It started out rainy, dark and cozy this morning, especially with the time change, and now the sun is stabbing me in the eyes. WTF. I had to pin a blanket over my window just to get some work done.
Also yall can pry DST out my cold dead hands. People who want to switch to winter time year round are nuts. I love DST.
So this past week a mix of good and bad.
I cleaned the house and my sewing room. Felt good to have a “reset” sewing room.
Yall usually only see pics of my costume closet nice and organized. Here’s what it looked like before I started cleaning last week.
I finished the Leia disneybound dress last week.
The zipper was a massive PAIN IN THE BUTT. It’s not perfect but I’m calling it done.
I ended up with a little snag right on the collar that I’m just going to hide with a pin.
With the jacket:
With that done I turned my attention back to my bra corset thing, because my boning finally showed up a week and a half late. Just glad it did. Got the boning cut and in and then decided I wanted to test to see if I could zip it up, so I grabbed a random zipper and basted it in… then realized DUH I just sewed in a normal zipper and not a separating zipper, there’s no way for me to get it on over my head. So I took that out and decided to just pick one up this weekend since we needed to go to Michael’s.
Friday night we went and had dinner with my parents! Spaghetti. And then we played dominos. Was a fun night and felt normal for the first time in months.
Saturday we had some errands to run. We went to Michael’s first intending to get the Leia print framed. Stood at the framing counter after pressing the “help” button for about 15 minutes and Chase went to look for someone. Turns out the framer didn’t come in for another hour. Would’ve been nice to have a sign up or something, Michael’s.
Picked up some stuff I needed but they didn’t have separating zippers. So had to go over to hobby Lobby for that. Found a 7″ zipper in the separating section that was a bit too short but I figured I could just do a hook and eye at the top.
Got home and it was time to work on stuff. First up I finished cleaning up the former Stitch romper:
Got new elastic back into the waist of the shorts and hemmed the top. I LOVE the shorts.
The top’s hem was a little wonky because I rushed it. I may take it out and do it by hand later. But if I don’t it’s not a big deal.
We had a big mail haul Friday so after that, I had lots of little things to work on.
Here’s my new red heels for Dale/Black Widow. They’re super comfortable!! I’m really glad.
And the pink flats I got for disneybound Padme. They’re not so comfortable. I can tell the seam at the center back is going to be a bitch. But I’m going to start wearing them around now to break them in.
Shoelaces for my Leia shoes were too short. Having to order another pair.
Dale belt! It’s cute. Chase is going to 3d print a little acorn to fit in the middle of the bow.
And shorts to go under the Leia dress and shorts for disneybound Padme. The Leia shorts are fine, they won’t really be visible. The pockets seams are a little visible under the dress but not terrible. And they have pockets which is all I wanted.
The Padme shorts are questionable just like I thought. Waiting on the shirt to get here to see how they look with that. I can already tell I’m going to have to take the center seam up.
And in non-disney outfit mail stuff…
I got these leggings in Gold Bubble’s current sale! I’ve wanted more Gold Bubble stuff so I’m excited to have these.
Back to the Padme disneybound…
I bought this headband a couple of weeks ago. Attemped dyeing it with regular RIT dye which did nothing of course, so this weekend I picked up some purple Dyemore and it worked great. I glued on some of my leftover pearls.
I also got my wig for Dale.
(Reminder, I’m wearing a wig because I know if I curl my hair the curls will NOT hold outside in Orlando.)
This was it after I brushed it out a bit. It’s not quite right, it’s a little long and a little more “20s” finger wave than I wanted. So I’m recurling it right now.
The other thing I worked on Saturday was my Leia belt for the disneybound look. The white vinyl I ordered had arrived with the mail Friday so I used my real Leia belt as a guide to cut out 2 versions – one the same size as my belt and one a little shorter (height-wise), since my belt pieces are a little smaller than the ones on the “real” belt.
I pinned it on around my dress on the dressform and… UGH. It looks YELLOW next to the optic white of the rest of the costume. So I decided to get some Design Master white spray paint later.
Then Saturday night after dinner I grabbed new zipper to baste into the bra-corset thing again, got it sewn in, unzipped it and… no separation. I grabbed the tag I ripped off it and… closed zipper. UGH IT WAS IN THE WRONG SPOT WITH THE ZIPPERS AND I DIDNT NOTICE.
