Well here we are, it’s monday again. And it’s been another week of panicked flailing around for something to do to work on while dragoncon stares me down in the horizon.
I spent pretty much all of last week doing little repairs on older costumes and what not. I fixed my broken Arwen necklace, finished sequining my Dorothy shoes (I started on that in 2006 then stopped halfway around a heel. they’ve been like that ever since. I finally finished it last week. LMAO.) I finished painting my Eliza shoes. I started pulling everything out and setting up a dragoncon-packing-staging area in Kevin’s room. I also searched high and low for my Selene wig. I thought i could reuse it for one of my dcon costumes. I could not remember if I sold it when I sold the other parts of the costume. I usually don’t sell the wigs, since I can reuse them, but sometimes I do. I went through everything except every single costume bin. Couldn’t find it so I’m assuming that means it’s gone and I need to buy a new wig.
I’m still stuck in the “I have no money in my costume budget to buy supplies/need to wait on Chase’s bonus to buy supplies” moment which really sucks. He’s usually gotten it by now.
I did finally get some stuff to work on this weekend — but I’ll get to that in a minute.
Luna’s been mostly normal. She got up in her cat tree for the first time since surgery. She’s also reallllly enjoying her new chewy food. We’ve been trying to mix the “Urinary Health” dry food in with the “Urinary Health” wet food but she is just not interested in the dry food at all. We tried a trick we read about online — we added some chicken stock to the dry food and she LOVED that. So that’s a step in the right direction. We just have to get her back to willingly eating dry food before we go out of town, because people aren’t going to be coming over to feed her wet food 3 times a day like she’s getting with us home.
Friday night we went to see Black Widow!! At the imax! It was so nice to be back in a movie theater. The last movie I saw in theaters before everything shut down was CATS. Let that be a lesson to you next time you want to go to a theater to watch something stupid because you never know when it might be the last.
Really enjoyed the movie, fun times. Florence Pugh is magical.
Saturday morning took Kevin swimming with Ash – I’d promised to take him swimming soon since we didn’t get to do anything for his birthday. After that I came home and it was time to dig in to the stuff I had to work on…
i decided to scrap my original Scarlet Witch bodice pattern, and decided to get a good fit I wanted to do a duct tape dummy. Never done one of these before!
I sacrificed the old homemade Wolfwood shirt I found in my parent’s attic for it LOL
Got seam lines drawn on and cut it apart to trace:
First pass at a mock-up:
Not bad, needed some tweaks, but overall it fit like 98% PERFECT. I had to take it in a bit at the bottom front edge, and had to thin out the area around the shoulder.
Here’s what I ended up with. Using this heavy taffeta as the main layer.
And then I decided I wanted to line it in something more comfortable so I dug around and ended up using this Yoda cotton I’ve had in my stash since 2005:
At that point I stopped – I had planned to go ahead and install the boning (not doing a lot — just enough to help with my posture. Not doing a lace-up back – it’ll be zipped), but I didn’t want to make it too difficult to do the outer fabric layer one it’s done, so I decided to wait on that.
Main reason i’ve been so stuck on Wanda is that I haven’t been able to order the HTV for the all over pattern on the main pieces. Finally got that ordered today, arrives Thursday, so hopefully this weekend I can get all of that applied and finally dig into this thing properly.
I did also pattern the half skirt, but needed to wait to get a heavier lining material before I really could do anything. UGH.
In the worlds of Padme and Bail… not much progress on either front.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I ordered the shapeways brooches but felt they were too small. The shapeways version is the white one. Chase modeled new versions for me that we felt were better sized – that’s the grey one. So at least that parts done – gotta print the other ones and paint them.
Also notice the piece of fabric hanging underneath them? That’s the swatch I was waiting forever on. The swatch for the gathered pieces. I really didn’t think the swatch was going to work, but wanted to see – I was planning on turning around and ordering the white version of the same fabric to dye. BUT it came in and I think it’s actually a great colour?! Hooray, no need to dye it all! I got that ordered thursday and it’s supposed to arrive tomorrow, so i’m going to hopefully SLAM through that part as fast as I can, and then I can finish up the velvet pieces and get it all attached and Padme will be done except….
