I’m just going to start at the beginning of my photos from the last week and work my way through them.
First up – my Nadja swatch arrived and looked good finally! I think I finally got the stripe sizing good.
So I got my yardage ordered and hooray it was on sale – it was $50 cheaper than I had budgeted for. It’s arriving tomorrow so fingers crossed it looks the same as the swatch.
This adorable pin cushion belonged to my great aunt! It’s now living in my sewing room right under my thread shelf – this will be much more useful for keeping tracking of my sewing needles than the little tomatoes.
Inherited a few other things from great aunt too, including a bunch of vintage gloves, a silk scarf, and this dress and jacket which still had their tags on:
The jacket is not something I’d ever buy – I’m not an animal print person. But I love it. I love the shape of it. I plan to put it in my regular jacket rotation for winter this year.
Friday night went to Joann which I’d been needing to do.
Ended up stuck in line behind a quilter getting a gazillion tiny cuts off an entire cart full of bolts. Stood there for a while reminiscing over Hancock Fabrics because at my Hancock they’d always call over a second cutter )if there wasn’t one already) in that situation. To be fair eventually a second cutter did come over a few minutes later. Yay.
Anyway trip was successful.
Got just about everything I needed for Breha. A blue satin for the lining and an off-white double brushed matte satin for the main part.
And then I worked all weekend. My goal was to get Rebels Leia as done as possible so I could cleanly move on to Breha and Nadja. My new boot showed up Friday night so Saturday morning I got to work. I worked on these most of the day Saturday and finished up Sunday morning.
First up – I cut the top 3 inches off because they were too tall. Thankfully the zipper didn’t go all the way up so I didn’t have to work around that.
Then got the soles painted, took about 4 coats and I dried it with a hair dryer in between because I didn’t feel like waiting.
Decided to clean up the top edge — with the top cut off, the lining layer was now loose and I just wanted a clean edge at the top underneath the boot cover.
So I sewed some bias tape around it.
Ready for boot covers
Wrapped them in cling wrap and packing tape
Drew my guidelines on – at this point I was planning to work around the existing zippers. The zipper was only in the ankle area.
Cut them apart to make a pattern.
Did a quick mock-up with this leftover knit — didn’t even sew it together, just pinned together so I could make sure it was hitting all the right parts.
Fabric cut – 1 layer of scuba and 1 of suede. I would’ve just done the suede except it’s too see-through. Basted the layers together first.
Sewed together front and back and hem marked. I only had to make 2 adjustments to these – had to take up the heel section on both so it would fit around the sole correctly and I made them way too long and had to cut off about 2 inches at the top. Better too much and have to cut it off than too short…
At this point I gave up working around the zipper. I had tested out painting it – didn’t work great and obviously don’t want a brown zipper showing. Thought about adding a blue zipper in the same spot on the boot cover and just having 2 zippers – but that seemed like a lot of work. So I tested to see if I could get the boot off and on without unzipping them, and I could. It wasn’t EASY, but it was do-able. So I cut the zippers out (because I didn’t want the lump of the zipper pull showing under the boot covers) and sewed the opening closed. I experimented with sewing some stretch fabric in the opening so it would still have some give as I put them on and take them off – but it let the opening gape too much and it didn’t look great under the boot cover. So I completely sewed it shut. Here’s hoping my feet don’t swell at dragoncon and I can’t get them off LMAO I mean if that did happen, I could at least unpick the top edge of the boot cover and undo the stitches holding the zipper area shut – I wouldn’t WANT to do that but I’d at least have an out I could fix later if comes down to it. Escape plan I guess.
Fit it back over the boot now with the hem done. At first I thought I’d be able to sew these on along the bottom – which is my preference – because I was able to easily get a needle through the top section. But the bottom section proved too hard. I tried, bent my needle, so instead I used fabric fuse tape to tape it down along the edge. Seems like it’s working pretty well, the couple of times I had to pull it up to reposition I had to REALLY pull to get it to come off.
