HEY! I have some really good costume progress to show this week! ~*WOW*~
The finished picnic Padme disneybound.
I still need to get some ribbons for my hair and I also thought about hanging some ribbons from the sides of the belt. We’ll see. I’m so tempted to just buy one of those tie-on ponytails that I can precurl so I don’t have to curl and then try to keep my own hair curled at Disney, but also the thought of wearing wig hair against my neck at Disney sounds horrible LOL
Ok so since that’s done, moving on to Dragoncon project 2 which I am calling “Dark Lady” even though it’s not Sailor Moon Dark Lady nor is it Cher, it’s just a nickname for now. I want to reveal the whole finished thing in a few weeks. Somebody might figure out from these pics and that’s cool, that’s the fun part of the game is the guessing 🙂
Last week I spent most of my time working on the basic top and trying to get it fitted. It’s an outer layer of linen and a lining layer of cotton (I had wanted to use something thinner for the lining but I had the cotton so the cotton I used. Oh well it’ll be more breathable than a layer of plastic lining fabric).
I did have to take it up a bit from the first go, mostly through the princess seams because they never fit me right anymore.
Got the lining layer sewn to the outer layer and everything pressed. Had to go back in and fix the front panel because it wasn’t sitting perfectly straight down my center front like I wanted. Please ignore the ugly pressing wrinkles I’ve since fixed that!
Then I had a whoooole lot of back and forth with the collar. It’s just a basic little stand-up collar open in the front. Trying to get it fit to my neck and the neck opening and stand up correctly and evenly was a lot of back and forth. The collar I ended up with is collar #3. I got it basted onto the outer layer, then flipped it and sewed the whole top edge closed from the inside. Some of my points are super crisp but I DONT CARE.
Then it was finally time I could move on to actual fun things, like these sleeves.
A couple of weeks ago I spent one night just making up a sleeve pattern on paper. I did have to change it a bit once I moved to actual fabric, my sleeve cap was too big and jutted out too far, and my sleeve pattern wasn’t wide enough for my lining, I ended up splitting it up the middle and just letting it be the full width of the folder fabric.
The cap is the interfaced linen backed with a layer of the cotton too just for extra stability. Then I pleated the large sleeve onto the bottom of it. (I did try gathering but didn’t like how it looked after being sewn on, the pleating looked much neater). Sewed up the main seam of the sleeve and got them sewn onto the bodice. Ran into an issue of the outer layer of the linen bodice being pulled funny so I had to take one of the sleeves off and fix it.
Then time to add the cuffs. I had also made a pattern for cuffs a couple of weeks ago, and it didn’t need much editing. It’s interfacing linen with a lining of cotton. I was going to do real button holes yall. You know I hate doing button holes. But I was like, it’s a layer of linen, a layer of cotton and a layer of interfacing, surely my machine can handle a button hole on that. And if it messed up this is a very small piece I can easily recut and have another ready to go in 5 minutes.
I have a shit ton of vintage buttons from my great aunt. I almost used these but in the end I just didn’t have the heart to pull them off their card. I dug around through the loose ones instead and found enough matching ones that were similar.
Anyway, I did a test run for a button hole on a scrap piece of fabric and my machine wouldn’t advance the fabric. It would just sit there and sew a giant ball of thread on the underside of the fabric. Dunno what that was about. Took everything off and set it all back up from scratch and same thing. So I decided that was the the fates telling me not to mess with it anymore so I gave up and sewed on snaps LOL I’m going to sew the buttons over the top just for the look. I may have to replace the snaps I sewed on with black ones because the silver ones I used show more than I like at the openings. We’ll see.
The finished top minus the front closures. Still haven’t decided how I want to do the front closure. Hook and eye? Snaps? Dunno figure it out later.
Also when I was sewing the cuffs on, it ended up being an all-morning affair Saturday morning. First I just gathered the bottom of the sleeves and sewed the first cuff on. Again, didn’t like the look of the gathers, dunno why I did that. So I took that cuff off and pleated the fabric instead and put the cuff back on. Then I looked in the mirror and decided my sleeve was too long and blousing over the cuff too much. Made Chase confirm he thought the same. So I took the cuff off again, cut off about 2 inches from the sleeve, re-pleated it and put the cuff on AGAIN. Ok finally that sleeve was done. Got the other sleeve pleated and cuff sewn on. Guess what, I forgot to cut the 2 inches off the length like I did the first one, so I took THAT cuff off, trimmed the sleeve and did it all over again. And then I realized I sewed the cuff on inside out (face palm). So again we take the cuff off and we sew it back LMAO.
