Sooo start off with… I TRIED to sew this weekend and my brain was just so full of everything we need to do that I just couldn’t focus.
I did kinda start playing with a mockup for Crait Leia. Didn’t get very far.
Went to the fabric store Friday night and got some heavy weight fabric to use as maybe a lining for it (sandwiched between the fashion fabric and the actual lining) and a mock-up. Got it washed, ironed, and a couple of pieces cut to play with.
Of course I’m still packing. But now we’re out of room for me to stack anymore boxes, so I have to stop until we get a storage unit. But I start thinking of all the things we still need to pack and my brain just goes into hyperdrive. I go in my sewing room and all I can think of is what can i pack… what do I need to keep out? What do I need to take with me? It’s maddening.
We did accomplish a couple of very important things this weekend. First — we FINALLY got the doors and trim in the master bedroom/bath painted white.
We’ve pretty much finished repainting all the trim everywhere else in the house — slowly getting rid of the dingy-looking “off-white” everything in the house was. We got the trim in the bedroom painted years ago, but never the doors. SO glad to finally have it done and it really brightens up both the bedroom and bathroom.
We still need to repaint the entryway, and a few touch-ups here and there, but that’s about it.
The other major thing was I went over to my parents house and cleaned out my old closet. I’ve mentioned it before… when I moved out 8 years ago, I just kinda left my closet. I took my clothes of course, but everything else in there I left. I’ve been saying for 10 years I’m going to clean out but never have. I finally went over there armed with a couple of boxes – I told myself, I can’t keep more than 2 boxes. It ended up being 3 boxes… but I took 4 GIANT bags of stuff to our church’s donation trailer, and 2 big bags to the trash. I got the whole thing cleaned out.
Mom said she got it vaccumed up for me… next week I’m going to start taking costumes over. I’m fairly certain I can fit almost EVERYTHING in there if I do it smart.
I found SO MUCH interesting stuff in there. It was truly a time capsule of early 2000s-me. The most IMPORTANT THING though…. I found the original photos of my Sakura and Beatrix photos at Animazement 2001. They’ve been missing for YEARS and I only have tiny, tiny, tiny scans of them. Turns out I had decided to scrap book my costumes and included those in there. So the Sakura photo is trimmed to a round shape, but still very scannable. I’ll finally have decent shots of those super old costumes!
I would have really loved to take pics of all the interesting stuff I found… but I was really in a “get it done, throw it away, get it out of here” kinda mood. But I do have 2 pics to share.
FIRST… I didn’t even remember I HAD this but as soon as I saw it I remembered buying it.
What a throwback!!! I didn’t look through it much, I packed it up… it’ll be a treat for when we get in the new house.
We also found my wedding bouquet
We’ve saved it for 10 years but it’s just been sitting in the closet. Decided it was time to say bye. Don’t need to keep excess stuff around; I have photos of it and that’s enough. It’s still so pretty tho š
So in order to prepare for taking stuff over to my parents for storage, I wrote out what costumes/things I need to keep out for the summer. New Leia (which isn’t done yet but soon), TFA Leia (same), Tinkerbell, and Bespin Leia for sure. Holding out a few things for ABC: possibilities are Megara, Georgian Belle (needs a few updates – gotta get it bustled finally and I want to redo the wig again), Belle ballgown, Disgust. And then anything I need for the new costumes I’m working on — one for ABC, Crait Leia, Amidala, and 2 downtime costumes for Dcon. And anything we might need for Ash’s costume I’m doing for her. And I’ve also got an important art commission to finish in the next couple of months. I’m going to just start knocking stuff out. I’ve taken a month off after MidsouthCon and I really shouldn’t have.
We are going to Nashville this weekend so I may take TFA Leia to finish the hem in the car/hotel. That’s one thing I can go ahead and get done without a sewing machine, I’m finishing the hem by hand.
And it’s time for the art dump.
Like I said last post I REALLY focused on finishing my Ep 3 Padmes. Got them all done!
Sleepless Knights, 2010:
New:
Green Velvet 2010:
New:
This is one of my fav ones so far.
I’m not going to post the whole thing, but I went back and tweaked the face of the the Aqua Georgette piece: here. Fixed her face shaped, opened her eyes a little more, and shortened the side of her mouth closest to the viewer.
Liberty Dies 2010:
New:
Funeral 2010:
New:
This one IS my fav so far. Just had a lot of fun doing it.
Episode 3 collage:
I just threw that together because I wanted to see them all together. I’m going to lay them out in a nice way and probably do a couple of prints.
Then I backtracked and picked a couple of other Padmes:
Packing Gown 2010:
New:
Purple Travel 2010:
New:
Next up I’m doing the flame handmaiden from TPM, and Padme’s pilot disguise from AOTC.
No new Disney right now. I’ve gotten into a groove of drawing Natalie Portman’s face over and over. Which sounds weird.
EDIT!
I forgot to tell my stupid pattern story. I’m not about to make a second post just for this so I’m tacking it on here.
So I have this old ROTS-era Simplicity pattern, I’ve had it since it came out — 2005 probably? I’ve never really used it because by then I had my own Leia dress already and have no desire to make the Peacock gown, but I have to hoard patterns. If I were a dragon, sewing patterns is what I’d hoard.
So anyway it’s mostly untouched. I’ve opened it up/unfolded it a few times but that was it. Year before last, or last year, I needed a collar pattern and that Leia one was pretty close, so I cut it out. But when I opened up the pattern — there was only one sheet of it. Thankfully the collar piece I wanted was on that one sheet. But I was like, WTF where is the rest of this? I’ve never used it for anything else!
I did a cursory glance around but didn’t find it anywhere. Checked my “Homeless pattern pieces” bag. No dice. I went on with my life.
Until yesterday when I decided I wanted to use that Peacock Padme pattern as a jumping off point for my TLJ Leia mockup. I got that pattern out again and remembered the 2 out of the 3 pages were missing. UGH. So I was already feeling super scatterbrained, and this just made it worse… I went on a crusade, pulled all my patterns out, started digging for these missing pages. It just BUGGED me. After an hour of not finding it, destroying my sewing room in the process, I looked it up to see if I could just buy a new one. NOPE. They sell for like $80 on etsy/ebay. GEEZ.
BUT… I noticed something when I googled it. Look at my pattern envelope above. It says it’s Simplicity 0577. But when I looked that number up online, I found NOTHING. if I looked for Simplicity “Leia/Padme” pattern, it came up. Everywhere else, it’s listed as “Simplicity 4443” NOT “Simplicity 0577.”
So I went back to my sewing room and pulled out that one remaining sheet — it’s 4443 on the pattern pieces despite the envelope!
Pulled out my homeless pattern piece bag again and went thru it – and there they were. Both times I’ve looked for it, I’ve been looking for Simplicity 0577, with no luck. Never thought the number on the envelope wouldn’t match the sheets. And everytime I’ve gone thru my homeless pattern bag to try to match them up, I’ve been totally confused what Simplicity 4443 was.
So mystery solved! WHEW! So glad. But now I feel kinda bad for cutting it up, knowing it sells for $80….. oh well.
And one more bonus art if you actually sat thru that…
Old Handmaiden from 2010:
And new:
