I’ve been trying to catch her in this pose and set the Huttslayer figure in front of her for ages. Finally got it.
Not a lot to report on this week.
The soft lavender and pale blue are making me wish I’d committed to doing only pastel costumes for dragoncon LOL
Walker stayed over Friday, she watched the Eras livestream with me.
THIS is what I’ve been dealing with the past week.
Basically I spent all last week fighting to get the lining put together and installed into the jacket shell. First I waffled on which fabric to use as the lining – as you can see I finally went with the darker blue knit I originally bought for this costume. I wish I’d bought 2 yards of the fabric I switched to for the main part, but alas I got got 1 yard so I didn’t have enough to self line. It’s fine.
I was having issues with my zig zag stitch. I had both my babylock and the bernette set up – one with black and one with teal, so I was using both. I first starting having issues with the babylock, basically it’s like the zigzag wasn’t catching underneath half the time resulting in straight stitches every so often. I rethreaded the machine, still happening. I rewound my bobbin, still happening. Changed my needle for a new one, stil I messed with the tension and speed, still happening. So I was like, ok, I know the babylock is overdue for a tune up, so I switched the teal thread to the bernette – and it was happening there too! So obviously this is user error somehow because there’s no reason for it to be happening on the bernette. The bernette was at least not skipping AS MUCH so I stuck with only working on it there and got through it.
Then when I switched to straight stitches for the finishing, I went back to teal on babylock and black on bernette – and started having tension issues with straight stitches on the babylock. UGH. So I put her out of service for now, Chase cleaned her out for me yesterday, but sticking with the bernette only until I can get the babylock in for a check up. Which I’m ok with, the bernette is like butter, it was just nice to have both machines running with different colours so I didn’t have to rethread so often! But not really an issue with anything beyond T’Lyn.
So anyway, got the lining put together, got the main collar section trimmed in the blue, sewed the lining in along front edges and bottom edge, understitched, and finally flipped it out through the armholes to close the body section to the collar section. That was time consuming trying to get everything matched up right and had to tweak a few things and basically that was my entire week of work up to Saturday night.
And then Saturday night I realized I had made a fatal error on this costume.
I had been planning to do snap tape at the interior closure on the left side seam, and snap tape at the “main” closure on the right seam. But I realized, it’s going to show like crazy, not just from it pulling away in areas between snaps on the main closure and revealing the back line of snap tape in my blue sections, but also causing lumpy spots where they would be placed for the interior side closure. UGH. I don’t know why I didn’t consider that before, I guess I thought this fabric would be thick enough to avoid it, because like you really don’t see the snaps on my Seven of Nine made of the same fabric.
So Sunday morning I re-gathered myself, and basically had to reconstruct part of this costume to fix the issue. Took the lining partially out – and I ended up totally removing the underflap that sits under the center front panel. I sewed the center front panel directly to the right side seam, did the same on the lining panel, and made it all one unit with no underflap and no opening in the front body section.
This fixed the issues, although having to undo and redo a bunch made it feel a bit messy. It’s not perfect but it at least looks more the way I wanted.
I still have to finish the interior lining – just tacking it down in a few places. I did cut a lining layer for the sleeves, but I think I’m going to skip it and just tacking the lining armhole edge to the seam allowance of the outer, and finish the sleeve edge by hand. And I still have to put in snaps for the collar closures – it now functions exactly like Seven, it’s a pull on over my head with the collar being open to get my head in and out, and it’ll have probably 2 snaps inside to hold the collar pieces in the right place, and then 1 main one for closing the main front flap.
I want to see if I can sneak a snap into the center bottom front to hold it in the right place on my pants. I don’t want it riding up but I also don’t want a “snap lump” there. Dunno if that’ll work but we’ll see.
I COULD have finished the handsewing on this yesterday and got it completely knocked off my list, but instead I rewarded myself for getting it fixed by moving on to making my Lavender Haze jacket:
I’ve been ITCHING to get this cut. And cutting all that fur did make me quite itchy LOL omg it was everywhere, all over my shirt, up my nose… LOL
I bought 3 yards of lavender satin on amazon to use as a lining, and when it arrived, it was stiff as a piece of paper. It’s 100% polyester so I just threw it in a delicate wash to see if that would soften it. It came out looking weird AF. Almost like it had color loss in the wrinkles? I ironed the whole thing and it still looked weird – but the weirdest thing was that it looked like everywhere it had been folded in the bag was sort of bleached? There were like lighter rectangular fold lines all over it. I washed it again and this time hung it on the line to dry. It still looks weird. Worse on the shiny side. But I don’t want to buy more fabric, so I decided I’d just live with it. It looks passable on the matte side and that’s what I’m using as the main side. And it’s just the lining. Just really annoying.
Anyway I did a quick mockup using a robe pattern as a base. Did some edits to that and then used that to cut out the back on the fold and 2 front panels, and the 2 sleeves. AAAAND of course I didn’t realize the fur was laying one direction and cut out the back and sleeves with the fur facing the wrong way, so I had to recut those. Glad I bought extra.
All I could think while working on this is HOW CUTE the minnie ears I can make from the leftover fabric are gonna be. So I’m ok with having some miscut scraps because I can make minnie ears out of that. Fur as the ears and the sequin fabric as the bow. UGH so cute. Fighting the urge to make them now LOL
Anyway, I got the outer shell of the jacket cut and sewn together which is what you see above. The sleeves are a little too long, but otherwise it fits the way I want. I wanted to get it to this point by last night so I could start on the beading this week.
And I know I just said I was just going to live with the lavender satin, I’m also over here shopping for something new. Blech.
BUT! This is a short work week with a long weekend, yay! I’m really hoping to get all 3 current costumes mostly done, here’s my to-do list:
T’Lyn:
-finish hand-sewing on lining
-hem sleeves
-install snaps
-make headband
-try on with pants and see if I can make a snap work there
(I still have to buy boots for this, I have some saved, and also need different ears and to style the wig. But my to-do lists are currently only focused on sewing.)
Lavender Haze Taylor:
-sew beads on outer shell of jacket
-finish hand-sewing top of zipper on shirt
-sew jacket lining layers together
-make interior pockets/attach to lining
-install lining
(And I still have to figure out boots and wigs for this one. Definitely buying base boots/painting and stoning. But again something I’ll be looking at in a couple of weeks.)
Padme:
(beads came in! They work!)
-string the beads for front panel
-finish front pleated panel/attach
-attach beaded pieces
-do beads on back of hood
-print out testers for the stamp
-do the stamping
-finish hemming cape
(And I still have to style the wig here and Chase is printing the tiara. More to worry about later.)
I’m really hoping i can do like 80% of this over the long weekend and have these 3 mostly marked off my list and then move onto Baylan and Shin for the rest of the month.