what a busy weekend.
My whole body hurts and I don’t know why!
So to back up. Didn’t get a whole lot of sewing stuff done last week, was still working on the house. But I did get my fabric for Hera on Monday….
Ummmm not an immediate love here. I set it out and decided to just think about it a bit while I started messing with a mockup.
Turns out Luna really liked it. I came upstairs tuesday afternoon to find she’d made a little nest in it, it was absolutely covered in her hair in one spot. LOL.
But the reason I didn’t just love it was that the fabric was just too thick, and I felt like the colour of it was looking a little flat. Anyway, mockup –
Rough start the first night. Using some old lining material i had in my stash.
Refining the sleeve a bit. I’m putting in some pleats on the sides and sleeves (and probably the back too) to recreate the lines/folds of the original art.
All basted together, except the sleeve at the shoulder and the collar.
Overall it’s close enough I feel ok to move forward with it. The pleats are fully sewn down here but planning to (hoping to) only tack them especially on the front. I want them to look a little more like folds than pleats. The art shows the jacket is probably a little looser through the waist than I have it here – but I liked the first image of her in this where she has her arm across it causing it to nip in at the waist. So I think that’s going to be a personal preference I go with, otherwise I think I’m going to look like a giant blue blob.
A few other thoughts… collar was just partially pinned on and I haven’t quite decided how I want to attach it with the crossover front. Figure it out later Sleeve’s a little too long – I want those folds/pleats to start closer up to the shoulder seam.
Also planning on the sleeves being a bit more dramatic because they’ll be interfaced and have more body than this old curtain/lining fabric will.
Thursday night Chase helped me switch out the curtains in the dining room!
Before
After
The “before” curtains came with the house, and I did keep the fabric to maybe one day use in something. The curtains I put on in “after” are actually meant for my sewing room but I put them up here just for now. Which is why I didn’t want to cut them off and hem them, so they’re just knotted so they’re not dragging on the floor. Eventually going to find something else to put in here but I do want to keep it light and sheer.
So anyway. I had Friday off yay! Which was nice because last week at work was a bummer and plus our air has been out for TWO WEEKS NOW. WTF. It’s miserable.
So yeh it was nice to be out of the office an extra day. Usually these fridays I take off in the summer are sewing days, but I didn’t sew anything Friday. WAIT NO I LIED… I forgot I did sew a couple of pillow cases Friday. I had some pillow forms and decided to just use some fabric out of my stash to make covers for them for the couch in my sewing room. One is the porg/r2d2 fabric and the other is one of those Star Wars ship “blueprint” fabric.
Um hello I’m trying to work on that.
I slept in a bit… then cleaned the house, ran the roomba, took a nap, went to lunch with Nana, Kristie, Cat and Rach. Got to hear more about Cat’s Japan adventures. And she brought me back a little Sailor Moon blind box capsule toy!!
I got a tiny Sailor Mars! And she got me a little pin too!
They’re both still in my purse, I need to take them out LOL
Then I went ahead and brought home some of their stuff for the shower Sunday, went back home and chilled for a while. FINALLY watched the first episode of the last season of Rupaul’s Drag Race. I’m so behind… but luckily not spoiled on anything at all so that’s fun.
Then I decided I want to dye my Leia wig now. Been putting it off for 2 months.
I cut the two wigs apart, took the buns out, brushed them out. I went through and cut out several wefts so I could keep some lighter “silvery” sections for adding back in later at the temples.
(To recap, this is my Crait Leia wig from Dragoncon last year, made using an Arda Matilda in Victory Blonde and another shorter Arda also in Victory Blonde (cant remember which – shoulder length – was my first wig for Carrie Fisher but was too thick so it became the “bump” higher section of the Crait wig). My biggest issue with it was the colour – it was just too light. So attempting a dye job. And then complete restyling because the back was all wrong.)
So as you can see above, I started with the shorter wig. I used a mix of Rit DyeMore Graphite, Chocolate Brown, and Apricot. I adjusted a bit on this one, the dye recipe I got from Rit’s website had much more graphite in it… like 1 cup Graphite, and then 1/4 cup Brown and 1/4 Apricot. I mean I didn’t measure any of this actually out I just guessed. But, I felt the Graphite had too much blue in it so I did more Brown and Apricot. I think in the end the Graphite and Brown were about equal.
Let them dry outside for a bit… they both looked more like a crazy witch wig than Leia LOL This was taken in my very yellow-lighted bathroom (it’s awful for doing makeup…) so the colour’s a bit off… here’s one in my office:
This was after they’d been left to sit and dry over the weekend and brushed out. Still crazy looking but overall really happy with the colour.
Going to need to straighten them back out before restyling. Not going to get to that for a couple of weeks though, but I’m glad I finally dyed them because that’s what I was scared of.
Also this was super creepy.
Saturday we got up and left for Nashville! We were staying with Derek and Beth that night so we got to spend the afternoon with them. Went and had lunch and did a bit of shopping. Went to the Joann in Nashville (IT’S SO MUCH BETTER THAN OURS) and was actually able to find everything I needed.
