threat level midnight

It’s mayyybe the last post before Dragon Con. Who knows. I may be able update next Monday. I may update later this week. No idea how things will shake out.

First things first, I worked on the blouse last week. This was before I got the side seams sewn together and I thought it was a look LOL

Got the side/sleeve seams sewn up, got the edges of the sleeves finished – used some leftover silk charmeuse from Lady Jessica, it was a good colour match with this. Got the bottom of the torso section finished – I installed some elastic to try to rein it in so it’s not in the way while the corset is being laced up. Got the straps made but not attached yet. Got 2 out of 3 of my sets of ribbons dyed – I didn’t have pink dye in the house.

Blouse with unfinished cape

I did also throw the underskirt in some dye remover. It looks MUCH better faded down a bit.

And in the biggest news, I did finish the cape. I’m not happy with it but I don’t have time to remake it before dragon con, so this will just be cape mark 1.

I sat down and got the stitching done on the edges, which on the whole went ok. There were a few rough spots, but it didn’t take as long as I expected.

The biggest disaster was when I pulled up references while at the craft store Friday night picking out fabric paint for the green parts and realizing that the cape meets in the center front. I thought it ended under the straps. So my cape was not long enough to go all the way around. I guess I just had my disneybound version on the brain. For a whole night I was thinking, I’m going to have to remake this whole damn thing.

Saturday morning I got up and went to look at it. Thankfully I had left a wide berth of fabric on the ends that needed to be cut away – and I determined I had JUUUUST enough there I could unpick the first swoop, change its shape a bit, and continue on with a final shorter swoop so they’d meet in the middle. I got that done Saturday morning…. and it was a little rough. The joins don’t quite meet up correctly, my machine was being a total DICK and not advancing and just making big balls of thread for a while that i had to take out and start over. But it’s done.

Then the painting went a little rough too. I started at the center upper back, since that’ll be hidden by my hair. Well I went WAYYY too heavy on the paint there, and it’s pretty chunky looking. I got it figured out better pretty quickly and the rest looks ok, but that back section is awful LOL.

I got the excess cut away and I’m calling it done. I have plenty of leftover fabric I can make another one after dragon con.

So my to-do list left on Padme:
-finish closure at sleeves
-embroider roses on straps
-attach straps
-finish dyeing ribbons
-attach ribbons on sleeves
-tack down sleeve fold over on upper arm
-attach cape to blouse
-finish back edge of bodice
-style wig
-finish embroidering forehead ribbon (hoping to have done today or tomorrow)

So it’s not a lot, it’s all just a lot of little things to finish up.

Morticia is still mostly in the same state, no updates there – I did experiment with adding the red beads I was thinking about. I did a few on the bodice, but I’m going to cut them off. I don’t think it goes with the vibe I wanted.

My last minute simple little Rogue costume is where I have the most updates here. I finally dug into the wig, which is really the only major work to be done here.

This is what I started with (and a short white lace-front as well I didn’t take a pic of)

I was hoping the curls it came with would work, but they were in a tighter pattern than I wanted, so I steamed them out.

Ginger Riff Raff

Sewed the white wig in

A lot of teasing!

Cleaned up the first section

She’s a little frizzy but I’m calling her done. I wanted big 80s hair which does mean some frizz. The only thing I’m not happy with is that front side edge of the white wig – I’ve got one curl that just does not want to behave, I’m probably just going to have to pin it down when I wear it. And there’s a weird weft RIGHT there at the front for some reason. I guess that’s just the reality of a cheap amazon wig. I think I can hide it when I pin down that errant strand of hair.

So what’s left on Rogue:
-iron on X-Men symbol on shirt
-I may have to take the shirt up at the shoulder seams, need to look at it
-fix boot
-sew belt back together after putting the belt buckle on
-find my gloves

And now onto Space Mutiny updates.
My Lea “Doctor Lady” costume is mostly done, so updates here are just accessories. I rolled the wig last night and left it to cool overnight, so tonight I’ll take it down and start teasing the hell out of it. Another big frizzy 80s wig LOL

So she has this buckle in her belt and we could tell there was SOMETHING on it but there was no telling exactly what it was. Just ordered a blank silver oval belt buckle and was going to leave it at that. Then I thought, what if we put the bots on it? So Chase edited this file from thingiverse and printed it:

So cute! LOL
Also hard to get a pic of without my reflection in it.

So just need to glue that onto the buckle, then do the velcro attachments on my skirt waistband (Not doing a belt, decided to just make it my skirt waistband for simplicity). I also need to find my boots.

