heathcliff, it’s me, i’m cathy

I’m losing my sanity. I keep trying to keep good and positive thoughts about the state of things and tell myself things will be back to normal in XX amount of time but it never happens. I feel like I’m staring into an abyss.

All right now that I’ve got that out of my system let’s talk about what I did this past week.

The first part of my Sailor Jupiter fabric arrived! Green taffeta for lining, pink satin for bows, white neoprene for the padded areas.

Sequin fabric arrived the next day!

So now I’m just waiting on my leotard pattern (arriving today) and my leotard fabric (arriving tomorrow) – but since I had basically everything for the collar and skirt I decided to get started this weekend.

I had a school uniform pattern that had a good “collar” pattern so I used that and did a mockup first to make sure it was long enough (seemed like it might be a bit short). I lengthened it by about an inch in the front.

Mostly finished collar – 1 layer of sequin fabric and 1 of taffeta. I haven’t yet decided how I want to do the stripes on the collar. Going to test out how some of my heat transfer vinyl works on sequins. Sequin fabric is working fine with high heat from the iron, so I’m only curious how it will stick. I’m thinking it might work because my sequin fabric is very low profile – the sequins are very flat to the fabric. Will see how the test goes.

The bows were the biggest pain so far. I hate making bows, so I decided to use a bow pattern from a Sailor Moon-esque pattern I already had… the bow parts from that pattern were too small, so I enlarged them, and after making one I wasn’t happy with how it looked. I ended up scraping the idea of using the pattern all together and starting over, making the bows the same way I make the bows for my Minnie ears – just using neoprene as the stuffing instead of batting. It worked much better. I’ve got both the front bow and butt bow made, but not quite finished – the pieces (main bow, “ends” of bow, and the bow band) aren’t assembled yet, going to do that once I get further along.

Yesterday I wasn’t feeling great, had a headache most of the day like I had a hangover. But I did at least get my skirt put together.

I didn’t have enough fabric for one long panel for the skirt, so it’s in 3 segments. Sewed the outer layer together and the lining layer together, then sewed them together leaving the center backs open. Then I pleated it on my dressform. I’ll need to clean up the pleats a little bit – they’re not super even, but I wanted to see how it looked pressed, so I pressed 3 of the front pleats into place (the ones facing the camera) and was really pleased with how crisp it looked. But at this point I’m leaving the skirt as-is until I can get the leotard partially made – I want to see it on me before I commit to finishing it in case I need to tweak the length or anything.

So tomorrow I’ll start on the leotard – once I have that mostly made I can put the skirt on, figure the placement, sew up the back, cut out the “v”shape and finish the skirt off. I’m going to make it a separate piece.

In non-sewing news…
Last week I had to go over and let Lucy and Maggie out each afternoon. They are Nana and Kristie’s dogs they adopted earlier this year and they still aren’t used to me. 3 times they set the house alarm off barking before I could even get in the house.

And while they still bark at me like crazy I felt like Thursday they were finally getting a little used to me. I brought them a piece of ham Thursday and split it between them and they really liked it.

Chase had to work Saturday (they are setting up a whole new system at his office and everybody had to go learn it), which is why I got so much sewing done that day. After he got home we ran to Walmart because I needed pink thread. Of course had to check out the Halloween stuff too:

Such unrealistic body standards!

Got home after that to discover our new neighbors had installed a light over their garage that day. A massive supernova light pointed directly at our house and directly into our bedroom windows. Not a motion-detected sensor light either, one that stayed on all night. It was so bright it put the “beacon of gondor” on our backyard neighbor’s house to shame.

We got up the next morning and immediately went to Home Depot to find some blackout curtains, which I hated doing because I love to wakeup to sunlight but I also couldn’t sleep with as much light was coming in through our windows all night.

But in the realm of good things, Chase texted them and mentioned it was shining into our bedroom. They had someone out Sunday afternoon and totally replaced the light! It wasn’t on at all last night so I’m wondering if they switched it to a motion-detector light. So that was really cool of them to get it switched out so fast. Crisis averted. Keeping the blackout curtains for when we want to sleep in. (and they helped with the other neighbor’s beacon of gondor, too)

I got the outside decorated yesterday:

I still have my little Mummy guy to put out but need to order some new stakes for him – and for the skeleton I want to put outside as well.

Last night Chase made potato leek soup, the recipe from Rose and Crown at Epcot. We’ve actually never had the potato leek soup there but we decided we’d try various disney recipes a couple of times a month.