We had a nice weekend, spent Friday evening-Sunday morning at my grandparents.
I also FINALLY got Snapchat to work with an animal face:
A few weeks ago Mema was ironing and ran outside for something or another… the cat knocked the iron over onto the floor and caused a lovely burn mark. They are having to get new tile put in but I’m glad I captured Catty Bob’s attempt at art.
Sunday afternoon I really focused on some sewing, since I got some supplies on Saturday:
Speaking of which… when our Hancock Fabrics finally closes its doors (*softly sobs*) my only nearby options are Hobby Lobby or Michaels. Our one Joann Fabrics is on the other side of town and is a trek to get there. At least at my grandparent’s house (they live an hour away from us), it’s pretty much right down the road.
Anyway, I picked up 3 patterns for the hoard since they were on sale. They didn’t have anything costumey I wanted so I just got some cute things. Some quilted cotton for a petticoat, 3 spools of lace for trimming the skirt, 2 yds of lace fabric and 2 yds of pink rose fabric.
I decided to have a little fun with my fabric for the sleeves – the pink chiffon swirled rose fabric will be the pink base of the sleeves, and I decided to do the top white section in the lace fabric (it’s sunflowers! more flowers!).
I used the same pattern I used for Edith’s sleeves, just took some of the width out of it.
Once I had it attached to the base sleeve, I stuffed it with some tulle and then sewed up the under-arm seam.
I had some trouble figuring out how much tulle I should put them… I had cut some tulle into strips earlier this year (when I was going to make a petticoat for Disgust and then ended up not having to), so in the photo above the one on the viewer’s left has 1 strip and the one on the right has 2. While I liked the shape of the right one better, it was a little too pillow-y. I ended up doing 1 strip per sleeve.
Next up I did the white sleeve uppers. I decided to do them as a sort-of petaled doilie-looking thing. I don’t know how else to describe it, haha. I did a mock-up first then cut it out of my white lace fabric. Two layers, sewed them together, flipped, pressed and then sewed up the top. Then gathered the top edge.
Further back with a scrap of pink ribbon sitting in place of where the bow will be. I forgot to look at ribbon but I think I’m going to make the bows out of some leftover pink taffeta from Belle last year. That fabric was my backup if I couldn’t find anything for the sleeves, so now it’ll be the bows. Maybe the ribbons for the shoes too. Haven’t decided yet.
Next up, petticoat.
Cut it into panels and pinned onto the dressform. Got them sewn together and then I made an upper piece out of white satin to attached these to so the quilted area starts around my hips and not my waist.
And finally the last progress photo from last night:
Oh I also got my trim pinned on around the skirt hem only to discover I was like 15 inches short. Argh. Chase is going to go try to find me another roll today, since he works fairly close to our Joanns.
The last thing I tackled last night was my actual hoopskirt. It’s an older one that I trimmed up shorter – I wear it without hoops for Briar Rose and Disgust. I put one of the hoops back in it for this, but it’s been sitting really janky like the hoop is malformed. Last night I removed it to see what was going on with that, and discovered the lower hoop pocket is fraying apart and the hoop was falling out in places. I sewed the edge back up with a tight zig-zag to keep it from coming open again, and cauterized the edges to get rid of the hanging threads and gross looking stuff. THEN I discovered that I’d had the wrong hoop in – I’d put the middle hoop in the bottom hoop pocket. Once I had the right hoop in, and after all the clean up, it looked like a brand new hoopskirt. Yay!
So here’s my to do list:
Bodice:
Add loops or eyes for the sleeves to tie onto
try to hide a spot on the front where the pile is missing. It’s a tiny spot but it bothers me, mostly it bothers me because I didn’t see it before cutting everything out and putting it all together.
Shawl:
Get closures sewn back on
Sleeves:
Sew white lace pieces in place onto the sleeves
Make bows for top, sew in place
Add ribbons for lacing them onto the bodice
Skirt:
Finishing sewing lace onto hem
Get zipper installed, hook-and-eye on waistband
PAINT ALL THE FLOWERS
Petticoat:
Resew waistband/upper strip to top of petticoat (it looked weird last night)
Get elastic installed in top hem
Trim excess length, hem
Accessories:
Make or buy ribbons for shoes
Let’s see what I can get done this week.