remember how I called a post a couple of weeks ago “lost weekend”? Well I take that back. This was it. This was the lost weekend.
Ugh! I was so excited to have a 3 day weekend and get a lot of costume work done. I ended up being so stuck that by Sunday I didn’t do ANYTHING. We ending up binging the last 3 episodes of The Queen’s Gambit (which I really enjoyed).
I did, at least, get Diane mostly done.
The new sweater fabric arrived thursday so I got most of it put back together that night and finished it up friday night. I did make another dumb mistake I couldn’t really fix because of how hard it is to unpick anything from this fabric, so I ended up having to create a back seam to take it up a bit. Not very pretty but oh well.
All I need is a closure at the neck which I picked up this weekend, I’ll get it sewn on soon.
the applique on the viewer’s left seems to be a bit higher than the other. I may move it down, though it matches up to the right one perfectly measurements-wise. I’d rather they be off measurements-wise but look correct to the eye.
All right so that’s done, what’s next? On to Bail…
While waiting on my sweater fabric earlier last week, I worked on Bail’s pants off and on. Finished them up Saturday. I don’t have any pics. But thankfully they ended up being some of the easiest pants I’ve ever made. Probably because they didn’t have a zipper fly LOL. They were supposed to be button-up but I did snaps. I still need to put a hook and eye at the waistband but otherwise, done.
So then let’s finally get to the fun part, the robe!
Used some scrap lining material to get an idea of how large a rectangle I was going to need to cut for each panel.
Guess what, I had EXACTLY enough fabric for what I needed. They will just be scraps leftover from what I cut off the excess at the hem.
So next up I ran into the problem of the fact that I can’t do this as a basic sort of robe going over the shoulder. It can’t show above the mantle. So after trying a couple of things I realized, why not just make a yoke to hold the robe in place out of the scraps of the suit material? Looks like that’s going to work pretty well and support the weight of the robe too.
So yeah i got the yoke made, fabric pinned on, but that’s as far as I got. I had really wanted to have this DONE this weekend – but Chase decided he wants to make a padded thing he wears between the robe and suit that will make the robe sort of “stand out” — which it does, the robe comes out further than Bail’s shoulders at the edge. So I really couldn’t work on it anymore until he figures that out. Bummer.
Padme was a massive frustration this weekened too. The other thing I was going to focus on this weekend was working on the appliques for the skirt. I thought I’d gotten step 1 of this process figured out. I went to test out step 2 and… it did not work. So I went back to step 1 to think about what I could do next — and what I had figured out for step 1 stopped working. Massive step backwards. I think I just got lucky with the initial test pieces.
So now I dunno what to do. I have an option coming that I’m not feeling hopeful about. Would be nice if it worked. My other options at this point are either doing it all by hand (not sure I have time), figure out someway to do it on spoonflower, or just buy a floral purple lace. Really didn’t want to do that but considering it the last option if nothing else works.
On top of that the swatch I ordered for the gathered sections STILL hasn’t gotten here. It’s been 3 weeks. This is why I freaking hate not having any fabric stores except Joann local. So I haven’t been able to do anything else anywhere on the dress in that time period.
I did have one note of progress on Padme this weekend – Chase 3d modeled the brooches himself and they look great. Much better size-wise than the shapeways ones.
So that just leaves Scarlet Witch… which I’m also stuck on because I haven’t been able to buy the materials I need for it. In a normal world I would’ve just dipped into my costume budget – because that’s what it’s there for – to get this stuff ordered, but I drained my costume budget for Luna’s surgery. So I’m stuck having to wait on Chase’s summer bonus (which he hopefully gets this week) to actually get started on anything. So far my shopping list is: red leather, black leather, base boots, black cotton for lining, and red HTV for the pattern. So yeah with no materials I have nothing to do but sit and think about what I need to do.
So I’m basically stuck on all sides.
Since I was stuck i pulled out Arwen to see about fixing the sleeve issue. Originally I was just going to take it up again to eat up the damaged areas, but instead I just started messing with it on my ironing board. I found that if I stretched each area over my tailor’s ham and steamed it, it relaxed the pulled fibers.
Left before, right after. It’s still not perfect but it’s like 80% better.
I’m still kicking myself for seeing this happening and continuing to sew. I was just so excited to get this done LOL. Still not sure why my old machine is doing this — same settings/same needle on the newer machine this isn’t happening (I know because the same thing happens when I sew on the mock-up material I used for bail above so it’s something I’m still dealing with). It probably needs a tune-up REALLY bad but that’s not happening til after dcon.
Anyway, Saturday night we went over to kevin’s for 4th of july festivities and fireworks.
He won “Best Sleeper” at camp. Runs in the family I guess LOL
We’ve got to take Kevin out for his bday sometime soon. Since he missed it because he was sick.
Anyway, we didn’t stay for fireworks, came home and I finished Chase’s Bail pants that night LOL.
4th of July itself we went to see dad’s band play down in midtown. Good music and good food.
And in other news I think our kitty girl is finally pretty much back to normal. She slept on the bed with us Sunday night, which we usually don’t let her do but she came in there before we shut the door. I don’t THINK the fireworks were scaring her but maybe? LOL. She did jump a few times at loud ones. So we let her stay.
Speaking of fireworks, I don’t think i’ve EVER heard so many being set off any other years. It just went on and on and on. I guess people have been pent up.
So I dunno what my to-do list for this week is. Maybe I’ll start pulling out my other costumes for dcon and checking them over and doing any repairs/etc. I guess I could also start on my Padme wig but I’m kinda avoiding that.