Hello and welcome back to my blog
Look I’m kinda ticked off that I spent a LONG TIME working on my Troi costume this past week and I have one photo to show for it. One. UGH
I spent most of last week working on the neckband. It was a comedy of errors. First I had to wait on that interfacing to arrive. Got the interfacing cut and went to iron it on and… melted part of the fabric.
Hey it’s only the second time in my costume career and this time it was only on a piece I was working on and not my actual finished costume!
The heat setting for the interfacing was just too hot for the spandex. In all my years of working with spandex, never had that happen before. So I had melted crispy spandex on my iron. Thankfully it wasn’t a lot, but it caused 2 cascading problems that wrecked my progress the whole week:
1. I now had to recut that neckband piece. I didn’t have any other dyed fabric. I wanted to dye the big piece I had leftover anyway, so instead of just cutting one tiny neckband piece and dyeing that, I went ahead and dyed everything I had left… with middling results. It was really too big for the pot so it came out splotchy. So I tried again, and again. Finally got it OK-ish. It’s not perfect but for cutting smaller pieces or something that’s not going to be seen that much like the tights, it’s fine. But that took up like 2 nights of messing with the dye again.
2. My iron was jacked all week. I cleaned it and thought all was good. Use it for a day and then suddenly it’s spitting out brown crap everywhere. Clean it again, fine for a day, then back to brown stuff leaking out. I spent probably an hour yesterday cycling through white vinegar/water mixture, letting that full steam out, then regular water, letting that steam out, cleaning with my iron cleaning stick again, rinse and repeat. Kept getting brown stuff coming out. IT WASN’T THAT BIG OF A PIECE OF SPANDEX! Like literally the part that melted with the corner of a neckband and it was like, maybe half an inch? I had a scrap of blue cotton leftover from Padme last year I was using as a pressing cloth just to protect my Troi pieces while I ironed them so I just went to town on that, steaming and ironing and trying to get every drip of brown crap out. That piece of fabric literally looks like somebody cleaned their butt with it now. I’ll probably have to do more today. I meant to get more vinegar at the grocery store last night and forgot.
(A Luna to break up the wall of text)
Anyway, once I had my dyed fabric good enough, I recut the neckband piece I messed up and went back to ironing on interfacing (this time with the pressing cloth so no more melting). AAAAND I ironed the interfacing onto the wrong side of one of the pieces. At that point I was so frustrated I just recut everything for the neckband and started over from scratch. I also jettisoned trying to follow the confusing instructions.
Finally got the interfacing all sewn on correctly and the pieces sewn together. Chase drew up a grid for me to follow for the top-stitching, which I transferred to the inside on the interfacing. My stitching didn’t come out perfect, but it’s fine. Got that sewn onto the top of the bodice, then folded the inside piece down and hand-sewed it into place on the inside.
I also went ahead and basted in a zipper so I could try it on properly.
It’s mostly ok. May need to take it up a bit in some spots again, but the biggest issue was that the sleeve openings were WAY off. Look at how much is coming down my arm. I’m almost going to have to lose the entire section between the neckband and the start of the neckband. It is what it is at this point. I trimmed it down some, need to go a little more — but trying it on again revealed that now I’ve got a gaping issue at the front armscye that makes it look like I need a dart. I am NOT adding a dart. Gotta figure out what to do there… ugh.
I also spent a long ass time working on the sleeve cuffs. Version one following the pattern I didn’t like so I recut it slightly different and started over. Interfaced both and did the top stitching. Both are done and ready to be added to the sleeve, but I decided to get the sleeve figured out before I do that.
Otherwise I got nothing else to add. That’s really all I did for the past week, besides play the sims and work. We went out for the moms’ birthday last night, that was fun.
I did panic buy my fabric for Belle and that’s arriving today.
I also bought some po-zu boots because they’re going out of business and I always wanted some.
Anyway, tonight I got to figure out this fit issue on the bodice, hopefully I can get the sleeves in and the cuffs added. Then I can focus on the waistband which is the biggest obstacle I haven’t even thought about yet.