Not much in the way of wedding dress Leia progress this week – the only thing I did was sew the 2 back panels together and gather the upper edge. Yes that’s all I did in a week. Why? Because I decided to complete clean out and clean up my sewing room instead. Avoidant behaviour.
Last week I posted a pic of the little new storage drawer thing I got for my work office. I started moving all of my craft supplies to it – and cleaning out as I went – paint, paint brushes, markers, pencils, rulers, any non-sewing crafting supplies got sent to the new storage drawer. Which meant I now had 4 empty drawers in my sewing room. Yay!
So I moved a BUNCH of sewing supplies into these drawers. Previously this stuff had all been in little storage bins in the built-in cabinet. Ribbons, trim, glues, etc. All of this went in here and I wound up with about 10 empty storage bins. Yay!
From there I ended up cleaning up the top of this chest of drawers. Then all the stuff next to it and under it. Then moving on to the newly emptied built-in cabinet. Then the white shelf and the fabric containers. Then the white wardrobe and my patterns… and so on and so on.
EVERYTHING got cleaned up and reorganized and it feels so good!
I normally do this after dragoncon every year. It’s kind of a reset for my sewing room. Put everything back where it goes, throw out trash, etc. But I didn’t do that in 2020 obviously, and after the rush 2021 one, I didn’t have the energy to do it last year. So it’s been looooong overdue.
So despite my lack of wedding dress Leia progress to show this week, I did actually make something. A couple of weeks ago I came across a tiktok challenge of the “walk away dress” – basically it’s a vintage pattern that was marketed as “start it after breakfast and finish it before lunch!” (It’s Butterick something-or-another, I’ll look it up and come back and update this soon…) So that was challenge, make this dress in a morning. The day I came across the challenge happened to be the same day I was looking at some haunted mansion sheets on the disney store that I thought would make a cute dress, so it was serendipity. I bought the sheets and planned it all out.
I decided for the contrast fabric I wanted a subtle black version of the HM wallpaper fabric. All I could find was black on pale grey – which I felt looked too much like the bedsheet fabric. So when it arrived, I threw it in a pot of Rit’s “Back to Black” dye – first time using that and I was really impressed, it is actually a true black and not a dark purple.
But that 1 yard of wallpaper fabric was a frustration — for some reason, the repeated design was SIDEWAYS on it. Instead of the pattern being vertical and on-the-grain of the fabric, it went from selvedge to selvedge. Weird and VERY annoying because the front panel of the pattern wouldn’t fit on the fabric unless I either pieced it together or cut it with the wallpaper repeating pattern going sideways. Wasn’t going to that so piecing it together it was.
So I did start after breakfast. Had to piece the front panel into 3 sections – made a waist-line seam and also had to do the part that wraps separate as well. So that took extra time.
I also split the circle skirt pattern – Instead of it only having 1 back seam, I cut it in half and made 2 side seams. This was partially so that the haunted mansion print on the back wouldn’t be upside down, and also so that I could have side seams to easily add in pockets.
So between those 2 changes it look me almost hour just to get everything cut and back to a “baseline” of having all of the pieces ready to assemble.
So then I actually got to get started, putting in all the darts, attaching the skirt to the upper back, sewing them all together, adding in the bias tape and hemming everything. For closures I did a snap in the back and 3 little skull buttons Chase printed for me in the front with some button loops.
Turned out ok. I was honestly rushing at the end… because I was ready to go eat lunch LOL
The pattern is basically a sort-of wrap dress – the front panel closes at the back and then the back panel wraps around the front. So it seems like it’s pretty simple and easy to do right out of the box. But as I discovered – along with several other folks in my tiktok comments – it’s not an easy thing to get fitted in a way that looks ok. I had to edit the fit of the back panel and also take up the shoulder seams 3 times. It still fits really funny through the shoulders/arm holes/chest area. Probably because that is always my problem area when using any commercial pattern – I have to go up to my weird bust size, but then the shoulders/armholes are usually too big. I’d love to repattern the entire front panel of the dress with princess seams or something so that it fits smoother without needing a lot of adjusting. Unless I get it in the exact right spot all those weird darts just look… weird.
The pattern also called for the circle skirt to hang for 24 hours before hemming, but the challenge time frame didn’t allow for that obviously. I’m not sure if those sheets will stretch or not – time will tell. Either way, I didn’t love the machine hem, and if I notice any stretching of it, I’m going to take the machine hem out and let it sit, and then redo it by hand.
But anyway I’ve got a cute dress to wear to dinner one night next weekend. And it took me 4 hours and 20 minutes from start to finish. It was fun to do.
Sunday we went to visit my grandparents then came home and… played tennis? We have tennis courts in our neighborhood, Chase used to play all the time, and I never have but always wanted to learn. So we went and TRIED LOL. I kept hitting the ball way over to the left out of bounds. We did way more chasing tennis balls than hitting tennis balls. But it was fun.
Lots of fun stuff to do this week – Kevin is coming over wednesday, I’ve got to fix up his Luke costume. His Jedi boots broke last time he wore them – zipper pull just completely broke off in his hands. So I’m going to add some velcro to the inside of it until we can buy new ones. Also picked up some stretch knit to make him some new putees for the farmboy outfit because he currently doesn’t have any. Also need to fix both his belts – he’s fluctuated in weight so much the past couple of years that they never seem to fit him right. Gonna just put some velcro on them.
Thursday we’ve got Spooky science Spectacular at Pink Palace, taking Kevin to that. Saturday is Midtown Con. Still don’t know what I’m wearing to that… Edith won my IG poll, but I remembered we are planning to go visit my other grandma while we’re in costume that day, so I don’t think girl covered in blood is the right choice for walking into a rehab center. So it’ll prob be a Leia. For both events. I’m nothing if not predictable.