by and FINALLY on thursday they respond… asking for all the info I gave them on the form again. Chase takes over and tells them and tells them again it’s on the front porch, please come get it. We don’t feel like it’s our responsibility to go out of our way to take to a fedex office. It’s your mistake, come get it.
Guess what is still on our front porch?
Sitting there all sad while a FedEx Ground truck prances by in the background.
Chase has told them several times since HEY you guys seriously need to come get this.
I’ve been on fedex on twitter, who apologized and said they set another pickup for it but there was no guaranteed date since there was no account number associated. But that shouldn’t take over 3 weeks should it?! WTF. This shouldn’t be our problem.
I’m seriously about to just bring it in and freaking open it and see if there’s a phone number inside for the person who ordered it. I tried searching for the person on the label on facebook and I MAYBE found her… but it’s not a super uncommon name and who knows if she’d even see my message (would probably go in the junk inbox in the junk inbox). Honestly anytime we get some thing misdelivered we’ll usually go take it to the address ourselves because it’s usually within our neighborhood. But this is in a gated apartment complex about a mile away.
It’s just so dumb.
So like I said earlier we had a ton of errand-running to do this weekend. This was our first get-together at our house! Chase wanted to do a brisket, and these bacon burnt-end things. We literally drove to every grocery store and butcher store in the area looking for the specific bacon he needed to no avail. He ended up having to do something else. So quick rundown of the rest of the weekend… Found a lost little girl at Costco (mom was located fairly quickly), went to see dad’s band play Sunday night, ate some cookies, watched Chernobyl (OMG it’s so good I’m obsessed), had our cookout and it was lots of fun with good food.
Oh and we drew my giveaway winner! YAY!
And some new art…
This ended up being kinda rushed. It’s ok I guess. I find Carrie’s face hard to capture and it’s even more difficult when doing older Carrie. Hopefully I can get better as I go through the rest of her new trilogy costumes.