I got a lot done this weekend and I am sore AF. But first let’s talk about the happy things!
My besties got married Friday! Chase and I took the day off work and went downtown to the courthouse with them. It was really cool and very sweet and then we ran around downtown taking some more pics around the area. Then we went and had a good lunch. So glad we got to be a part of it!
I spent most of last week playing with tulle. In my last post I showed yall the cotton petticoat I made. Here’s the tulle petticoat to go over it – just roughly gathered at the top and pinned on.
This is how I have to leave everything when I’m done for the night, otherwise Luna goes up there and chews on the tulle and gets it all soggy.
Apparently I didn’t take a picture of the petticoat after I added the tulle ruffles. I did 2 rows of pleated, folded over tulle around the bottom half of the cotton petticoat. I was able to machine sew the lower layer on, but then it was just too annoying to deal with getting through the machine after that, so I hand-sewed the upper tier on. (Stuck a cardboard fabric bolt between the petticoat and the hoopskirt to keep the needle from going through both.
From there I started playing around with what I wanted to do with the rest of my tulle. I want a more elliptical shape, with it “longer” in the back, but still full in the front and sides. So I’m trying to achieve that with the tulle, instead of having to make a new hoopskirt. I really don’t want to make a new hoopskirt. I got 60 yards of tulle so surely I can make this work.
I got my Snow White skirt and 05 Belle bodice out to try over it to see how it was looking. The Snow skirt was the only one I could think of that I knew would be full enough to fit over all this. The 05 Belle bodice was just closer to the front of the closet than the other!
I added more tiers of ruffles to the back of the petticoat only, I didn’t want more fluff in the front.
I played around with making a second partial petticoat – basically a bustle – out of my leftover quilted cotton from my Tightrope Walker. I was going to add tiers of ruffles to that. But it was too heavy and pushed the hoopskirt forward weird – so I’ll have to do with that just the tulle. I’ve made a basic back piece out of tulle, I just need to start adding the tiers to it. By friday I was over messing with tulle so I took a break on it to get started on my real fabric.
Last weekend I bought a bunch of cotton sheets to use for mockups and linings. I started cutting them up to figure out my skirt shape – and discovered one of them appears to have my name written on the tag??
Cue X-Files theme!
Friday/Saturday I got all of the skirt panels cut out of the cotton sheets. I wanted to basically do a “full” mockup before I touched my “real” fabric, because I needed to make sure I had enough “real” fabric to dye! If I didn’t, I wanted to order more before I touched the dye, so it could all be dyed at once. These aren’t going to waste, I’m going to be flatlining the velvet panels with these.
I got all of these labeled and checked them laying them out on my real fabric and I did have enough! YAY for mental math.
Saturday after running some errands I got the dye stuff set up.
I made Chase crazy. Needed his help with the hose, needed his help getting stuff out of the shed, needed his help setting up my clothes line. It was so hot out there, I was miserable doing this. Also that 10 yards of velvet was so heavy I couldn’t lift it all at once. Had to move it in chunks.
It was so heavy, when I got it up on the line, it ripped the board off the shed where the hook is attached. Chase had to fix it LOL
But I got it dyed. I did round 1 and hung it up. Let it dry a bit. I really liked how it was looking but it seemed like the areas that were dryer looked a little bit lighter than I wanted, so I put it back in the dye once more real quick and I wish i hadn’t done that.
It’s just a shade darker/more saturated than I wanted. Could I put it in some dye remover? Prob, but this dye process was so exhausting I really don’t want to go back out there and revisit it. And I do LIKE this colour. It IS the buttery yellow I wanted just like 10% more than I what I had in my head. Training myself to decide I love it.
I was so tired after all that I just got it all set up to dry in the kitchen and took a break the rest of the night.
Sunday I got back to it and started steaming out my velvet and cutting each panel. This took FOREVER. A lot of crawling around on the floor – I have carpet burn on my knees. Took about 4 hours to get it all steamed, and cut. I KNOW. How did it take that long?? I don’t know. But above you can see them all finally cut and pinned onto the dressform.
I was really hoping to sew the lining layer directly to each velvet panel on the sewing machine. ALAS… I did one side of the center back and it was just to slippery. So now I’m gonna be spending the next few nights with each panel laid out on the floor and hand-sewing them together. UGH. My back hates me. After the dyeing saturday, and the crawling around and steaming on sunday, my back was on FIRE last night.
So yeah, this week is going to be a lot of leaning over skirt panels on the floor and hand-stitching the layers together. Once I get that done I can start getting everything sewn together on the machine. Then I can start on the bodice. I’m really hoping to have the BULK of this together by next weekend – not counting decorative pieces, just functional pieces (skirt, basic bodice)
Last night I did have to take a break and clean up my sewing room because it was a disaster. Feels so much better to have everything cleaned.
Last little random thing, thursday night I washed my hair and decided to try something new for curling my hair for Friday.
I put it up in a loose ponytail on top of my head with a scrunchie, then rolled up the ponytail in a large velcro curler and secured it with another scrunchie. I had high hopes for this. Results?? Nada. Like literally it didn’t look like I did anything, and by the time I took it down, I didn’t have time to do anything else. So I just had straight hair for Friday. Boo!
So that’s all for today. This week’s goals:
-Get all skirt pieces flat-lined (one down)
-Get bodice pieces cut
-Get bodice assembled/boning in
-Get grommets in
-find 3rd fabric (I need one more fabric for the bottom of the swags. Had something in mind but the slight colour change on the velvet makes me need to rethink it)
-start messing with the chiffon for the swags
I also need to go out to my parents’ house and start helping mom with her costume too.