I don’t have a lot to chat about this week EXCEPT costume stuff.
I worked on Honeymoon Leia every night last week and almost all of that was me monkeying with the back zipper. It took me forever to get it installed without it pulling at the bottom weird. TBH I don’t know what I was thinking doing the zipper the way I planned and did – I kinda wish I’d done the lavender hip panels as a separate piece, it would’ve made my life so much easier. But I made it all one unit and I’m sure as hell not undoing it now.
After I got the zipper in I realized it was too big around the waist, so I took the skirt off and took it up at the side seams instead of trying to take it up at the back at the zipper. Seriously I’m not touching the zipper again.
By Friday it was finally all one piece.
All that is left is pressing the waist seam, and I’m going to sew some bias tape around it jut to enclose the raw edge. Then I just need to tack down the front skirt panel so I don’t flash anybody.
I’m torn about the way the lavender hip panels look – again, why I now think I should’ve done it as a separate piece – they’re pulling a bit in the front causing some wrinkling right below the waist. The reason I’m torn about it is that I kinda like it?? It wasn’t supposed to do that, but I like the added visual interest of the fabric looking a little more draped.
I need to draw up the shapes for the necklace pieces and belt buckle today and get them sent to Chase for 3d modeling. I also need to decide how I want to do the belt in general.
Anyway, I had planned to do those last couple of things on the dress yesterday (pressing the waist seam and sewing the bias tape on mostly) but got completely derailed.
We finally FINALLY did the last 2 shoots I needed. Got up and got to them right after breakfast to get them out of the way, and get the photoshoot stuff finally OUT of my sewing room (it’s been driving me crazy).
I wanted to reshoot this Padme because I never liked the first white backdrop set, and now I’ve got this new wig so it was time.
The new wig fits so much better – I paid extra to have it done on a smaller wig cap, though it’s still a tiny bit too big and doesn’t fit right around my ears, but WAY better than most lacefronts I get.
Got that shot and then time to reshoot Seven of Nine. As I mentioned before, I wasn’t happy with the December pictures. We decided to do some tweaks and reshoot it, it just took a while to do those tweaks which is why I’m finishing up my December shoots in MARCH.
Chase 3d printed new face prosthetics for me and got them shaped to my face and painted. I thinned out the wig and recurled it. I have no mirror pics of this… why?
Well, first I got partially in costume – shapewear, pants, boots – and then went to put the prosthetics on only to discover I didn’t have any toupee tape. I SWEAR I had an entire new roll but it was nowhere to be found. I tore the bathroom and my hall closet apart looking for something else to use. I tried some wig tape, didn’t work great. Found some rolls of some other toupee tape? I guess that’s what it is, I think it’s some I bought on amazon and didn’t like? It was not as strong as what I usually use. But I was only going to be wearing it for 10 minutes tops so thats what I used. It’s all I had that would work.
So now I was frustrated but moved on. Started to put the top on when I realized something was missing… my turtleneck dickie. Went back to the box and… it wasn’t in the box with the rest of the pieces. It wasn’t in the bags with my TOS uniform either, I thought maybe it got wrapped up in some of those black pieces but it wasn’t.
So now, half in costume, I had to start tearing apart my costume closet. I looked through all of the “stuff” bins in my closet first, because if I find an errant costume piece that didn’t get put in its bin before the bin when it in the crawlspace, I put it in one of those “stuff” bins to be organized later. No luck. I started looking through all of the “newer’ costume bins – AKA all the stuff we shot in December, in case it got put back in the wrong bin after the December shoots. No luck. Went through everything multiple times. Went through my recent fabric storage baskets. Nope. Every little place in my sewing room it might have gotten set. Nope.
After an hour of searching I finally gave up, found the original fabric and had to MAKE AN ENTIRE NEW TURTLENECK. While half in costume.
So I slapped something together, it’s not as nice as my first one but it worked for the shoot.
Halfway through making it I got up from the sewing machine and thought, “my boot feels weird” and looked down and realized one of the heel caps from my boots was missing. No idea when that happened, it may have happened on the cruise, though I feel like I would’ve noticed then. That was kinda the breaking point and I nearly started crying I was so frustrated with everything.
(I JUST got these boots last year! I specifically paid more to get a nice real leather pair! And the soles are already coming off, the inside flap of pleather is peeling and now a heel cap is gone. I am taking them to a shoe repair place because I really like them and they’re only a year old!)
So that was fun.
After finishing up and cleaning up it was way later than I expected. Besides cleaning up the photoshoot stuff I also finally cleaned up my sewing room which I haven’t really been able to do with all the photoshoot stuff around. Felt good to have a “reset” sewing room.
After a late lunch and a short nap, I went to start on those honeymoon Leia things but ended up not feeling it. Instead went and started dinner and we watched the Oscars.
So thats all I have for this week. After I finish up Honeymoon Leia I’m going to move onto Shin and Baylan mock-ups and hopefully we find fabric in Atlanta for those so I can kick into high gear on those by the end of the month.