It’s Monday again.
And once again I really don’t have much in the realm of sewing to show you guys this week. I did do a little.
Excited about my new fabric, I decided to start messing around with Liberty Dies Padme.
Decided that my smallest hoopskirt was closest to the right shape. It’s not 100% but it’ll work as a stand-in for now.
Also decided that the Padme “Peacock” pattern simplicity put out back in 2005 was a great start for Liberty dies also – I just used it for Raddus Bridge! It’ll need some tweaks but it’s a good start.
I laid out my skirt fabric to cut and realized… wtf am I doing? I have so much other stuff I need to do before I start cutting into this. So I put it all away and recentered myself.
I made a mental list of the things I need to tackle first, and here I’m going to write it all out.
1. Boushh repairs
2. Costumes for Huntsville
3. Dapper Day outfits
So first up is Boushh. This is not going to be the full-on revamp I want to eventually do when we do my helmet, but just a tidying up and making it wearable… and checking to see if I can still fit in it.
Yay! I can still fit in it! The only thing that DIDN’T fit is the cummerbund; I’ve got about an inch gap where the velcro doesn’t meet anymore. Initially I sewed on another panel with more velcro to extend it – which is how I have it on here, but the velcro pops at the slightest movement so I think I’m going to replace it with hook and eye. And if I use the big hook and eyes I used for Amidala, I think I can get rid of the extension and just have the hook and the very edge. So I need to run go get hook and eyes this week.
I also fixed up the boots – some of the glue had come undone. I sewed it all back on. Cleaned up some stray threads. Marveled at the incredibly weird and slightly uncomfortable dart I put in the back of the pants legs. (I thought about removing it or at least cutting the excess out to make it more comfortable – but decided to leave it for now until I do the actual full-on revamp.) Also the pants are SO low cut. But I realized that’s just how we all wore pants in 2007. When I do the revamp I’m going to add a waistband to A)get rid of the drawstring which I hate and B)make them not so low-cut. Also there’s so much velcro all over this thing. I’ve gotten to where I don’t really use velcro much anymore. I’m really hoping when I do the revamp, I can “save” most of my leather pieces and I don’t have rebuy any of it… but I have a feeling unpicking all this velcro is going to leave a lot of holes. We’ll see.
Just wanted to see it with the unfinished helmet.
But yeah I’m just going to add the hook and eyes to the cummerbund, then cauterize the edge of my belt webbing because it’s fraying everywhere, and it should be fine to wear for a bit. Reason I want to wear it? Femi Taylor (Oola) is doing a signing at a local comic book store in a couple of weeks, and I want to go get my pic with her. Huttslayer is out of the question. LOL.
Next up is Huntsville costumes. Still not sure what I’m taking to Huntsville. Definitely Dr Crusher – which needs shoulder pads readded (I took them out for another costume), and I need to sew up the bottom of the pants and readd the elastic, after I took the legs up in December. That’s all on the list for this week.
Was considering taking Raddus Leia, Poe Dameron Comic Leia, or Padme’s Lake Dress for costume 2 (only taking 2). Lake Dress and Raddus are both done and wearable. So if I take Poe Dameron Leia, I needed to get it finished up.
THANKFULLY, after not being able to find any gold netting for the snoods on our Atlanta trip, I found some on etsy. It arrived the other day:
YES! Love it. And the gold tones match my trim on the bodice. Now I can stop messing with all this dumb embroidery floss.
First snood ended up being a little big – so I considered that one a test run and made the rest a tiny bit smaller, with tighter elastic in the channel.
Didn’t have a good coloured thread for it so it’s just sewn up in yellow. Not gonna be seen anyway.
The main 2 for the side buns are the same size as my medieval Leia bun covers, which worked well. Made the 3rd one slightly smaller for the back bun.
The 2 side buns in this costume look to be smaller and worn higher than the traditional ANH Leia look, but I’m just going with the ANH Leia look because I’m lazy, I’m not buying more hair pieces and this is really just a costume for fun.
So yay the snoods are finally done! Then it was fixing an issue with the bodice trim:
I’d pinned the 2 vertical stripes on to come to a V at the bottom, without considering that the horizontal “belt” piece would cut it off before they actually met. So I partially unstitched it (not hard since it’s just basted), and moved the point up so it creates a nice “V” shape. I also trimmed the back of the trim off – I had some overhang at the center back because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to finish the trim – snap it together or just have it end before the lace-up back? I ended up just cutting it off so it ends before the lace-up back.
