Diary of a Costumer

I finished the other corset commission last week and shipped that off. This weekend I will probably start on the BB-8 baby dress commission, which is my last for a moment, though I will probably have some stuff for the caroling group to do in a couple weeks. 

But in the meantime, what I'm really excited about is starting my skirt for Disney World. I can't remember if I posted about it here yet, but I am making a light up skirt! I was going to do it on a black base, but I found this fabric at Joanns that is black cotton threads in one direction, woven with rainbow lame-ish threads on the cross-grain. I did a small test embroidery, and it embroiders fine *knock on wood*. I'm going to embroider Cinderella's castle, maybe the Partners statue or Tink, and a bunch of fireworks on it, and poke little holes through and put lights behind them. I found an inexpensive lightweight strand of LED color-changing lights on Amazon. I haven't figured out if it's best to sew them into the skirt, or to tape them in place - if anyone has any tips, please share!

I also figured out what I'm doing for Halloween. Between the commissions, theatre rehearsals/shows, and my Disney sewing, I have almost no time for Halloween sewing this year. But when I was at Goodwill on Sunday, I found a turquoise prom dress that fits me perfectly and was giving off major Ariel vibes. So I'm going to add puffed sleeves (I already have the fabric from past princess sewing), and I bought a red Ariel wig. Easy costume! 

Anyway, we open on Friday, and I work every day until then, so no new sewing will happen till Friday morning (and then only if I have the energy). I'm excited to get this show open, because then I can actually get to rehearsals for my next show! 

I swear, every time I look at Dreamwidth, a week has passed. I really don't know how that's happening, though I also don't know how we're already halfway through November. 

I finished the commission on Friday, and it has been picked up, so now I don't have to worry about that, which is certainly a nice feeling. It's maybe not so nice when I look at my finances and realize the money from the commission has been helping to keep me afloat, instead of going into a save-for-Europe/later bonus fund. Oh well.... 

Here's a pic. It wasn't my design - I was reproducing an old jacket from the 90s. 


Anyway, now I get to sew for me! I wanted my first project to be fairly quick, no stress, and something small that I could take with me to sew at rehearsals. So I pulled out my new Simplicity Disney stuffed animals pattern, and I'm making Thumper. I think I've got the body a little more than half done at this point. I'm hoping I can do a tiny bit more today before rehearsal. 

Here's what he looks like so far:


This is also my filler project before my coat lining gets here, because my next project is going to be a winter coat. I guess I should probably mock that up... 

After I finish that, I'm not positive what will come next. I want an S-bend corset, so possibly that. But I'm so far behind in my sewing because of the commission that I really should be getting on with my gala dress or something, which doesn't need the corset (that's for an Edwardian I want to make). But I haven't finalized what I'm actually making for the gala yet - all I know is that it will be yellow and 1890s. Or I could go back to the stripey 1880s bustle I was working on, but that was being a pain before which was why I shelved it. Or I could do the plaid 1830s dress I want to make, which would probably be the easiest choice. Fitting just seems like such a pain right now. Maybe once we open and I have more time to think and do things I'll figure this all out. 

Today I got a rush order for a custom Daisy Head Mayzie playdress, so I made it this evening while my parents were watching tv. Naturally, I totally underestimated the time the collar would take, so now I know I should have charged way more, but oh well. It turned out super cute, and at least now I can mail it off and not have to worry about it for the rest of the weekend.


While I was picking up the fabric for the dress, I also got the last of the lace and the thread I need for the giant turquoise ballgown of doom, which hopefully means I don't need to buy anything else for it at all. *knock on wood*

Oh, and my parents and I tried a lovely Victorian tea room in the area today. It was delicious, and hopefully I'll be able to host some events there!

I spent tonight trying to catch up on all the LJ posts for the last several days while trying not to scream/vomit/cry because of this stupid election. I refuse to accept that Trump appears to have won. I doubt I'm going to be able to sleep, but if I can, I want to wake up and have it all be a terrible nightmare.

But I digress. I did actually do some sewing at the end of last week. I fixed my Mary Poppins skirt appliques, put together the mockup for my corset, (which I still need to try on), and I also did my commission for Princess Anna's winter hat. Tada!

Obviously, the second picture is unfinished, but it was the only one I took that showed the painting I did on the back.


Anyway, then I ran off to Disneyland for the weekend for Dapper Day. I don't have most of my pictures yet, (my phone is so terrible that for Sunday we mostly used my friend's phone to take pictures), so here's a teaser pic from when I met Mary Poppins:

I'll do a full post on Disney as soon as I get the pics, but seeing everyone all dressed up for Dapper Day was amazing. It was a lot of fun just people watching, and trying to guess some of the disney bounds I saw.

But now I'm back, and I really need to try on the corset mockup and get on all the stuff for my caroling group, so that I can go back to working on the corset, and eventually, the green bustle gown! Eventually, I'll need to go back and fix Mary Poppins, too, since I had two bones work their way out of the swiss waist while I was wearing it, and more appliques need to be sewn on in more places, but that can wait till early summer. Because I have so much sewing to do right now...

