Another week of fresh hell. I’m so tired of this timeline.
But in good news my parents are getting their vaccine today and we have our second shot scheduled for this Saturday. Yay, I guess. I mean I’m glad to have it but the doom-loving news just keeps telling us that nothing will ever be back to normal even with a vaccine so I kinda just want to jump off a bridge at this point.
So I can’t remember if I ever posted it here but we did that Star Trek puzzle last month at it was missing a piece. I contacted the manufacturer who has a guarantee about replacing a puzzle if a piece is missing. Well they got back to me that “due to covid” they are unable to replace my original puzzle. I don’t know what covid has to do with that. So not wanting to rebuy it on amazon, I just… did this.
Since it’s an all white area I just filled in the spot with some air-dry foam clay. After the clay dried I glued the puzzle together, which caused the puzzle to curl a bit and changed the shape of the filled-in piece a little, but not terrible – I just need to sand it down and then I can call it finished. I wanted to hang it in my work office which is the only reason I went to all the trouble.
Mom was apparently going through old photos last week and kept sending me pics of them.
Look at this CLASSIC 1989 bedroom
Playing with Molly when she was a puppy
Mom also sent me this one of me, Mema and Mema’s dog. It made me think of something…
Am I DEBBIE from Manos the Hands of Fate?
Speaking of Mema, I did get to go see them Saturday! YAY!
Since we’re vaccinated and they’ve had it, we got to go hang out with them for a bit.
So now to sewing. Last week I made a decision about my Leia disneybound look – the one I’d made the jacket for last year but never got around to the other parts. I had originally wanted to make a romper to go under it but after doing a test in other fabric I wasn’t feeling it. So I’ve just kinda been thinking about it ever since. I finally last week decided to use this cute 70s vintage tennis dress pattern I have.
This one.
The pattern came with a shorts pattern but I didn’t have enough fabric for them… also I really didnt want to make shorts with 2 layers of slippery jetset. So I just bought some white cheerleader shorts to wear under it.
I still had the 3 yards of jetset I’d originally bought for the romper – got the dress panels cut out:
Doing 2 layers just like a regular Leia dress, one outer and one lining.
Also, I originally cut this slightly wider than the panel pieces because I thought it would be a hair too small through the bust based on the finished sizing, but it ended up WAY too big. I recut all the pieces to the actual pattern piece sizing and it was still too big, so I had to take it in a bit. I suspect it’s because I’m using thinner fabric with some stretch than what was intended.
So now with the 2 layers put together, I needed the front closure, which the pattern calls for a 22in separating zipper. So I found a white one on amazon and ordered it. Was supposed to be here Saturday so I was like great, I can work on it Saturday night and Sunday and get it finished. Nope, USPS has it, along with a bunch of other stuff we’ve ordered, just floating around in a distribution center somewhere. I’ll get to that later.
But, here’s how it’s looking with the jacket.
I still need to get vinyl to make a belt – I need to make a list of stuff I still need to get.
One thing OFF that list is I finally found some shoes for the disneybound Leia look:
I had to get the super expensive Jordans I saw last year OUT of my brain but I found these cute Nike high tops locally and I got them. I’m going to put silver shoelaces in them. I need to break them in, they’re pretty stiff, but overall pretty comfortable.
So with Leia on a pause waiting on the zipper, I decided to move on to a less fun project – it’s what the bra project has become since my ELASTIC IS STILL ALSO FLOATING AROUND IN A DISTRIBUTION CENTER SOMEWHERE 3 WEEKS LATER.
I decided that a bra was going to be really tricky to achieve what I wanted – being very low-backed for the back open of the Bespin Leia dress – plus it wouldn’t work for my Dale top which also need to be strapless. While of course also giving me the compression and minimization I like. I decided I should just really go back to what I know and make a version of a corset. I modified my fav corset pattern to be shorter (ends at my natural waist) – got the 3 layers put together (strength layer, lining, and outer layer). It’s all just scrap fabric leftover from other projects. Nothing pretty. I’m hoping to make it a zip-up back but we’ll see if that works. I was out of boning, so I ordered some early last week and it was supposed to be here Friday. I think you can guess what happened next.
Yep it is also stuck somewhere here in Memphis. This is getting frustrating. I mean, at least it’s not medication or something deathly important but still.
And while I’m bitching about “grown up” stuff – WE HAVEN’T HAD A TRASH PICK-UP SINCE FEB 5. They skipped us the week of the snow which was understandable because it was difficult to traverse the neighborhood streets, but they skipped us the week BEFORE THAT and now they’ve skipped us last week too!! I made a complaint on the city’s citizens 311 app and it lets you see other local similar complaints – 3 other people in our neighborhood have made the same complaint. We have so much trash sitting in the garage we can’t do anything with because the bins are full. As soon as they pick up they’re going to be immediately full again. It’s just annoying.
