Hey I’ve got real costume progress to show yall today!
First, I decided early last week I wanted to dye my Troi fabric. It was just too bright.
Thankfully I had a bottle of graphite. I came up with a formula and did some tests. Bottom fabric is the original undyed.
I had to do it in batches because it was too much fabric for my pot to do all at once.
If there’s one thing to say about dyeing.. it’s always new and exciting LOL. Literally it’s never the same from one project to the next. This time around the bodice pieces came out splotchy when the test dyes didn’t. By the time I noticed the splotchiness I’d already done the neck and waistbands, sleeves and parts of the skirts. So I had to put the bodice pieces back in hoping another short round in the dye would even it out. Thankfully it did but now they’re a shade darker than everything else. So the neck and waistbands, parts of the skirts and sleeves all had to go back in for the same amount of time to get equally darker. Then I had to do the remaining skirt panels which were the biggest ones, and they didn’t get dark enough. Had to put them back in twice, constantly comparing them to a control (one of my neckband pieces sopping wet in a bowl so I could compare both while wet)
Then realized I forgot a sleeve during the redye process and had to do it. Then noticed a stain on the center front skirt panel and had recut it and dye it again from the start. Oh lord this week has been a dye drama.
Also, at the end of every dye bath, the water is green. For some reason.
And worst of all? All of my pieces SHRUNK. The bodice pieces all shrunk vertically about half an inch. The skirt pieces all shrunk vertically nearly TWO INCHES!! Thank god I had cut them two inches longer because I felt like the original pattern pieces were slightly too short. So they’re back to being the original length of the pattern, so we’re going to live with it like this. I’ll just have to do the tiniest of tiny baby hems on it.
So at the end of the day, all of the pieces are not 100% exact. We are just going to live with it as-is because I’m not buying new fabric and I’m not going to continue the farce of dyeing the lighter pieces to match the darker and continuing the cycle. It looks close enough in photos.
Saturday in between the last couple of dye sessions I started assembling the bodice.
I did decide to double the bodice pieces, so each layer is 2 layers just so it would be a little thicker. I basted each section together to make them one, and then basted the whole bodice section together so I could try it on.
And that’s when I officially “overdid it” in terms of still healing from my surgery. I started feeling some soreness and pinching sensations in the area where I know I had internal stitches. I was originally sitting on the floor doing this basting and moved to the table once I started feeling this, but the sensation continued on into Sunday night. Took some aleve last night and this morning haven’t had any of those feelings so lesson learned, I need to slow my roll still.
But anyway who the EFF was this pattern made for?
It fit ok through the shoulders and bust and then suddenly from the waistline down it’s like 2 inches too big all the way around? I had to take it up a TON.
I got all of the seams of the bodice sewn together except the side seams and back seam (where the zipper will go). I think I talked about it last summer while working on T’Lyn that neither of my machines were doing a zig-zag stitch correctly. They both kept skipping stitches. I tried everything, cleaning, changing needle, changing thread, changing length, changing speed, etc – nothing worked. So I was worried we were going to be dealing with that again with this project and nope, worked fine. Still don’t know what that was about last year. Maybe it just didn’t like that fabric.
Last night I got the skirts basically assembled. Ignore how wrinkly the top is, there’s still basting stitches and a lot of excess fabric in the inside that needs removed.
The neckband and waistband instructions in this pattern are ODD. I’m so confused by them. I think I’ve got them figured out after reading through it 15 times. But I didn’t have enough interfacing, so I’ve got some on order to get here tomorrow.
Anyway, besides all that, boy did we get a lot of rain the last few days. It flooded in lots of parts of town here. Our little stairs in the backyard up to the upper elevation turned into a waterfall. The worst of the weather missed our area, but Luna was on edge the entire time and slept under our bed every night. Saturday night I was awoken at 2am to the sounded of her gagging under the bed. I jumped up and shook the under-bed storage box she sleeps in and she got out. Let her out of the bedroom and decided if she pukes out in the living room, that’s a problem for the morning, it’s better than her puking UNDER our bed. And indeed Chase confirmed he’d had to clean up puke when he got up Sunday morning LOL.
I spent most of the weekend dyeing and sewing, but yesterday we went to the mall and just dinked around. I wanted to see the Snoopy stuff at miniso. The mall was BUSY! That was nice, felt like I was back in the 90s.
I posted my Dragoncon lineup on instagram last week – for April Fool’s. I had a fun time trying to think of silly costume ideas. Some of them I’d actually do LOL
But let’s do a real Dragoncon lineup check-in —
1. Troi – I’m really hoping to be mostly done with her (sewing-wise) in the next couple of weeks. If nothing goes catastrophically wrong with the dress construction it should go quickly from here. I’ve got a wig on order (I panic bought wigs last week). I need to make the headband which I think I’ll use kobracast as a base. If I have enough of my spandex left I think I may just make the tights out of my spandex instead of buying tights and dyeing them to match. Then I just need to find shoes. Been looking since like, November last year and no luck so far.
2. Scarlet Witch – haven’t done anything new on this yet. Will soon.
3. Belle – I also panic bought a wig for Belle last week. I probably need to go ahead and bust my budget and buy the bulk of my fabric too.
4. Surprise costume! – I got my fabric for this! I still need one more yard of another fabric that should be easy to find, and some trim. I think I’m going to start on this once Troi starts wrapping up because it should be a quick sewing project. Would love for this and Troi to be done by the end of the month.
Edit to add:
I forgot to mention, I asked my migraine doc to put me on a preventative and they gave me topiramate. I took the first dose last night. After I finished this post this morning I went to get my breakfast, took the first swig of my coke and it tasted flat and at first I was like oh man did I get a bad batch? Did somebody drop this case? But then could still kinda sense the fizz on the backend of the drink which isn’t normally how a flat coke tastes. So I googled it and sure enough. Common side effect is not being able to taste carbonation. I don’t know that I can do this. I’d rather have a coke and a migraine than no coke and no migraine. Ugh.