So now all that’s left is figuring out shoes, and the jewelry. I went to Michael’s yesterday to try to find some jewel pieces for the tiara and necklace and didn’t find anything I liked. Going go look again when I go for hook and eyes this week. I’m just using my leftover smaller trim for the tiara and necklaces. Because again, i’m lazy.
Then my next projects I need to focus on are Dapper Day stuff, but I didn’t do anything on that this week, so no updates there.
Next project I did last week was to play around with some dye. After posting the Bail fabric last week and being concerned over how saturated green it looked, I decided to see how the fabric dyed.
Took to Dyemore just fine. First swatch on the left is just some graphite – not a lot of change. Second was some orange, which was kind just experimental and I didn’t expect it to work, but wanted to see what it would look like. Third was pink – which looks to be the ticket. It helped to knock down the green tones which made it look a bit more desaturated, so I guess I get to try to dye a ton of velvet in dyemore sometime this summer LOL. I’m thinking a kiddie pool might be the ticket.
These 3 catty bitches were totally whispering about my sweatpants the other day.
I think I forgot to mention last week that Derek found a dressform for $20 at a garage sale and picked it up for me!! Thanks Derek!! Now I have 3 forms to play with.
Been trying to think of 3 related costumes I can display together.
Luna enjoyed the funeral cape.
And Arwen.
Last night we couldn’t find her and she’d gotten underneath the Arwen cape like it was a tent and was sleeping in there.
Getting this costume out the other day was really making me kinda think of remaking it. Same concept, updated construction and technique.
Not gonna happen anytime soon, just fun to think about.
Speaking of dressforms, I updated my old Animal Crossing New Leaf and Sable just randomly gave me a dressform/mannequin. Everybody knows kelldar loves dressforms.
Friday night Chase was supposed to be doing a photoshoot but it got canceled at the last minute, so we stayed in – Saturday, I went and picked up Kevin because we had plans together that night! We met Ash, Lauren, Cath and Rach in midtown for pizza, then Kevin and headed on downtown for Aladdin at the Orpheum!
Kevin’s parents have season tickets but decided not to go to Aladdin, so they asked if I wanted to take him. OF COURSE I DO!
Getting from midtown to downtown ended up being a pain. Google maps took me a weird way I wasn’t familiar with…then just decided to stop working part of the way there. I had to quickly try to close out of it and restart it and get my address back in while at a stop light. Then it took me directly through the parking garage traffic for the Lakers/Grizz game happening a few streets over. BUT! I had prepaid for valet parking at the Orpheum so that ended up being really easy and nice and I’ll definitely do that again next time I go to the Orpheum.
The show was really fun! I loved it! The genie was the best part. The costumes were fun, I took my opera glasses so I could try to look at the details. Only downside was I had a vent blowing cold air directly on me the entire time, I was freezing! At intermission I told Kevin I was cold, he said he was warm, so I asked if he wanted to switch – we did, and it cut down on SOME of the cold air blowing on me and he was happy there, so that was nice.
Getting OUT of downtown was nuts and I nearly had a panic attack – google maps stopped working again, traffic was horrible. Traffic was at a deadstop and I was at a red light, there was nowhere for me to go so I stayed put until the traffic ahead of me started to move. People were honking at me and the person behind me went around me in the turning lane and just got up next to the other people ahead of me?! It was nuts. Like, where are you going to go?!?! There’s no room for you! But we made it home. LOL.
Kevin just stayed over Saturday night, and Sunday morning, helped us do some lawn work in exchange for donuts.
Then we took him home, ran some errands, came home and ate dinner, and we finally watched Frozen 2. I really liked it!
So that’s all for this weekend for normal stuff. For non-normal stuff, here’s the Sims 4 update.
The small-faced vampire family did not last long. They all decided they loved dancing at the fire pit and would go out and dance at night, and then the sun would come up and they’d still be dancing and catch on fire and die.
So my next family was the Brady Bunch. They’ve stayed alive very well. In fact they’re all adults now and Mike and Carol are about to turn into elders. The biggest issue I had was that 2 of the vampires died off my lot, just barely, but it’s where I can’t delete their headstones. So their dumb ghosts kept coming over and breaking the toilet. I released their spirits to the netherworld but it didn’t seem to help?? Bug or something? I dunno. I also couldn’t put their gravestones in inventory. Stupid small-faced vampire ghosts.
So plans for this week:
1. Finish jewelry for Poe Dameron Leia, cross that off the list
2. Finish fixing up Crusher
3. Hook and eyes on Boushh cummerbund
4. Mockup for romper for Dapper Day
5. Mockup for dress for Dapper Day
6. Mockup for Chase’s jacket for Dapper Day
Yay.