emile thanks you

Well here we are after the 3 day weekend. I had big plans to have Belle totally done minus the wig, lower embroidered swags and shoulder drape. I didn’t even get CLOSE.

But I did post up my “secret” costume on instagram so I can now post about it openly here – more below. Let’s go through the state of everything one at a time.

1. Troi
No progress here. I need to get the wig out and mess with it sometime soon. And I need to try it on.

2. Scarlet Witch
My skirt fabric is ordered. I also got a swatch from another place. My boots came in and I don’t like them – I didn’t realize they weren’t a full shaft boot when I ordered them, they only had stretch fabric uppers and that won’t work for my boot covers. So I’m sending those back. And I just paused writing this and went and shopped and found a solid pair on clearance at Macy’s so I ordered those.

3. “Dark Lady” – AKA Lorne from Severance!
That costume I’ve been working on I was calling “Dark Lady” is mostly done! It was done enough that I put it all on and took pics this weekend, so the big reveal is that it’s Lorne from Severance! (Gwendoline Christie’s goat lady character!) I was obsessed with this from the second it showed up in that finale and wanted to make it. I just thought it would be fun to drop it pretty much finished. So here’s playing catch up with some progress photos I didn’t post from earlier in June.

The apron. I did get my designs higher up on it than they should have been. Wasn’t about to take it all over and do it over, it’s fine.

All of the trim! Easiest things was sewing the ones on the vest (did that by hand) and the ones on the apron (machine-sewn). Difficult ones were the ones in the sleeve, just because that was fiddly to do even by hand. And the long belt one – I backed it in some leftover green cotton, and it was sooo long it was a pain to turn.

I got the brooches from Woodenstihl on etsy. Thank GOODNESS for Woodenstihl. I went in to start trying to draw these up so Chase could 3d model them and the references just weren’t there. Got to skip that whole headache. These are beautiful! Chase painted them silver and I added a black wash to darken up the details.

Unfortunately the shoes I bought for this are ENORMOUS. They weren’t marked with a size at the thrift store, and the spot inside where it would be printed was worn off. They are clarks though, so I was like, they’ll be comfy, and I held them up to my shoe and they looked close, so I got them. Tried them on and they are BOATS on me LOL I think they are like a 10? Gonna try them on with like 3 pairs of socks because I do really like their shape. Backup will be my little black velvet slippers… if I can find them.

My little Emile. He’s a little smaller than I would’ve liked but I’m not spending more than $25 on this prop LOL

Here’s my preview pic. It was a good test for the makeup and hair. I think I want to switch to using my Hoth Leia braid bumper instead of the smaller bumper I used here, it’ll make my braid on my head look bigger. Need to remember to hike my petticoat up a litle more so it doesn’t show so much.

Things to finish are:
-closure on the apron – it just ties on right now, which makes a lump under the vest, so I want to switch to a snap or hook and eye.
-pockets on the apron? Thinking about sneaking some pockets on the inside of the apron, if I can do it where the stitching won’t be noticeable.
-finish the leaf detailing on the neck bow – one side is done. Gotta finish the other side.
-closure on the neck bow – I just pinned it on here.

That’s it, nothing major.

Now that I’ve dropped the finished thing, I’m going to go back and update my previous blog posts to the character’s actual name so they’re not confusing to anybody reading through my blog builds. And I’ll have new costume page up soon too before I forget everything.

4. Belle
So yeah my goal was to finish everything I could on Belle this weekend, which was finishing the basic skirt, put the zipper in, put the waistband on, at least pin the hem, get the swags put together, sewn on, finish assembling the bodice and get the eyelets in. I didn’t get most of that done. But let’s rewind back to Monday because after I posted last week’s update, I had a crash out that night.

Basically I finished all of the hand-sewing on the new hoopskirt… put my petticoats on it. Put my skirt on it. Andddddd I hated it. I felt like 4 days, $150 wasted. I came downstairs and sulked for a few minutes, then went back upstairs and messed with stuff.

My solution was my 18th century panniers (untied so they are a rounder shape), stacked over the top of the new hoopskirt. The panniers give the width I want, and the new hoopskirt gives the shape in the back I want. It’s still not 100% what I envisioned, but it’s close enough I’m going to accept it and move on.

Beauty and the Beast

I got the bodice outer layer finished and did get it sewn to the lining layer. I flipped it right side out last night and it’s going to need some tweaks – I think I need to shorten a couple of the pieces of the boning mainly. I’ll do that tonight and get it pressed and closed up and hopefully maybe do the eyelets?

I also got my skirt pleated down and Chase had to help hold up the excess so I could get it through the machine – it’s heavy to the point now that it throws off the tension if I don’t have something holding up the weight.

I did decide on my fabric for the lower swags/base of the shoulder drape piece. It’s “renewal” from Silk Baron and I got that ordered.

Messed around with some scrap fabric to see how I wanted these swag pieces shaped.

First stab at a gathered front panel.

Cutting this chiffon out was a nightmare. I had to keep my ceiling fan off because it was making the chiffon flutter and move too much while I was trying to cut it, so it got really hot in there. And that made me start to sweat, and leaning over to cut with a sweaty face meant my glasses kept falling off. I finally took a ribbon, tied it on the nose bridge of my glasses and looped it back through my hair clip to keep the damn things on my face.

Also having to do math and measurements was a pain in the butt. Or rather a pain in the brain. I had to take brain breaks LOL I can’t remember all of the measurements of these but I basically just kept adding around 25inches to each swag as I went around the skirt. I do know the last one ended up just over 4yards long. I had jussssst enough fabric to cut these and still have some scraps leftover for the shoulder drapes.

I started getting everything pleated and then realized they were all too big at the waist. It wasn’t going to fit onto the skirt right. So I had to take them all off, lay them all out, and cut the angle deeper so they were all smaller at the top so they’d fit right. I did take that time to clean up the cuts and make them match better – ie, the 2 side front panels and the 2 side back panels should be the same, so I laid them out together and trimmed them at the same time and trimmed off anything that wasn’t matching up.

Back at it. I got these each pleated (using a ribbon as an anchor to hold the chiffon steady while getting it shaped the way I wanted. Then carefully removed the ribbon and repinned, and then basted the pleats in place — then machine sewed them in place.

She’s pretty

Here’s all of the panels finally pleated. It’s all just pinned together minus one I haven’t pinned on yet.

Struggling with how much I want to trim off the bottom of the base skirt. I LOVE how long it is, but I know it’s not functional to have it that long in the front. I’m going to maintain the length around the sides and back as much as possible.

Tonight my plan is to get the swag panels all sewn together, and I think I’m going to have to tweak the pleating on the base skirt to get the side seam opening to line up with the side seam opening on the swags. I’m probably going to have to hand-sew the zipper in, ew!

I’ll follow up with goals for this later in the post.

5. The 5th costume
I still haven’t gotten anything more done on this. I have the second mockup cut but I’ve been so involved with Belle I haven’t gotten back to it. I was hoping to at least sew the mockup together this past weekend, but alas.

Ok let’s talk about real life happenings.

Look at this massive freaking bin at Home Depot. We joked about buying it for dragoncon because we could just put EVERYTHING in it… but then we wouldn’t be able to lift it. Or fit it in an elevator.

Chonk. She ran out of her RX food so she got “junk food” last night and omg she was so excited.

Got another one of these Star Wars poster blind bag keychains and got the one I wanted!!! It’s me and Kevin LOL

Other than that, we ran errands, we had a big birthday party for our summer bday babies yesterday, had dinner with my parents Sat night, work has been awful and stressful so I was glad for friday off. Didn’t get to go work on Mom with her costume this weekend, waiting to hear when she wants to get together again. She did get her fabric for the top in and it looks great – but is raining glitter everywhere LOL

Ok goals for this week:
1. clean up inside of bodice, close it up, install eyelets
2. sew swag sections together
3. hem swag sections
4. sew swags to skirt (edit pleats on base skirt?)
5. add waistband
6. add zipper
7. pin hem
8.sew together mockup for costume #5

I gotta get MOVING it’s JULY!

OH! Nearly forgot, I found some Dragoncon 2005 pics on facebook I’d never seen before!