Hey I actually got a good amount of stuff done this past week.
I finished hemming the Jessica veils, and then I got the dress pieces cut:
It’s been kinda hard this past week to show any progress of this on IG, because I’m trying to avoid putting pins in it so I never had the panels pinned together until I went to actually sew them together.
She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face
Luna has been such a good girl lately. I don’t want to jinx it by saying that, but she hasn’t had any freakouts or meltdowns lately. She’s been very sweet and wants to play a lot, I even got some of her old toys out she was never interested in before, like her cat tunnel. Friday she came close – we were moving some furniture in and out of my home office and she was clearly anxious about it, but didn’t hiss or anything. I really think having the RIGHT feliway diffuser is working.
Anyway back to the Jessica dress. It’s self-lined to the upper thigh — I didn’t want to fully line it, waste of expensive fabric — so I focused on getting the lining layer assembled first, and once that was put together I did the outer pieces – got the darts put in, and started to work on the cut-outs on the shoulders. But then Friday night I went to look at my references again to check the sizing of the cut-otus and realized… there’s a seam right at the armpit up to the neck that I didn’t notice before. Argh.
So I had to kinda totally rethink the way I was installing the lining in order to include this seam. I ended up just cutting the dress away at the seam line and then just sewed the lining in there, and decided to make the outer shoulder piece a separate part. That’s what I spent Saturday and Sunday night working on:
I had to go through about 4 mock-ups to get the shape right and the outer edge of the dress pulled in under the armpit correctly. Just irritating I didn’t see it before and could’ve included it in my initial mock-up/patterns.
This is kinda where I left it last night. This was close, I made one more tweak to the shape after this photo and then realized I needed to do the same tweak on the back – so I’ll do that tonight, and hopefully only have to do 1 more mock-up and then I can make the real thing and get it attached.
After that I just need to close up the bottom of the shoulder straps, put the zipper in, and then start working on the hem – I don’t know when I’ll actually do the hem, because I haven’t decided on shoes yet and obviously I want to see exactly how tall I’m going to be before I start hemming.
She wears some kind of crazy expensive shoes with this with sort of geta-sandal soles and I’m not wearing anything that I’m not going to be sure-footed in considering how much fabric I’m going to have to be wrangling, including blocking my face. So just trying to find something that suits it at this point.
I also can’t wait to steam the hell out of this thing. I’ve obviously been pressing my seams and the darts but the fabric gets SO easily wrinkled, I have not seen it totally steamed out and looking nice yet. Maybe Ill do that tonight, I need to make sure my portable steamer works on it because I’m NOT trusting a hotel iron with this fabric.
Nothing to report on Padme progress. My new sleeve liner fabric arrives today …. AND SO DOES MY SWATCH!!! FINALLY!!
So Saturday I did get a lot done on Jessica but not really on Sunday. I had to go over and sit with my grandmother while my parents went to church, then we had lunch with them, then we had errands to run, and we ended up being gone from 9:30 to 4:30. Geez. So I only did the little bit of mock-ups on that side panel last night.
Other random stuff…
Chase randomly got this for me at the thrift store! My collection of haunted porcelain dogs is growing!
Switched the house flag out…
I’ve gotten asked several times over the last few weeks if I ever go live while sewing. My answer is generally no but the “why” of that no is harder to explain.
First off, I don’t stay in one spot. Do other people while they are sewing stay in one spot? I am all over the place. Sewing machine, ironing table, regular table, dressform, 3 or 4 places on the floor (I am constantly moving away from the mess I’ve created lol). The only way it’d work is if I had a camera mounted to my head and then I wouldn’t be able to interact with anyone.
And then there’s the fact that I don’t have a linear work style. I will do one thing and then sit and think about it. Scroll tiktok for a minute. Do something else. Then back to it 15 minutes later. I also can’t really narrate and think at the same time. I discovered that when I DID go live making those Ariel ears a couple of months ago – it was a pretty mindless thing I was putting together, but I had a hard time assembling thoughts into speech while working. I ended up rambling a lot.
And I like to listen to podcasts while I work. Sometimes music. Can’t do that on live.
But it’s mostly the location thing and the constant stopping and starting. Sometimes I just stand and stare at the window like a creep while I’m thinking. Not really riveting “live” content.
And if I were on live I’d not take the photos I need of the progress for the website. I’m already having issues between video and photo now. If I take video of progress I forget to take a photo, and vice versa.
Maybe I just need to focus on doing more video progress updates on IG. It wouldn’t be live but it would be more personal than a random progress photo every few days. I tried to do that for a while and found it distracting so I stopped, especially when I’d have to try to explain my thought processes on something I’d messed up and corrected – I’m much better at typing all that out here on the other side of it than I am trying to explain it speaking on the fly.
Anyway that’s all for today. Hoping this week I can finish up the Jessica dress besides the hem and then move back to Padme sleeves…