It's all done! I didn't make to the post office today, but it will head off to my customer tomorrow. I rather enjoyed it, for the most part, since it was a nice easy project (besides the zipper of course). The dress is cotton, with a poly matte satin sash, and matching bow. The sash is actually made out of three pieces - the part that is attached to the dress and goes around the waist, which is cut on the bias and top-stitched to the bodice, and then two ends, which were made double width and turned into tubes to tie into a bow. The bodice is based on a jenky looking McCalls princess pattern, but I changed the darts a little, and cut the neckline lower and wider. The skirt is just three flat panels (two halves in back, one whole in the front), and the dress closes with an invisible zipper up the back. It's entirely machine sewn except for the CB of the lining, which is handsewn down along the zipper. There's also a matching hairbow out of the satin.

I'm feeling a bit better about my sewing progress now! Yesterday, I cut out the rest of the bodice interlining and silk bodice pieces, and assembled the whole bodice. Then I made a mockup of the bertha, and since it seemed fine when I pinned it on, I went ahead and cut it out of the silk. Of course, as I was cutting it out, I had an "oh crap" moment, when I realized that I hadn't taken into account the facing for the bertha, and there was no way I had enough of the ivory silk left for it.

Luckily, I have a dark cream shantung, that, while it is a few shades darker, should be fine for the facing unless my bertha flips way up. So I cut it out, and pinned the two in place, and started marking my triangle seam lines, and I found an amazingly easy way to measure them! I don't know if this is just something I had never learned, or if it's some new thing I stumbled upon, but I realized that if I took my 3" wide plastic quilting ruler, and positioned it so that the 2.5" mark was on my CF dot (which was .5" up from the edge of the bertha), and put both 3" marks on the edge of the fabric, I could go around the whole rounded bertha piece, always using a 2.5" mark as a placement, and getting perfectly measured 90-degree spaces between each triangle! It made it soooo much easier!

So anyway, I sewed and turned all my triangles, and serged the top edge, which means the bertha is ready for trimming. I'm going to sleep early tonight, so none will get done now, but I'm really hoping that by the time I get home, I can finish the two rows of trim on the bertha, the 5th row on the skirt, and the last overskirt tab. Because then I'll feel sooo relieved. Especially because I just signed up to take a 4-day, 6 hrs per day class on draping a Victorian bodice the week before I leave for CoCo. Maybe not the best decision, but the class signed up super fast last time, and it's only $15. I couldn't pass it up!

I also shipped off Anna today. I'll get the skirt back in a couple weeks, and finish working on it after CoCo. But here's a picture of everything altogether, since I won't be getting the top pieces back:

I got really excited thinking I had finished the Anna blouse tonight, and then I realized I still need to sew on a few hooks and eyes at the neckline. But it's almost done! I'll finish that tomorrow morning, and then post some pictures.

I also finished the Elsa skirt. Still not in love with the dye job, but I think it's as good as this fabric is ever going to get.

Tomorrow I also hope to finish all my Victorian child overskirt pleats and attach them, and cut and iron my trim strips so that I have plenty of handsewing to do while I'm in CA next week. If I can get a bodice mockup made up, then even better! 

Whoops, forgot to post yesterday!

I finished the vest yesterday! I also cut all my bodice pieces, and redid the embroidery for the front of the bodice. It's so much better now!



Today, I serged, assembled, and boned the bodice, and I sewed the binding on one side, and pinned the zipper in place. All I need to do is stitch the zipper in, and flip and sew the binding into place. So I should have it done by mid-day tomorrow, and then on to the blouse.



I also tried another attempt at dyeing the Elsa skirt today. It took dye better than it has before, but either it wasn't in the dye long enough, or it wasn't enough dye, or both, because although it looked pretty great when it was wet, it dried so much lighter. I'm going to try picking up two more bottles of dye tomorrow, and give it one last go. Otherwise my customer and I have just decided to call it good. At least I'm only hitting Joanns every other day? I also have to drop some fabric off at the post office tomorrow, since someone bought some of my Harry Potter fabric. Yay for more etsy sales!

Today was quite a day! I had an audition at 11:45 in Seattle, and a dentist appt also in Seattle at 2pm. Since I live almost an hour away, I decided to go to Starbucks and work on my Anna digitizing (I smartly brought my laptop). And by the time I left for the dentist, I had finished as much of the digitizing as I could do without my printer!

Then, of course, my dentist appt went super quickly, and I had a rehearsal at 7 in West Seattle. Since I had also brought my hand sewing with me, I decided to just hang out for 4.5 hours in West Seattle, instead of fight traffic both ways. So I worked on my skirt, and I think I wound up getting about 1/4 of the fourth row done.

When I finally got home after rehearsal, I finished all the digitizing. I'm really happy with how it looks, though I've realized I'm going to have to do this the old-fashioned way, and embroider on the fabric before cutting the pieces out, like an 18th c waistcoat. Otherwise it's going to be sooo hard to perfectly position the pieces in the hoop, even with my machine's camera. Each piece is almost 8x12, which is the size of my largest hoop, and it's going to require five hoopings total to complete the vest (and a 6th for the bodice). I just hope it all works out - the vest is 61481 stitches, and that doesn't include the parts that I'm just going to satin stitch with the sewing machine.

Here's a rough picture of my print-outs: