Diary of a Costumer

Insanely early Tuesday morning, I flew in to Long Beach, picked up a rental car, and headed straight to Disneyland. I was joined partway through the day by a couple of other CoCo'ers, Maria and later, Teresa and her daughter, neither of whom I knew before, so it was fun to bond with new friends! I stayed surprisingly late (considering I had woken up around 2am), and caught Fantasmic, the fireworks, and the Electric Light Parade before driving to my aunt's house to stay the night.

I slept in a little the next day and had breakfast with my aunt before heading back to Disneyland. I wore my new Belle-inspired dress, which has since become one of my wardrobe favorites, and spent a good chunk of the afternoon and evening with one of my good friends/sorority sisters from college, which was wonderful. We got a great spot for the fireworks, and made it over to World of Color just in time for the show. One of the coolest things that I experienced, though, was getting to sit in the 3rd row center section of the Frozen musical. It was like a whole different show from that close, and it was just amazing getting to see all the details! Overall, it was a fantastic two days, and a great way to end my annual pass (Wed was the last day it was valid, because Disneyland's passes are good for 366 days)!

Here's two pictures. The rest of the pictures of Disneyland can be found here.


Thursday, after breakfast with my aunt, I headed north to LA - I quickly swung by Home Fabrics for literally 15 minutes, and picked up some solid butter yellow silk taffeta (they didn't have the goldenrod I was looking for for a historical Belle gala dress at the time), and a brick red-based plaid silk taffeta (for an 1830s dress). Then I headed to Bel Air to meet my Grandpa and a different aunt for lunch at her country club. By the time we finished, traffic had gotten bad, so I took the scenic route up the coast and through Topanga Canyon to get to CoCo. My roommate had already checked in, so I was able to drop off the rental car and head right upstairs. We had a little bit of downtime before getting ready for registration and the Pool Party, which I used to iron or steam pretty much everything I had brought with me. 

For the Pool Party, I wore my Snow White outfit as part of the Designer Disney group. I definitely need to do something to that cape before the next time I wear it, since it was constantly trying to choke me, even with double stick tape and attempting to pin it into place. Everyone looked great at the pool party, though! I loved how many people were dressed to the Disney theme. 


I will have more posts for the rest of the weekend at some point, but I can't promise that they will come right away!

I got home from rehearsal 45 mins early yesterday (which meant I got home at about 9:50pm), and made the possibly irresponsible decision to watch at least part of the movie due back at the library today while I cut out pieces for the Beauty and the Beast dress. I was going to just watch half the movie, and just cut the skirt, but then that turned into the whole movie and the whole dress and going to bed just after midnight. Whoops. But at least it's cut out!

My goal for this afternoon is to assemble the entire dress except the zipper (since I'm not going to Joanns till tomorrow). Hopefully I'll even do the hem. And I want to cut out all the organdy pieces for class. I'm thinking that if I cut all that out, I'll be better able to figure out how much muslin I need for all the class pieces, too. I don't think I have much (if any) muslin in the stash, so that will have to wait till after I hit Joanns as well. Then I can cut out the rest of the pieces on Saturday. And pack. And drop off all the stuff that's too big to pack to my roommate, who is driving down and luckily only lives a little over an hour away from me. 

My 2016 Goals changed a few times over the course of the year, but this is what they were:

Navy blue swiss dot Regency - Done!
Black silk taffeta bustle ballgown - Done!
Child's Victorian Gown - Done!
Daniel Deronda Riding Habit - Still hasn't happened, and is no longer on my specific upcoming goals list.
1860s Fully Handsewn dress - Didn't even pick this up all year. Maybe someday, but probably not anytime soon.
Turquoise Silk Mid-19th c  Giant Ballgown - I kind of knew this was going to be a 2017 project, and sure enough, it will be.
Fur-trimmed bustle-era skating outfit - Coming up next; I've already started cutting pieces out.
Winter bustle gown - Almost done!
Super-secret Disney-related project - No longer super secret. This is the Snow White Designer Disney dress, and will be made for the CoCo pool party this year.

In June, I added an Elizabethan kirtle and Mary Poppins Jolly Holiday to the list, both of which I have since completed.


And here's picture proof of everything I made!

( Click here for pictures )

I think that's everything. Overall, not a bad sewing year, though being unemployed for the first eight months of the year certainly helped in that, and as you can tell by my posts, my sewing has definitely slowed down since I started working in September! 

I realized tonight that it's been almost two weeks, and I still haven't done a real post about Dapper Day!

I flew down super early Saturday morning to Long Beach, picked up my rental car, and drove to Disney. By the time I parked, it was shortly before the Dapper Day Expo opened at the Disneyland Hotel, so I waited around a little bit, and then checked that out. There was sooo much vintage and repro clothing and accessories for sale, but it was all quite expensive (and I didn't want to have to walk around all day with it). It was kind of nice that Simplicity had a booth advertising their new patterns, and were giving out vintage apron patterns and travel sewing kits.