With that debacle over it was finally time to move onto the skirt. I love doing skirts because they make you feel like you got a lot done with just a couple of seams sewn!
I’m using a green cotton for the skirt, and for the darker stripe at the bottom, I had this green velveteen leftover from my 18th century library Belle, so I’m using that. I had to be veeeerrry careful cutting these strips though, because I need to use this fabric for another part of the costume too and there wasn’t that much left. I got that other costume part patterned out and the pattern pieces pinned onto the velveteen, then used what was left to cut out the bottom parts of each skirt.
Got the strips sewn onto each skirt section and pressed. I looked at the panels pinned onto my dressform over my quilted petticoat and decided the cotton was too thin to lay nicely. The shape of the petticoat folds was forcing the thin cotton to lay funny, instead of the outer skirt just skimming over it, so I realized I was gonna have to line this sucker.
Thankfully I had just bought those cheap cotton sheets at the secondhand store. They were fresh out of the dryer so I used those and just flat-lined each panel.
That added the right amount of weight and thickness to the fabric so now it hangs correctly.
Last night I got all of the panels french-seamed together and just kinda sloppily pinned it onto my dressform with the bodice just to see how they were looking.
I did also get my trim swatch in. They are too big so I resized and have another swatch coming. Once that’s here and looks ok, I’ll order a yard and then I can start making and sewing on the trim.
My to-do list:
-finish bottom edge of bodice
-pleat skirt to fit and attach to bodice (may have to shorten skirt at top edge, need to get it on and try it on to see)
-closures on front of bodice
-hem skirt
-add buttons to cuffs
-make the other costume piece – lining fabric arriving today. Will be a fast project, only take an hour or so. I’ve already mocked it up.
-Make the apron. It’s just a big rectangle, easy enough.
-when trim fabric arrives, cut it all out, finish the edges, sew onto the dress.
That’s it. I think, outside of the trim, I can have everything else done by next weekend. And once the trim is here that won’t be difficult or time-consuming to do.
I do have 2 things Chase needs to 3d model for me so I need to draw them up for him.
Went to dinner for Mother’s Day last night. That was the only thing of note we did this weekend, otherwise it was all sewing all the time for me. That was nice.
Contact update? Ok so Tuesday I had the follow up visit. I got a second pair of trial contacts. These ended up being worse than the first, they gave me double vision that never resolved even after wearing them for a while.
BUT I did get a lot better and faster and putting them in. Something clicked and I’m fairly good at it now. So that meant it wasn’t such an ordeal to test things out and I spent last week trying different variations between the first set and second set, as well as giving both set 1 and set 2 a few more gos.
Saturday I was feeling really down about it all again, because I tried set 2 again and after 30 minutes still couldn’t see anything, worse than just not having my glasses on. It seemed like the right eye was the one causing the problem (which was not what i expected, when I tried that right eye one on in the office it was so much better than set 1’s right eye), so I took that one out and put the right eye from set 1. Then ran errands like that.
That seemed ok? Like at least there was no double vision. I could read my phone, not great but it was manageable. And it felt ok. Like overall this was the best result I’d had with them. It’s still like maybe only 10% better than just going without glasses, but I guess that’s better than nothing. I have another appt booked. The earliest I could get is 5/21 which pushes it really close to an important event I wanted these contacts for, but it is what it is.
I’m still kinda at the point of saying fuck the contacts, I’ll just go without my glasses. I did that for the redbirds game again and by the time we were on our way home, reading my phone was not perfect but manageable. Which is why I’m like if the contacts are only slightly better than no glasses, then why am I gonna drop $$$ on them?
I really thought the difficulty here was going to be me learning to get them in my eye, not the RX.
Anyway that’s it for this week. I already posted my to-do list so that’s all I got.
OH! I did go ahead and write up portfolio pages for Troi and Picnic Padme disneybound since I have no idea when I’ll have pics of these to be able to properly post them, but there they are in case anyone wants to read.