Moooving!

I just wanted to pop in and say hello before I disappear again for a few weeks. I’m currently taking a break from attempting to pack everything I own into my tiny Camry, which I’m going to be driving up to northern California tomorrow. Then next Tuesday I’m hopping on a plane to fly to London and then Montpeller, France! I’ll be over there until about a week after the New Year so don’t think I’ve died if I don’t write for another month.

Sadly, this means my latest bout of costume inspiration has to be put on hold, but do expect a lot of Deathly Hallows costumes to be popping up on here soon. Moving back into a cold-weather-zone (yes, I realize that 40 F is nothing to complain about but I’ve been living in San Diego for five years!) has caused a sort of obsession to own Hermione’s entire wardrobe. I’m even dying to teach myself how to knit a Fair Isle sweater so I can make that gorgeous gray hoodie cardigan she wears. And don’t even get me started on the red dress.

Yup, movies are dangerous.

Anyway, I haven’t done much sewing lately because I started packing, which meant all of my sewing supplies were put in boxes, which for some reason makes it difficult to sew.

And now, back to packing..

-whine-

New camera squees!

I’d been eyeing the new Casio Exilim for ages and finally caved and ordered it on Saturday. This morning I woke up, stumbled out of my room, and there it was waiting for me outside my door.

Anyway, the point is I can take decent pictures of costumes now. Huzzah!

This is how far I’ve gotten with the ES wedding dress. The dress itself is mostly done, other than some lace that needs to be attached and I still have to hem the top of the upper skirt attachment. All that’s left is about three and a half butt-loads of gold leafy/straw embroidery. I have the pattern scaled and printed out, I just need to figure out where it goes.

As for my Halloween costume, I’ll have to post pictures of my almost-finished Snow White costume later. Squee for successfully gusseted sleeves!

I start on Halloween costumes ridiculously early.

I somehow managed to get the bodice right on the first try. This literally never happens.

The headband took me about ten minutes to make. I literally just took a thick plastic headband and attacked it with thick red ribbon and a glue gun. There was minor stitching on the actual bow part though but minimal.

For the gusseted sleeves I used Aranel’s tutorial, same one I used to make my Susan Pevensie archery sleeves. I just made the holes bigger. I can’t tell you how many tutorials I read where people cut corners by just sewing on strips of red fabric, or cutting holes without finishing them. One person even described painting red ovals on. o.O

</snob>

I also made a petticoat with two layers of tulle. I have two more strips cut out but it’s already so fluffy I want to try it on under the finished dress before I decide if it needs more poof.

I already can’t wait for Halloween! …..Maybe I should work on the part where I don’t have actual plans yet.

Buttons!

Dammit, it’s 2am. So much for getting to bed early.

In other news, I finally attached the stomacher to the bodice (I got tired of poking myself in eight places every time I tried it on) and put in button snap closures on the other side. The sleeves are still pinned on; I’ll get to that tomorrow.

Next up is just embroidering the crap out of the bodice and the skirt. Luckily there’s no embroidery (that I can see) on the polonaise overskirt. There’s just the front edge on either side of the underskirt, the peplum, and the little sticking-out panel that frames the stomacher (which I started earlier).

This whole project has actually been saving me quite a bit of money. I already bought everything for it, other than the $3 I spent on crochet thread, plus I’ve been working on it so much that I never feel like going out and participating in activities detrimental to my bank account.

I don’t think that previous statement could have made me sound more like a loser.

Embroidering with crochet thread.

Why doesn’t Walmart sell embroidery floss? The one near my house sells a huge variety of crochet thread (which I find pretty useful for embroidering actually) but they don’t have a single color of embroidery floss.

I stopped by there today in the hopes of finding something champagne-colored to use to sew the leaf trim onto the actual fabric. I debated getting a generic cream-colored one but ended up grabbing one that had a strand of bright gold woven in. I figured it was small enough to be subtle but the shininess would make it go better with the leaves. So far, so good!

Next I’m going to chain-stitch the stem bits for the fan-like flowers, and I have some raffia straw that I’m going to fan out and sew down. The picture up there is one side of the sleeve. I’m using a diagram from www.costumersguide.com as a reference for the actual design of the leaves, but since the original fabric was already embroidered with the leaf design repeating along it, and the sleeves were cut out of that fabric, I’m just going to do one segment of the design on either side of the sleeve.

I also ran out of the blue-ish ribbon/lace trim I made so I’ll have to make enough to go around each sleeve.

I have a feeling I’m going to harbor a deep hatred for foliage when I’ve finished with the leaf embroidering on the whole dress, seeing as how there’s quite a bit of it to be done..

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Ok, it’s now 1:49am and I should probably do that thing where I become unconscious for a bit.

Especially since I literally spent 10.5 of my 14 waking hours today on this sleeve. Pretty though! On the right is a reference image of what the actual sleeve looks like. Again, forgive my crappy photo. I’m still using Photo Booth until my sister gets back so I can steal borrow her camera.

And yes, this leafy/fan pattern is kind of a bitch. In a therapeutic way.

Also, for the record, that gold/cream crochet thread I bought makes a lovely effect with the leaf trim but is oh-so obnoxious to sew with, as the gold bits like to unravel from the rest of it and create all matter of mess and entanglement. Something to keep in mind for next time.

 

 

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