Well. Chase was feeling a lot better last week. Was able to go to my cousin’s wedding reception Friday night (he just stayed in a wheelchair), Saturday he was able to walk around and do his own stuff and and even came upstairs once, and that afternoon drove my car to Hobby Lobby (he stayed in the car while I went in). He was careful not to overdo it and mostly stayed seated but was feeling like he was on the upswing. Then suddenly yesterday aftenoon it was all downhill and he was back to page 1, he couldn’t find a comfortable position to even lay in, couldn’t walk or sit without immense pain, bath didn’t help, medicine didn’t help, he was in agony all night and hardly slept.
So frustrating. He’s calling the dr today and I told him he needs to be adamant about getting help TODAY (hand clap emoji) because this is now week 3 and it’s ridiculous.
Like I said above Friday night was my cousin David and Brittany’s wedding reception! They got married in Florida a couple of weeks ago. But, I will wait and post a few photos of that at the end of this post because… the photos are taking FOR-EV-ER to upload and so far I only have l like 5 of 130 in the gallery, geez.
So for now I’ll skip up to Saturday. I spent Saturday morning finishing sewing the trim on the dress. To recap, I machine sewed on side on and then finished the inside by hand, so it took a while.
I was going to dye it that afternoon, but I got cold feet and pushed it off til Sunday. I did try it on Saturday night tho.
Not tied in the front obviously but… yay!
So since I decided not to dye it that afternoon, ended up running to Hobby Lobby to grab a few things (a box of emergency dye remover, some jewelry wire, pearls, beads, etc) and then spent the rest of the night doing crafty stuff – my Padme jewelry pieces for the dress and my Hera tiara….
In an effort to be… “budget conscious” (AKA I’m tired of spending money on costume stuff) I got nice, prestrung crystal beads for the front jewelry piece and then just plainer glass beads for the back that needed to be strung. And the “flower petals” are large sequins instead of the pearl discs, but I’ll upgrade one day.
And now a crappy pic of my Hera tiara.
I wanted to use these stones as the “wibbly bits” of the tiara but had a hell of a time getting them glued to the wire I’m using for the base. I finally just totally coated the backs in the jewelry glue and taped them down to dry… so the back is ugly but it looks ok from the front? I just need to clean up the sides and make some kind of back closure. The back will be underneath the wig so it doesn’t have to be pretty.
Sunday was the day. I slept like crap Saturday night, anxious over dyeing this thing. I got up right before 8 and started setting everything up…
My set up was a large tarp (because obviously I didn’t any of this silk touching the nasty patio), my garment rack (for hanging stuff on), our backdrop standing (also for hanging stuff on), some stools from the kitchen, the hose (with nozzle that has a misting attachment, which was my preferred, gentler method of spraying down the chiffon), 3 tubs of dye (one yellow, one pink, and one lavender-blue), and a spray bottle with a fine mist option.
So initially I started out planning to dip dye everything. I started out with the underdress – expecting the spandex to not suck up much of the dye but boy howdy did it, it’s actually a hair too bright even after drying, but I’m leaving it since I plan to remake it one day anyway. And dip-dyeing that thing was a pain, so after I got it hung up to dry, I rethought my plans — which is where my spray bottle came in.
I ended up wrapping the back part of the dress in a garbage bag to protect it, and just laying the front panels out as flat as possible on the very wet tarp. I loaded the spray bottle up with dye (yellow first, then rinse it out, switch to pink, rinse it out, switch to lavender), and just sprayed it, slowly. It took forever. Literally 3 hours of me sitting on the wet tarp with an aching arm because the dye was very diluted from being in the bins – but I think that, with the fabric basically laying in a shallow pool of water allowed it to slowly build up the colours while keeping them moving (and thus blending well). The most difficult part was that I had marked the colour sections with pins, and the pins did NOT want to stay in that chiffon, so I had pins going everywhere (had to take a magnet outside to find them all), and I lost the plot a few times on the back. Speaking of…
Once I had the yellow and pinks done on the back sections, I put a garbage bag over my dressform, pinned the dress to it, and switched to spraying vertically, since at that point any “drip down” wouldn’t matter. I also ended up just dipping the end of the back straight into the lavender dye towards the end.
My timing was overall pretty good. I got it done just as the sun was creeping onto the patio, so I went inside and let the sun dry it for a while. Though after a while I realized I needed to do a second round of lavender on both the front and the back, and some touch ups on the pinks, so I braved the sun and went out and did those things. It was miserable at that point LOL.
Once it was mostly dry I brought it inside, took it upstairs (on a towel because the ends were still damp) and started pressing the edges – the silk trim had especially shriveled up (didn’t shrink, just got weirdly wrinkly), and it pressed it out fine. Then I steamed it to get the wrinkles out.
OMG YA’LL
SCREAMING
I am a total convert to spraying it instead of dipping it. I can’t stop staring at it. LMAO.
After a bit of staring at it I decided to fix one spot on the underdress. The blue was lower on left side of the front than the right and it looked funny. So I took it out, got that section wet and sprayed lavender on that area until it was even. While it was drying I got the outer dress gathered at the front, inner sleeves sewn in and the little brooch on the front attached.
(insert screaming emoji)
Around 6:30 I took a small break. Why? Because Chase found a woman on facebook marketplace just around the corner selling the Contemporary Resort play set for the monorail for $30!! I thankfully had $30 stashed away so I ran up the street, met her, and came home with my prize.
Just kinda sat the pieces together to get an idea. Can’t wait to set this up around our christmas tree this year!
So back to the lake dress.
These were my dyes. Golden yellow, petal pink, and hyacinth. The Hyacinth worked great. I couldn’t find it locally so I bought it on amazon – I’d never seen this colour before and it’s a great lavender-y blue that’s pretty perfect for this.
So now onto a few wedding photos because they STILL haven’t finished uploading.
He’s in so much trouble LOL
Stabbing the Spider-man groom’s cake
First dance
We did a lot of dancing.
That’s it! HOpefully these things finish one day so I can send them to them. (I wonder if it’s just that the photos on my new phone are so much bigger they take longer? Seems to be a regular thing since getting my new phone.)
A few more pics of my current obsession before I go.
(heart eyes emoji! screaming emoji! Why don’t I have emojis on here!)
Sooo… small update since writing this. Chase’s pain got so bad today he couldn’t get up. He tried to stand to go sit on the couch and basically collapsed to the floor (thankfully didn’t pass out or hit his head or anything), had to call an ambulance to take him to the ER. He’s getting another MRI to see if he ruptured the disc.
New to-do list:
Crusher: finished
Jedi Leia: fix belt
Crait Leia: same as before:
sew sleeve on
finish wig
Hera:
clean up the back of the tiara
Carrie:
dye wig
check gary for any touch ups
Padme:
Finish hairbands
sew combs into wig
finish styling wig
Get outer dress sewn onto inner dress
Add hook and eyes to inner dress
Sew back brooch in place
Cast necklace
Paint necklace
Paint armbands
PACK!!!!!!!!!!!
You did a beautiful job with the dyeing. So pretty!