Taped on at the bottom and hem marked at the top.
I had some grey cording in my stash that I attached along the bottom between the boot cover and the rubber sole – I just felt like it made it look a little neater. I glued this on and then also stitched it in places just to make sure it wouldn’t come off like my Lady Jessica ones did last year. (I yanked the cording off the shoes mid-photoshoot because ash pointed out it had come loose and was sticking out from under my dress LOL)
Everything is done except hemming the top, the 3d printed pieces and the belt.
Picked up the belt at tandy saturday along with some paint. I did get it painted yesterday – probably needs a couple more coats. Then I’ve got to pattern the larger parts of the belt and figure out what I want to make that out of. I do still have some suede leftover from the shirt/boots, so I could make it out of that with a heavier fabric underneath. Or leather scraps. Will have to see.
Chase 3d modeled and printed both this piece and the belt buckle yesterday – after trying this on we think this front piece is too small. So he’s editing it today to reprint. Same with the belt buckle, he felt like first print was a little too small.
Still got the hair piece for him to model and print – and I also need to figure out the hair.
One other Lothal Leia note – I checked the RL standards a few weeks ago and they require grey fabric for the areas I did as that desaturated blue. Mine probably is a tiny bit too saturated but I do think it’s a blue-grey fabric and not straight grey. If you take the character model, concept art or any non-daylight screencap into photoshop and just select the colour, they’re all very much in the blue family — on the grey end of course, but still blue. The night-time screencaps are VERY much blue – but that’s the blue grey being influenced by the darker lighting. The day-time screencaps DO read as just straight up grey – but if you take them into photoshop and look at the colour, it’s a grey-green – which again reads to me like the yellow “dusty daytime” lighting is influencing a blue tone.
Anyway just something I thought was interesting. Wasn’t going to submit this one anyway so I don’t have a dog in this race, but the standards are always handy for good reference images.
A few years ago we bought this leather bound disney world scrapbook. I started adding photos but never got very far – it’s been living on the lower level of our coffee table ever since. Well Chase went to dust the coffee table Sunday morning and picked it up to move it and…
Part of the back stayed on the table 🙁 Very disappointing for what we paid for this.
Sunday I also decided to add some gold trim to the top of the wedding leia cincher:
I REALLY like it and I’m glad I added it. I still need to rehem the bottom front before dragoncon, and I’m also probably going to mess with the pleats, but that’ll be for another weekend.
So what’s going to happen with the first boots I got for Rebels Leia and ended up not using? Well I decided to use them for Breha. I already have the boot cover panels cut and ready to go. Might as well finish these off and have the white shoes I needed for Breha!
Sunday afternoon I cleaned up my sewing room and misplaced the paint I’d got at tandy for the belt. I looked for it for an hour. I thought it was on the table. Looked everywhere where I’d put stuff away multiple times and no luck. I got down on the floor to see if it’d rolled underneath the blue cabinet… it wasn’t but I did find my Beatles action figures.
I do love these but I’ve hardly ever displayed them because the display stands suck. Ringo’s stand becomes back heavy once you put him on and it won’t stand up unless you prop it up against something. The smaller drum won’t stay put in the pegholes. John and Paul’s bases have pegholes like they should have pegs on their feet to fit in there – but they don’t. They’re flat footed so you just have to hope nobody bumps it or they fall. George has one peg in one foot – the other peg broke off in his base at some point. I’d love to figure out something to make them easier to display but what? Maybe some 3d printed pegs? I dunno.
Anyway after I wasted time with that, I did eventually find the paint. Apparently I’d taken it into the garage with me looking for mixing bowls.
So that’s it for me this week. Well, except my wedding Leia photos I promised last week. They are up! But I’ve already chattered on so much in this post I’m not going to put them here. I’ll do 2 posts today. Photoshoot post will be incoming soon…