So what did I do this past week?
Well first I finished off the Marvel outfit. I apparently don’t have a “finished” photo and I’m too lazy to walk the 15 feet to take one so use your imagination. The elastic came in and I got it finished up. I meant to put it on this weekend and take photos and a quick video for a making-of video for tiktok and I didn’t do it. This weekend was busy.
Mid-week, I ordered a bunch of stuff online that we needed for the trip.
1. I got the new flats for dapper Leia. They fit better but I can tell they’re not going to be much more comfortable than my heels – uncomfortable in a different way LOL They’re just super stiff and I can tell they’re going to rub. I’m going to try the hair dryer method to try softening them up.
2. a dvd case for the car so kevin has a ton of movies to choose from
3. a water bottle for kevin with a strap so he can easily carry it around the parks. Well, at least I thought that’s what I ordered. Turns out I only ordered a strap LMAO. But thankfully the strap fit nicely on a water bottle I already had (it just didn’t have a strap) so I guess that worked out ok.
4. A BUNCH of stuff for Kevin outfits. I’m putting together a Dagobah Luke bound for him (which is why we got the Yoda backpack) and also some dapper-day-ish accessories so he can wear it twice — adding suspenders and a hat for dapper day. But mostly it was putting his dapper donald look together, to go with our Chip and Dale:
Gonna be cute LOL
Off and all last week I worked on some Padme ears using the fabric scraps from the costume. Friday I got them mostly assembled:
The headband is covered in the surcoat fabric with a lining of the velvet peaking out on the edges (to look like the piping on the sleeves/collar). The ears are covered in the taffeta/floral velvet – I had one large test panel I’d done of the first set of velvet I’d cut and applied to a taffeta scrap, so I used that. And the bow is the velvet with the embroidered swirl on the sides. Yes I dragged the embroidery machine out just to do that LOL.
The only thing that is left is to finish the bow and attach it, in the photo above it’s just held on with a quilting clip. I waffled on what to do for the bow band – at first I thought about using one of the small brooches I got from shapeways and didn’t use but it’s too big. So then I felt like I needed something that made it more Padme so I was going to embroider the Naboo symbol on the band. I got out my naboo symbol embroidery file but my machine would only shrink it by 10% and I needed it to be shrunk by like, a lot more. (It’s like 6 in tall and I needed it to be 1 in tall). So I tried to find a free program that would let me resize AND save it as the file format I needed which turned out to be impossible. I did find one that resized + saved as JEF but when I loaded it in the machine, it messed up every single time, so I don’t think it worked right. So I’m just going to do it by hand this week.
Saturday I went to Joann to get some stuff for my last project i’m doing for Disney. Then that night I went and “granny sat” at my parents’ house – which was really nothing, my grandma was already in bed when I got there at 7:30 and I never heard a peep out of her.
So Skye and I just hung out, watched a movie, and I ventured into the attic again.
I did find this, but it wasn’t where I could get it out. After Disney Chase and I are going to go over and load up the car with as much as we can, take 75% of it to the trash and sell the rest.
I also found a box of stuff labeled “from my closet 2006” and when I opened it, it was mostly toys/collectibles. So I want to get that one too mostly because AFTER the fact I started wondering if maybe my Quidditch robe is buried down in there?? Maybe used as padding? Probably wishful thinking but I want to grab that sometime soon too.
The only thing I did bring down was a bag of clothes, which had 3 more beatles shirts in it but mostly otherwise going to donation. The one shining spot was that I found my birks:
Keeping those. Also found a pair of sweatpants I LOVED back in the day and thought I’d lost so keeping those too.
Sunday’s project was the tie-dying. I bought a plain black spirit jersey online and I have a VISION. Though I was nervous about doing this because — I know this sounds crazy — I’ve only ever tie-dyed one other thing in my whole life. Yes despite my hippie 90s phase and all the dyeing I do in costuming now, I’d never done any tie-dying until one small project for a friend a couple of years ago. So i was nervous I was going to mess up this shirt.
Wet shirt
I bought a reverse tie-dye kit at Joann, only because it had squeeze bottles, gloves and rubber bands in it for cheaper than I could buy those things individually. The squeeze bottles came pre-loaded with a powdered “colorr remover”.
I tried the colour remover from the kit first but it wouldn’t fully dissolve into the water no matter how much I shook it so I said EFF it and went and got the bleach. Also at first I only did every other segment of the rubber bands…
But once I unwrapped this it wasn’t really enough bleached areas so I re-tied it and did it again, this time squeezing my bleach/water mix all over.
This was my finished result which was exactly the effect I wanted. Hooray!
After it was fully dried.
So next was re-dyeing it. Did a 15 minute soak in scarlet RIT:
And here’s the final result after drying:
Thankfully it turned out perfect, exactly what I wanted.
Now I’ve just got to add the finishing touches which I will be doing tonight. Hopefully.
And this week i’m also going to be officially switching to Dragoncon costume mode. I’m not totally done with Disney projects yet (still have a few more things to do on Leia/ears, etc) but it’s all little stuff I’ll do over the next month as I can.
Last week I ordered a TON of swatches for both Dcon costumes. Padme swatches for the blouse, vest and skirt of the Packing Gown, and while I was at Joann I picked up some cotton to start constructing the interior that is under the vest/supports the sleeves. Hoping that some of these swatches I got work.
And I made a big decision on Lady Jessica last week. Originally I was going to do her blue dress but I changed to the yellow one, because it goes with the Atreides armor/Duke Leto look Chase is doing. I’m planning to dye all the fabric for that so I don’t really need swatches, but I do have some plain swatches coming (threw them in while ordering stuff for padme), so I can start doing dye tests until I can order the fabric.
Chase also decided on HIS costume list which he surprised me with – here I am thinking, i’m only doing 2 costumes for Dragoncon, going to keep this summer fairly simple and lowkey after last year’s stress, and Chase comes at me wanting to do 3 costumes LOL. I talked him down to 2; he’s doing “Hobo Luke” from Last Jedi and Duke Leto. Going to buy and mod something for the fabric parts of the Leto suit, since it’s just a grey undersuit and I think we can just mod something to make it close. Did some initial digging on Luke, saved a bunch of fabric options.
So today Chase is home sick from work. He started feeling like he had a cold Saturday night, took a home test yesterday and negative for covid. Our weather has been back and forth the last 2 weeks so it’s no surprise for anybody to have a head cold. I’ve had a migraine the past 3 days myself.
After how busy this past weekend was I’m really hoping to keep next weekend chill and dig into Padme. Maybe also start packing for disney. Yes I know it’s too early for packing but to pack something is like marking off a project a mental checklist like it’s officially done and I can stop thinking about it. So don’t come for me when I start packing a month and a half early.