I forgot to take pics of these so you’re getting screencaps from my story. Sorry! LOL
I picked up new Hera coat fabric. This is much lighter and thinner than the knit. It’s got a light texture to it I really like. So I think it’ll work well for the folds/pleats without looking super chunky. But it’s so thin I’m going to need to flat-line it, so I also picked up some navy blue cotton. The sleeves, collar and probably the front flat panel will be interfaced as well. But especially for the side panels the cotton lining will help it drape correctly.
AND THEN… because I have apparently lost my damn mind…
I bought fabric to make a new Misato costume. For Anime Blues Con. In 2 weeks.
I mean I follow some cosplayers who CAN and DO knock out costumes in that short a turnaround time (or shorter!) but I’ve never been one of those cosplayers. A month super short notice for me. Even back in the day when I made more costumes (and made them a whole lot quicker).
But I know I have patterns on hand I can use and the dress itself (doing the full black dress instead of the black top/miniskirt like I did in 2002) will be super easy. I still have my pattern from the 2002 jacket (though last night I couldn’t find it but I did find 2 other options I may use instead) and I think I can make it pretty fast. Also going to try to remake the hat.
Going to just use my Janet Snakehole wig again (which I used for some shots when I wore it for a white backdrop shoot a couple of years ago) – even though it’s not purple it’s a “realistic” option and I think it looked pretty cute. Going to reuse my 2002 necklace, shoes and socks.
So the reason we went up to Nashville was to go to a concert… I wasn’t familiar with the band but Chase has been a big fan so it was fun because he was so excited.
My biggest beef of the night? Even when all the other rows sat down, the people in front of us stayed standing most of the time, with at least 5 people in front of me also holding up phones recording the whole time. Which just adds extra inches to people already taller than me, so, thanks, for blocking my view the entire time for a shitty iphone video of a concert you’re never going to rewatch.
But afterwards the band was signing so Chase was able to get their autographs and shake their hands so that was cool.
We got back to Derek and Beth’s a bit after midnight. I had a headache (not a migraine!) that made it hard to fall asleep – even though I’d been falling asleep in my chair at the concert before it started! – but i had some ibuprofen in my purse, once that kicked in I finally fell asleep probably around one.
Sunday was shower day!! We wanted to get back early to help with setup so we got up at 5:30 in the morning at headed home. With going to sleep around 1 that was rough, but Chase let me sleep in the car for 2/3 of the drive so that was nice.
Got back home right after 9 and Cat, Rach and their mom got there a bit after to start setting up (they’d done a lot on Saturday while we were gone, too! They did so much work!).
Look at all this delicious food! Seriously we had some good food.
Shower started at 2 and we started with food, then we did a craft time (instead of games) – we all made little decorated hoop frames for hanging photos from (in honor of Brittany’s hula-hooping skills), and then presents. It was fun! Then time to clean up.
One tiny problem was that my grandpa came, too. He was like, can I just go watch tv somewhere? And I was like… uh we dont have normal tv anymore. LOL. So I had to pull Chase out of his office (where he’d been planning on hiding for the whole thing) to come set up a place in our bedroom for my grandpa to watch some baseball LOL.
After clean up Chase and I just crashed. My whole body hurt from wearing the same dumb flats at the concert the night before and then for several hours of shower-set up and during the shower (I changed ASAP once everybody was gone for cleaning up!!). I’ve got to get a new pair of black flats that aren’t so… flat.
After dinner I tried to move onto watching ep 3 of RPDR but I fell asleep 5 minutes in… so I decided I need to go do something to keep myself awake.
I decided to dig out my patterns for Misato and start on the dress. I’m using the same pattern I used for Jedi Leia, just shortened. (Somehow I’ve already lost the collar pattern tho?! ARGH. Gonna have to just draft it myself, not like it’s hard just wish I had the actual one.)
Got the basic dress assembled, and taken in last night. Still got some more fit tweaks to do – need to take up the shoulders and the top of the side seams in the back. And I need to press all my seams – didn’t feel like dragging my iron out last night.
Hoping I can get away with no closure. So far I can get it on without one but obviously no collar yet. So we’ll see.
This black fabric is super heavy stretch. Really liked it for this project, whatever it is. I didn’t pay attention to what the bolt said when I bought it LOL
But I’m hoping I can have this finished TONIGHT and move onto jacket over the holiday weekend.
Lastly a few sewing room updates.
Sorry it’s another story screencap, but I got these beautiful Leia, Padme, Jyn and Rey prints from etsy store OdderThanAntiquity. Aren’t they gorgeous?? I’ll try to take better pics later. But I got those up on my Leia/Padme wall (I guess it’s Star Wars ladies now but whatev), and also got frames/hung up the prints Ash got me last weekend!
Oh and the seller included a tiny Poe print:
And I happened to have a tiny frame so I put him in that!
All right so next week’s post we’ll see if I have actually managed to make this Misato costume. Wish me luck.
I leave you with a hot air balloon we saw on our way out of nashville sunday morning.
