Fully back to real life now, ew.
I don’t know that I want to post anymore “Dark Lady” progress pics right now. I feel like if you watched the source material, you will recognize it at this point. But I did make good progress on it this weekend. My trim fabric arrived, I got it all cut apart and pressed and sew in place on the costume.
It’s all done except painting the jewelry, getting a ribbon for an accessory, and some tassels. I have the ribbon picked out, need to find some tassels. And I have a prop to buy. As soon as I do all that, I will post the rest of the pics. And a finished pic.
I did notice 2 things while working on this weekend — first, I got the shape of the back of the vest wrong. It v-shaped and mine is round. Do I care about that? Still trying to decide. Second is that my trim design came up higher than it should be. I’m definitely not undoing that, it took me all day Saturday to do. I should have put that part on me and marked it but I didn’t. Oh well!
I tried it all on yesterday and I’m pretty happy with it all. Excited to show yall the finished thing.
Oh I did have to make one really long piece of trim into a functional ribbon with a backside, so I just backed it in some cotton. 3 yards of it! Easy enough to put together, but to flip? I tried to put it on my tube turner but it was too much… I got it as far as I could onto the turner and tried to do it from there… and punched a hole through it. Thankfully it all did end up being too long so I was able to cut that part off. If I hadn’t, I would’ve just darned it with some embroidery floss because I wasn’t about to redo it!
Luna’s been extra salty since we got back from vacation. Alternating between wanting to sleep in our bedroom and being real sweet and swatting at us.
My aunt (Kevin’s mom) was in the hospital last week! Thankfully she is ok and back home now, but while she was there we went and got Kevin and took him out to dinner and just general errand running with us on Wednesday. He goes to camp today, so I was chatting with him about camp, like I always do. Here’s how the conversation went:
Me: Are you excited for camp?
Kevin: Uh-huh
Me: What are you looking forward to doing at camp?
Kevin: I dunno
Me: Well what’s fun there?
Kevin: I dunno
(I should note we have had this exact same conversation probably 100 times. He’s been going to this summer camp for at least 20 years. He responds to questions with “I dunno” even when he knows an answer, like what his favourite thing to do at camp is — it’s the lazy river! So I tend to needle him when I get an “I dunno” in response to questions like that)
Me: “Are you looking forward to the lazy river?”
Kevin: Yes… AND YES TO EVERYTHING ELSE YOU’RE ABOUT TO SAY!
That made me laugh so hard! He is so funny. He KNEW I was about to go through the list of all the things he likes to do at camp and he was ready for it!
Saturday we went to check out a new bakery and had a really nice breakfast during a rainstorm.
We ran a few other errands and I finally fell for the Star Trek Lower Decks blind box.
I got Rutherford!
Trying to figure out a way to incorporate him into my T’Lyn costume at dragoncon this year.
Also went to the good thrift store and got a ton more sheets for mockups and linings. Got them all washed because I wanted to use one for the Belle petticoat. I did get 2 that were marked as flats that were actually fitted, but for $3 a piece, I can cut the elastic out nbd.
I also bought a pair of shoes for “Dark Lady” while there, they were perfect, but couldn’t find a size on them. I thought they looked close enough so I got them. Tried them on with the whole costume yesterday and they are WAY too big LOL Gonna try ’em on with 3 pairs of socks and see if I can make it work.
Came home and sewed the rest of the day. It was nice.
Sunday was kind of a bust. But I did at least make some steps towards Belle:
Got one of the fitted sheets cut out to make a petticoat that fits over this amazon hoopskirt I bought 5 years ago. I’ve never used it because none of my petticoats fit over it. I’m really hoping this hoopskirt is going to stand up to the weight of my skirts – it feels kinda flimsy. If it doesn’t, I think I will just take the hooping out of the skirt and replace it with more substantial hooping – that way the shape stays the same and I don’t have to make some new from scratch that will still work correctly under the petticoats and skirt I’m making.
I got these panels all basically sewn together last night to make sure it did fully cover the hoopskirt. Tonight I’m going to finish the seams and get the top pleated down to fit. Then I gotta figure out what to do with all this tulle. I think I wanna maybe do tiers of tulle on it topped by one that fully covers the whole thing? I dunno. I feel like the bottom hoop of this hoopskirt is a little “high” off the ground I need extra oomph at the bottom of the petticoat to make up for it, so at least an extra bottom tier? I think first I will make a separate piece that is a full length tulle layer and then decide. Put another skirt over it all and see how it looks (if I’ve even got one big enough to fit over it all…)
Anyway around noon we left and went and picked up Kevin again and took him to lunch. Tried out a local place that was near where we wanted to be after lunch, and it was mid and expensive. Left there to go to the event we’d wanted to go to – an Ice Cream festival! Only to discover the line was at least 100 people deep to get in, in direct sunlight. So we noped out and went and got ice cream elsewhere.
Dropped Kevin off with Hannah to see a movie, came home, took a nap, cooked dinner and worked on the petticoat a little more. Then I played Sims a bit – which reminds me I need to go back and update my Sims story post again. I know nobody cares but me, I am literally just writing this all out so one day 10 years from now I can find it again and laugh my ass off at it. Because that’s what I always do with my sims posts.