I recently cleaned out my folder where I keep all my photos for my blog posts, there are some in there that have been there for ages. Among them I found this one:
My sweet girl
Speaking of cozy puppies, Skye stayed with me for a day while my parents went on a day trip.
First up today I have some NEIGHBOR NEWS.
The house behind us with the BEACON OF GONDOR light that shines through our bedroom and living room windows every single night (despite HOA rules saying on lights directly pointed at other houses – and yes we have blackout curtains over the bedroom window but a lot of light still gets in around the edges) that I have complained about ever since we first moved in… IS FOR SALE. And currently under contract already. Just noticed the sign when coming home from that direction yesterday.
Realllly hoping the new owners don’t insist on turning it on every single night like the current ones (and no, it’s not set to come on automatically — occasionally they forget to turn it on and those night are WONDERFULLY dark in our bedroom. And it comes on at odd times. I’ve paid attention the past 2 years LOL). If they do I may slip a note in their mailbox offering to go halfsies on motion-detector lights instead.
Also last week i was reseaching sound-absorbing fences. Our backyard is only 2/3 fenced in, and we’ve been wanting to fence in the remaining 1/3 eventually, before we get a dog. The side that does NOT have a fence is the side I want to invest in something sound-blocking. Because our neighbor’s driveway on that side is literally 10 feet from our bedroom window and I’m tired of hearing car doors slamming when they get home late or leave early.
All right that’s the end of my Old-Lady-Complainer-Corner. Oh one more gripe – we had to run out to target yesterday and it was a madhouse. Apparently school starts tomorrow. So glad I don’t have to deal with that anymore.
Saturday we were going to go try a new place in midtown for dinner, but turns out they don’t do to-go (yet) and the wait for a table was an hour. So we decided to try a not-new place we just hadn’t been yet – Hattie B’s chicken and it was good!
We both had the chicken sandwich but I want to go back and try just the regular fried chicken.
Anyway let’s move on to the reason people are here, the costume updates.
First up, Chase got his Bail mantle reassembled so I was able to get back to work on the robe.
Of course my dressform is not quite the same shape, but having the mantle set up where I could work around it was all i needed.
Sexy
I got all the pleats basted together last night so tonight, I’m going to have Chase try it on to make sure it’s all ok on him. then get them sewed down permanently, put the side panels on, sew the yoke on, put a closure on, hem it, done.
In the world of Wanda…
I’M TIRED OF THIS GRANDPA
Seriously I’m SO tired of applying HTV. And it didn’t turn out great, but as of last night the HTV on the skirt is done and I got it assembled.
I’ve still got to do the trim. It’s stiff AF but it flows nicely when walking.
Also I’ve got my mockup for the hip panel attached, but I stopped there because I want to get the bodice where I can at least zip it up and have it on to make sure the hip panel is looking right before I go any further.
The reason I say the skirt “didn’t turn out great” is that it was an ABSOLUTE PAIN IN THE ASS to get the htv panels lined up. At first I thought it was me, I was just not being careful enough lining them up. And then I started to realize it’s like 10% me when applying and 90% the silhouette/me not lining up the vinyl on the cutter correctly. I realized some of them weren’t cut completely straight leading to blocks that were angled and then became very hard to line up the next block. Or ones like this:
I had 2 like that and that wasn’t anybody’s fault, that was the silhouette being goofy.
So there are places where there’s too much space between the design elements or they overlap or whatever. Thankfully in the back I was able to cover up the worst spots with the black stripes (made those out of pleather).
But you can clearly see one horizontal line there in the area closest to the camera where it didn’t match up correctly.
I think something that would’ve been much easier in the long run would’ve been to use the silhouette to make a stencil and then paint the design on. If I remake one part of this it’ll be this skirt — the fabric was cheap, I used cheap HTV, so I wouldn’t be out much except my time.
I’ve still got to print more HTV for the gloves and hip panels but otherwise I’m finally done with that and can switch over to cutting padme stuff.
I got the stripe panels for the front of the bodice made:
Glued together with black e6000, because there was no getting a needle through it, hem tape wasn’t holding and couldn’t get enough heat through all this pleather for fusible to work.
I guess I’ll have to glue this to the bodice too. May TRY hand-sewing it on. Maybe just glue down the center and sew down the edges? I dunno.
I’ve got to get the bodice finished up, or close to it. I’m starting to get stuck without having it more done. I did get the lining layers sewn together and some boning in — only doing boning on the side panels and even with that I’m not completely sold, may take it out depending on how it looks at the end. I’ve got to get the interior torso shell made and applied. Then i can get the lining sewn in and the zipper installed. Ugh I’m still so stymied by this project. I feel like I can’t get my thoughts in order.
Saturday night I took a break from everything else and made masks for all my costumes since that’s a thing I now have to do.
Top 3 are Arwen (used leftover sleeve fabric, a lining + the sleeve chiffon), Wanda (the bodice fabric with some of the leftover htv on the side), and the little blue dress project (fabric from the dress + lining).
Second row is a plain blue for Trillian (didn’t have any fabric leftover from a 9 year old project, so just found something close), a plain black one for Mothman, and Raddus Bridge Leia (leftover dress fabric. I did have some leftover robe fabric but that would be too heavy)
Last row is Padme (surcoat fabric), Ceremonial/Poe Dameron Leia (this is one is old, it’s my disneybound Leia mask but reduce, reuse, ecyce), and Eliza (dress fabric + lace from the sleeves)
Only one I haven’t done yet is Diane – I want to make a black lodge inspired mask so I ordered some chevron fabric. Also need to make masks for Chase but his masks use a different pattern so I’ll do that later.
I leave you with a Luna update:
Since her surgery in June we’ve been feeding her half a can of her RX wet food in the morning and the other half at dinner, and if she begs in between (and oh does she beg in between) she’s got RX dry food we give her. She is absolutely NOT into the dry food. She’s turned into an absolute begging-monster for the wet food. We needed to get her back into her old schedule of dry food all day and a can of wet food at night. We started that on Friday. And so far it’s going surprisingly well, she seems to be begging LESS somehow. EXCEPT… she’s gotten to where she wants to bump our door every morning somewhere between 5AM-7AM to make us get up. So got to figure that out next.
OH! I nearly forgot. Chase fixed my laptop! Thankfully it seems all my files are OK and intact, though all my settings and individual programs are gone. I had to start redownloading all my sims games last night. I think my sims data is all ok but if it isn’t… that’s ok I’d been thinking about redoing the entire thing from scratch.