Got some work done on Chase’s Big McLargeHuge. Finished up his pants last night (Just needed elastic in the waist and the ankles hemmed). Biggest thing was getting is shirt made. I used a t-shirt of his as a pattern to make the front and back, then made a paper pattern for the blue lightning bolt. Sewed the lightning bolt onto the front panel before sewing it all together – this was tricky because this metallic-y spandex wants to stick even under my teflon foot. So I basted the bolt on first and thankfully it went on without a lot of problems.

Got the sides sewn together, bottom hemmed, arm openings hemmed. Here he is trying it on:

With my rough mock-ups for the collar and shoulder pauldrons.

Last thing I did last night was cut the actual collar piece and do a new pauldron mock-up.

I’m re-thinking my pauldron approach. I bought some fosshape for them but now I’m thinking that’s going to be too much, they don’t need to be that rigid. My little pauldrons just have canvas in them and that worked, but mine are a lot smaller. I may have to play with some stuff tonight and see what would work better. At the moment I’m thinking I could maybe get away with a canvas interior and maybe some plastic boning in the hem?

So my to-do list left on that:
-sew in collar
-do test for pauldron (I have plenty of fabric to play with)
-get pauldrons made and sewn on
-finish taking batting out of his muscle suit (there was too much in the chest and it made a weird “shelf” at the top which messed up the look of that lightning bolt I worked so hard on LOL)

My to-do list for everything else remains the same, haven’t done the Padme/Taylor stuff or Belle. I also have not packed a thing. I also have not gotten my bin out. I also have not figured out exactly what I’m taking??

I still have 7 days to work. I think tonight I’ll hopefully finish up my Lea wig, get the collar sewn on Chase’s shirt, get the closures sewn on my picnic sleeves, finish dyeing ribbons and maybe do those? I really need to finish up the bodice but I need Chase for that so hopefully he can take some time to come help me with that.

Trying to get caught up on Strange New Worlds before Dcon. Loved “Human Best Friend” and had to make this:

Saturday at 8am I had an eye doctor appointment – I wanted to ask about those eye drops that improve your up-close vision for a few hours. He prescribed them for me! Yay. He said it sounds like something that would work for me when I’m in costume and can’t carry readers. He said the main side effect may be a headache and my distance vision may be a little blurrier). Of course my pharmacy didn’t have it in stock, so hopefully they get it in soon so i can try it before Dcon.

I just want to be able to read the badge ribbons people hand me!! LOL
(And honestly if I can get away with just the drops thatd be great, wearing the contacts for so long ever day makes my eyes feel SO tired.)

Anyway, Sunday me, Chase and Kevin all had haircuts.

This snapchat filter made us look smooth as a baby’s butt LOL

Afterwards we went to a bakery where I had one of the best donuts I’ve ever had?? omg. Then we needed to run to Michael’s because Chase needed paint, and guess what, the Spirit Halloween was FINALLY open. The ones in surrounding cities have been open for a couple of weeks already but ours haven’t. They were supposed to open Saturday, but when we went by (after another Michael’s run) people were just standing outside waiting on them to open the doors, but they had no idea when they were going to open the doors. This was like 1pm so I dunno what was up with that.

Kevin had fun with all the animatronics. I was hoping to find a little bat or spider brooch to go with my morticia but no luck. They didn’t seem fully stocked, there were still lots of empty shelves and not near as much like, house decor as usual? Guess that’s why they were so late opening.

Anyway took Kevin home, came home and got back to work.

Saturday we apparently had a large weather event.

We didn’t really clock it here; it rained really hard for a bit, got really windy, our power blipped twice but came back on immediately, so we just thought “ok storm.”

But apparently it was much worse in other areas, lots of trees down, it totally tore up a festival, and there’s still a ton of people without power. When I asked Kevin about it he said he went down to the basement to be safe and he lost power for a “long time” (when we talked to Susan – who was out of town this weekend – she said she checked in and it had come back on before it got dark out). I’m just glad he knew to go to the basement. Maybe I should set up weather alerts on his phone so he knows when something is coming.

Anyway, art corner, I only have 1 this week because we are in the trenches:

This absolutely ridiculous comic outfit LOL. I do like her Padme-esque hair though.

Ok now I gotta wrap this up and get back to work.

(Oh but I do need to bitch that I accidentally broke my 170-something day Strands streak (crying face emoji). I was rushing out of the house Sat morning for the eye appointment, I had one word left, I selected it and thought I was done but apparently I missed a letter when selecting it, didn’t notice, and didn’t notice the game didn’t complete til the next morning when I went to play and there was no streak on the main screen. I’m so irritated LOL Thankfully wordle and connections streak not broken, I play Strands last every day…)