Also in terms of annoying things grown-ups have to do, I finally went to the dentist last week over a broken tooth I’ve had for… years. It hasn’t ever bothered me so first I was waiting to pay off some other dentist bills, then I was waiting on covid to be over and I finally just went and did it. I paid for better dental insurance this year knowing I was going to need to finally deal with it. Unfortunately it’s going to have to be pulled and it’s going to have be oral surgery to be pulled. Ugh. So I get that done 3/17. Then I’ll schedule another appointment for cleaning/check-up and seeing if a bridge can be done or something. Joy.
SO back to fun stuff – Chase spent last week planning a Han dapper day look to go with my Bespin Leia dapper day look.
Still waiting on the pants, socks and shoes to arrive. He got really into picking all this stuff out for himself, it was very cute.
So with USPS being like “whatevs” with our mail, I had nothing to work on Sunday and had set aside most of the day FOR sewing. So I ended up working on very non-important stuff.
I made some new ears. This is from the scraps of the knitorious toile. Put Han and Leia on the front…
And Luke, Lando and Chewie on the back.
Bow fabric is leftover from Sleeping Beauty.
It took me a bit to get back into the hang of making these. They’re a little messy but it’s fine.
And I had to make some from this Stitch/Baby Yoda fabric. Still plenty leftover for masks. Bow fabric is leftover from the Poe Dameron Leia top and the velour I covered the headband with is leftover from nightgown Padme last year. I was trying to stick to a Stitch-colour theme since I didn’t really have greens that worked for Grogu.
And then I also..
Made a quick replacement Scarlet Witch headpiece. My original broke way back in 2009/2010. I haven’t been able to wear it since Dragoncon 2009 because it brokeeeeee and I threw it away figuring I’d just replace it soon but of course I didn’t. I really wanted to do a couple of Wanda videos for tiktok so I made this out of EVA foam. Chase cleaned up the edges and heat formed it for me. It’s glued to a headband, and I painted it. It’s not as nice as my old one but it’s similar shape and will be fine for a couple of videos.
Speaking of tiktok, let’s get into last week’s abysmal results.
I didn’t think it could get much worse but absolutely, 100% did.
Monday – No Post
Tuesday – Growing up Over 24 Years of Cosplay. Just a slideshow from each year I’ve been cosplaying. This one did “ok.”
762 likes. Traffic: 62% following, 35% FYP, 2% profile.
Wednesday – No Post
Thursday – repost of my Meg dressform video with new song. Total flop.
246 likes, TraffiC: 50% following, 43% FYP, 6% profile.
Friday – posted 2 videos because it was a 2 parter on my Bespin Leia build. I’d been saving doing this video because I thought it’d be a good one. I was very wrong.
Part 1 – 378 likes, Traffic: FYP 79% (HOW), Following 15%, 5% profile
Part 2 – 199 likes, Traffic: Following 77%, Profile 21%, no FYP at all
Saturday – Hoth Leia dressing video
494 likes, Traffic: FYP 74%, 25% following
Sunday – Aurora dressing video. In another world this video would have done great. But we are in coocoo world.
282 likes. Too early to have analytics yet.
So again – my stuff is making it to the FYP it’s just not STAYING there. And then I don’t even think it’s going out to my followers that often. It’s just… bonkers.
Dressing Videos usually always do at least OK. Hoth Leia and especially Aurora flopped HARD and that is 100% on tiktok and not on my content. When I post these on IG I guarantee they will do great.
So I have a theory on why I think this week was so much worse. About 2 weeks ago I made a backup account but didn’t post to it. Last week I did start posting to it – I decided I’d make it a backup account and just reupload my videos there in a pleasing way (ie, rows of 3 of the same costume). So I started uploading stuff last… Wednesday I think? Maybe Thursday. And that’s about when things got WAY WORSE for my actual account. I’d seen people warn that having 2 accounts can affect you – so I think that is correct. Having 2 active accounts on the same phone negatively affects how much your video is pushed out. I deleted the extra account yesterday.
I’ll keep experimenting in other ways for a bit longer. Kevin is staying with us this weekend and I have a couple of things I want to record – and I want to do a couple of scarlet witch videos, But after that and exhausting my drafts, I’m going to take a break. It’s just not worth it at this point. Unless something changes but I doubt it. Once I get to the point of taking a break, I’m compiling all this information and sending it to tiktok’s feedback address.
Oh and I lost about another 100 followers but the bleeding seems to have stopped. My conspiracy last week may have been wrong – tiktok has apparently been deleting bot accounts like crazy lately like over a million removed or something. I didn’t think I had 400+ bots following me but who knows. That would make more sense than 400+ random people all deciding to unfollow me within 3 weeks.