So Sunday we ran out to Joann to find a white separating zipper and the white spray paint. The shortest zipper they had was 12″ so I just got it. I basted it in yesterday and sat there and looked at it and decided… after all this… I don’t want to do a zipper. I mean for one thing I can’t find a zipper that fits it. I know I know there are ways to shorten a zipper, but I don’t feel like doing that. Plus I really don’t think I’m going to get the compression I want from a zipper. So I took the zipper out, put it in the zipper pile and ordered some grommets on amazon. Well, I tried. But sometimes it’s just better to do what you know works.
Then we went to Michael’s for the spray paint. They had it, yay. But before Michael’s I noticed the Ulta nearby. Ran in to see if they had the Wandavision stuff…
They didn’t have it out, had to ask. They hadn’t put it out yet since they didn’t have everything in yet, but the employee went and got me what they did have. YAY!
So I got home and started painting my belt. After 2 coats I went and got a scrap of fabric and… it still looked yellow. I was basically painting the belt the same colour it already was. UGH. So I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. I wanted the belt to have a different texture than the knit white of EVERYTHING else but at this point I don’t know what to do other than to cover it in my fabric. I had few suggestions on things to try on instagram. Looked at Angelus paints but it didn’t really look like their whites would be any different than the acrylic whites I had at home and tested out. There was maybe like a 10% brightening but not enough to make a difference.
Why do artist paints only have like 2 white tones (“white” and “natural white”) when house paints have like 100 shades of white?
Anyway I’ll figure something out. Tonight I’m going to paint the belt pieces.
Sorry that was all over the place, but my mind was all of the place this weekend. I had a really bad mental day yesterday afternoon. Like, I know logically dragoncon probably isn’t happening this year. I’m still holding out hope. If Biden wants the vaccine available to all adults by May, that would give everyone time to be vaccinated and then we can all just move on and get back to normal and Labor Day should be fine. But I can’t deal with the people acting like the people holding out hope are stupid. It’s like some people on social media just want to exist in this shitty dystopian world forever. I’ve been hiding posts on facebook for the past 24 hours and I’m on the verge of leaving all of my dragoncon groups over it. But it made me really sad.
Chase and I discussed that if dcon doesn’t happen, we’ll go to disney again this fall. So I guess that’s something.
Oh and we got our new masks in! The clear ones! They are pretty neat. I don’t have any pics. We are going to put them together and wear them on a walk around the lake outside to see how they do.
So last little bit for today. Tiktok engagement continues to get worse which I didn’t think was possible but here we are.
Monday last week – a video reply about my Ahsoka costume.
255 likes. 80% following, 12% FYP, 8% profile.
Also Monday, friends only post of me and Kevin doing a Stepbrothers bit. Not going to record these stats since it was posted friends only.
Wednesday – repost video of my pink georgian gown. (not reposting the tiktok, but same video I used previously).
225 likes. 74% following, 18% FYP, 6% profile.
Friday – Little video of me and Kevin being cosplay buddies.
754 likes. 64% Following, 34% FYP, 1% profile.
Only thing that did “Decent” this week.
Saturday – repost of my Padme funeral detail video with a new sound.
135 likes. 65% following, 26% FYP, 6% profile.
Absolutely abysmal.
Sunday – Leia video I’ve had in my drafts since October. Not a repost.
127 likes. 73% following, 24% FYP. 2% profile.
I don’t even understand how, with 127 likes, this was ever on the FYP.
I don’t even think my stuff is being pushed to my followers at this point either. 135 and 127 likes. That’s fucking ridiculous.
Last week I wrote a letter to tiktok with my findings looking at my engagement the past year. Used an email address I’d seen suggested elsewhere – it bounced back. So today I took it, shortened it where it would fit the text limit of their contact form and sent it again.
Like I’ve said before I know it doesn’t matter. But it’s frustrating. Like tiktok is one of the few things I’ve been able to focus on and have fun with through this shit year. Not having cons or any other costuming outlet, tiktok became my outlet. And to have it taken away… for what? Why? It makes no sense and I’m angry.
So after that negativity, I leave you with a picture of a flower from our yard.