…the fucking appliques
So I have hit a wall on my original plan for the appliques. It’s just not going to work and at this point I’m tired of throwing money at it trying to make it work. I’ve fallen back to Option B. Once again stuck waiting for a swatch.
Out of my 4 options for the appliques Option D – the one I really didn’t want to do – was to just buy a floral lace. I did actually buy some floral lace to have on hand in case absolutely nothing worked. This is it:
I really don’t want to use it. I don’t love it.
And besides just not liking it for this — I actually think it would be a pretty decent option for the lace overlay on the ROTS dressing gown LMAO. (The one she’s wearing when obi-Wan tells her anakin’s been killing younglings) Dye it a bit darker and put it over a lavender satin. I really didn’t want to do another ROTS costume but it’s got me thinking LOL.
And no more progress on bail since last week. As we were working with the mantle to get everything placed correctly, we both realized it was too big in the back.
It comes down too far, and also sticks out from his back too much. So he went back to his friend who originally modeled these for him, and he made some adjustments – so Chase is going to be reprinting the mantle. So the cape is on hold until that’s done.
Sunday just worked more on the Wanda bodice and also kind started looking at the pants. I have my pants fabric, but not the stuff for the stripes. I want to be able to sew the stripes onto the front panels prior to assembling everything, so I’m just in a holding pattern untiL I can get stuff. Actually while digging around I did find some black pleather that might work for some of those parts. But nothing for the red. I also dug around through my patterns for a good stretch pants pattern that did NOT have a center front crotch seam. I feel like that always looks bad so I ended up pulling out a unitard pattern and I think that’s what I’m going to use. I want to test it out with some scraps but haven’t found big enough stretch scraps yet. going to dig some more tonight.
Also from Saturday night through to Sunday dinner I was having awful stomach aches. It was like from back in the 2005-2008 days when I was overdosing on ibuprofen everytime I had a migraine and gave myself ulcers. I don’t think it’s ulcers this time… it’s happened a few other times the past couple of weeks and I’m starting to wonder if it’s because I’ve been eating so much bread lately. But every other time I took some Tums and was fine within a few minutes, but could not get it under control Sunday. Made it hard to work. Finally after we ate dinner (ribs and potatoes au gratin, yum) things settled down. Which again was just like when I had ulcers.
Anyway we went to Bargain Hunt Sunday because they supposedly carried something Chase wanted. No luck on that front but in the wall decor section I found a bunch of poster tubes just labeled “star wars poster”. Opened a couple of them up and they were all the same – Drew Struzan’s “First 10 Years” Star Wars poster for $5. So I got that for Kevin’s room. When I got it home and was able to fully open it up, it’s actually a giant sticky-back poster you can reuse. That’s neat. But I’m going to frame it, to go with the other Struzan posters we have for his room.
Goals this week:
tonight:
-finish pulling my older costumes
tomorrow-thursday:
-Padme fabric is supposed to arrive, get it cut, gathered, pressed, attached! Finish the lining on the velvet pieces. Get everything attached. Paint brooches.
this weekend:
-apply the HTV pattern to my fabric
-get lining for half-skirt cut, assembled
-start assembling outer shell of bodice
Things I still need to buy:
-Diane wig
-Diane bracelets
-wig for the stupid blue dress
-boots for wanda
-red fabric for wanda
OMG I had to come back to edit this because I forgot my exciting news. So Last Podcast on the Left is my favourite podcast and has been for a while. They did a live show in May here in TN and I really wanted to go but it was the weekend after we got back from disney. And at that point I told Chase, if they ever come anywhere near here when they actually start touring again, we are going. Well they announced the cities for their new tour and… they are actually coming HERE! Not Nashville! Here to Memphis! Ahh! So I ended up joining their patreon so I could get early ticket access. Wednesday morning i was on right at the time they were supposed to drop and the stupid site wouldn’t work. So Chase called and was able to get us seats in the row right behind the VIP section! I’m so excited! I told Chase he could consider it an early/late birthday present for me. Early in that we had to spend the money earlier than we would’ve liked and later in that it’ll be way after my birthday when we actually go. It’ll actually be Chase’s birthday weekend LOL. So I figure he can pick where we eat dinner and we’ll both celebrate our birthdays together LOL. Anyway. Yeah. YAY