Having a 4 day weekend was GREAT. Especially since because of… the current world situation… we didn’t go anywhere or do anything. Just did stuff around the house and took naps and ate good food.
Last week I pulled this costume out for a tiktok video…
I posted said video Thanksgiving day and it promptly bombed. It’s so frustrating; my account engagement has just been TRASH since joining the creator fund. It got slightly better after leaving the creator fund, but it’s still maybe like 15-20% of what it was before. (When I was in the creator fund I’d say it was like 10% of what it was before.) My content is just not getting pushed out. Which is not normally something I care that much about; there are 2 times I have cared…
1. Facebook – I stopped using my facebook page when they cut off the engagement. I had 5000 something followers and only getting like 4-5 likes on things. That’s RIDICULOUS. I was just posting costume pictures on there, so it was easy to just drop it – there was literally no point in wasting time on it towards the end. Still disappointing after you built an audience.
2. And now, Tiktok. And here is why I’m so frustrated here. On instagram, or even facebook, I’m just posting costume pictures I already have. I am not creating content for either of those platforms. Tiktok, however, I AM taking the time to create specific content for it. So now that my engagement has dipped so low, why am I wasting time creating content? I worked really hard on that Anne Boleyn video, was really proud of it, and only got about 200 views on it after 4 hours. I ended up taking it down to repost again some other time. I’ve decided to cut back on posting, and skipped recording anything new this past weekend even though I’d planned on it. I’m not going to stop entirely; just sort of going on a tiktok diet instead of going cold turkey. Hopefully it gets better because I do really enjoy creating content for it, but I want that content to actually be seen when I do.
Anyway, that was a rant out of the blue, didn’t mean to go off like that.
I decorated a little more for Christimas… by Saturday night I’d gotten everything out finally.
Luna helped.
I was excited because now that we have 2 trees I could maybe put ALL my ornaments out? But nope. I mean technically I maybe could have squeezed them all in but they would’ve been really crowded. So I maybe got 2/3 of them up. I separated the 2 trees into themes – pop culture (dining room tree) and traditional/mid-century (living room tree). I didn’t take any pics though, I want to get the lights up first. That’s the last thing I need to do, need to get some command hooks.
Some of my vintage/vintage looking things on the mantle.
Found Indy’s Santa hat and put it on the Child.
Thanksgiving day, we did have a small get-together. Just the local family we’ve all seen pretty regularly the whole year. Masked, outdoors, and separated just to be safe.
It was actually really fun and maybe my favourite Thanksgiving in years. I did miss seeing all the extended family and Mema and Daddy Bob, but it was fun to have all new different thanksgiving foods. Everything was really good and we had fun.
Saturday morning we went to the farmer’s market and got a roast for this week – yum. That was it for anywhere we went LOL.
And thanks to that… I finished Arwen!!!!!!
Second sleeve only took a week to finish. Really sped up towards the end. Finished it Friday night, so Saturday it was time to finish assembling everything.
I had totally forgotten how I had planned to have the “lining” work for the sleeves. I had intended it to hang free and to not actually be attached to the chiffon originally. Well I forgot that and thought I was going to sew them together at the bottom, etc. Once I started assembling I realized what was going, I had to kinda rethink everything again. That’s the issue with taking a year to finish something.
So I french-seamed both the lining layer and the chiffon layer. Machine hemmed the lining layer. Finished the chiffon hem by hand which I’ll get to later.
So it took a bit longer than I expected to get them assembled but overall not bad.
Got them sewn into the underdress… which meant it was finally time to tackle the scary neckline drape.
I only had one square of this silk velvet leftover. And it’s out of stock, so if I messed it up, I would have to live with it. I had a mock-up I’d done a while back that looked good, so I double checked it and then dove in and cut it. 1 for the front, 1 for the back. Here it is just set onto the dressform.
I had to play with it a little further. Had to shorten the length of the front one towards the top/shoulder area… and I wish I’d cut it a little wider at the bottom. But overall it turned out good. I got it sewn onto the neckline and then ran a gathering stitch up each side seam until I had them looking about how I wanted. Them hemmed the bottom edge by hand – it’s all tucked underneath the drape and probably won’t ever be seen, but just in case.
And then I hemmed the chiffon sleeves. I dunno what was going on but the thread I was using would NOT stop tangling. It made hemming these things take twice as long as it should have. I was so frustrated! I switched to another thread (similar colour) after a while and that one seemed to be work a LITTLE better but was still twisting and tangling every other time I pulled it through. I was so glad when it was done and pressed.
Oh and another thing that I was frustrated about – this chiffon from spoonflower wanted to pucker like crazy when sewn on my machine. I went through and double checked everything (it was working fine with same quality chiffon when I was working with aurora this summer), checked my tension, my stitch length, made sure my needle was fresh. Everytime I changed something, tested it on a scrap, started sewing my seam again – it would start puckering again a second later. I know it’s probably something with my machine and related to the fact it probably needs cleaned. At the end of the day I just had to kinda pull the puckering and press it and live with it. Made me glad I did the much more visible hem by hand.
Also… I didn’t hem the bottom of the velvet outer dress. I seem to remember reading somewhere that they didn’t finish the edges of any of the velvet dresses Arwen wore in the movies, soooo that’s my excuse. LOL I mean I would have, it’s not a huge hem to do by hand, but I didn’t want to lose any more length necessary. In the exhibit photos on the mannequin, it’s exactly floor length, notes say a small train in the back? But we never see her standing while wearing this and I really feel like similar to so many of her other costumes, there should be a little bit of a puddle on the floor. I’d lose probably an inch of that puddle if I hemmed it. So I just cut it neatly and left it… I haven’t seen any fraying or issues with it and it’s been cut for over a year now, so I think it will be fine. Altho if I do end up wearing this anywhere next year, my urge to have it “nicely finished” may overcome me and I may hem it. We’ll see.
Anyway, now I can start on Eliza. woohoo.