After I walked around the whole Expo, I headed to CA Adventure. I was on my own on Saturday, and seemed to have pretty bad timing on wait times for things, so Saturday wasn't the greatest day. That said, I did a bunch of pin trading, met several characters, did a few character drawing sessions, and did manage to ride several rides, too. I also watched the absolute worst Disney fireworks show ever. It was literally 4 minutes long.

Luckily, Sunday made up for Saturday. I met up with a friend of mine who I hadn't seen since college, which was wonderful. It was her first full day visiting Disneyland, and I absolutely love taking Disney newbies around the park. We met lots of characters, had perfect timing for pretty much every ride, and did a ton of people-watching. So many people were dressed up in Dapper style, and most people were also Disneybounding, so it was really fun to try to guess who everyone was supposed to be. Another friend joined us in the evening, and we rode more rides and all watched World of Color. It was such a great day!

Here are some pics. More of them can be found on my facebook.

We had an awesome Halloween! I dressed as Mary Poppins during the day, but went scary in all black with a big dark cloak and painted face for the trick-or-treaters. Most people were at least fairly scared at our house, but it was nothing compared to all the screams coming from our next-door neighbors' house! At the last minute, when I got home from work, we added a bunch more decorations, and then I spent most of the evening at the door, so no sewing time.

I also realized while wearing Mary Poppins that a bunch of my skirt appliques are trying to come off, so I really need to sew them on before Disney this weekend. But I also haven't had any time to sew! I need to fix the skirt, make the Princess Anna hat, fix all the costumes for my caroling group, finish my corset, and hopefully make a new bustle gown. All by Thanksgiving. Yikes.

Anyway, what I did manage today was to practice my hair and decide on a hat to wear with my Disney Villains dress for Saturday, but I'm still waffling on the shoes. Help me decide! The majority vote from facebook seems to be for the Saddle shoes, so I'm going to try breaking them in starting tomorrow.

So much burning of my hands later, Mary Poppins is done!

I did the hat first, which required a whole bunch of my organza scraps and a ton of hot glue. And of course, putting hot glue on organza also means very much burning of fingers (including at least three that have already blistered). But that said, I'm really happy with how it turned out!

The base is a wavy-brimmed straw hat that I bought from the thrift store a few years ago, and spray painted white. Tonight, I started by gluing/pleating an organza strip around the top of the brim. Then I took another organza strip, glued the selvedge edge around the top edge of the brim, and turned it under, where I pulled it tightly, and pleated it around the crown on the inside. Next I took a narrower strip, pleated the ends, and glued one end to the side of the base of the crown. On the other end, I sewed on two hooks, and sewed two bars to the opposite side of the base of the crown. I also ran gathering threads at three points on the length, to cinch it on the sides of the face and under the chin. Then I took a vaguely circular piece, and shaped it over the top of the crown, gluing it around the edge (leaving the bars free, obviously). I pressed messy ruching in place on another strip, and glued that loosely around the sides of the crown. Then I gathered a long piece for the back, and glued that around the back. And finally, I glued on the flowers! So as I said, a lot of glue - I lost count of how many sticks I went through!



Then I put the hooks and eyes on the skirt and the swiss waist, and the ribbon tie on the parasol. I didn't actually try it all on tonight - I'll save that for the morning, but each item does fit individually. I'm wearing it to a Halloween party tomorrow night, so I'll be sure to have someone take pictures of me. For now, here's som dress form pictures:



On the other hand, the temporary hair dye I tried this morning did almost nothing whatsoever to my hair color, so it is still very much not brown. I'm going to try to get to Sally's before tomorrow night, and see if I can exchange it for something better.

Oh, and also, I made both my first embroidery design etsy sale and my first princess playdress etsy sale today. And how fitting that the one that sold was for Mary Poppins!

The bodice is done! Unfortunately, it took way longer than I had anticipated to finish it. I finished the sleeve trim and made a bow for the neck, and sewed down all the edges that were flapping up on the sleeve applique. But then I realized one of the appliques on the back was coming up on the edges, too, so I did that one as well. I'm really hoping all the skirt ones aren't going to require tacking down all over the place - otherwise, what's the point of the fusible?!

I also realized that I needed to stitch down all the seam allowances in the armseye so that they don't show at all in the sheer sleeves, and that the top corners of the front ruffle needed to be tacked down as well, since they kept flopping over. But all of those are done, and I even added a hook and thread loop on the back of the collar.

Pictures!

Then I moved on to redoing the skirt. I took the waistband off, and took apart all the layers. I still need to take the gathering out of two of the layers, but I got the other five. So far, I've taken in three of the layers - 2.5" off each side at the top, tapering out to the existing hem. I've re-gathered the top two layers at this point, but of course, I was really hoping to finish the whole thing by today. And to make matters worse, I'm pretty darn sure I'm going to have to round out the hem again, since it's wanting to turn into points at all the seams. *sigh*

If I don't get the skirt fully back together by tomorrow night, I might really have a problem on my hands! I'm wearing this on Saturday night, and I have rehearsal on Wed night, and a brief rehearsal Friday afternoon as well. I was also still really hoping to see The Dressmaker this week, because otherwise I'm worried it's going to disappear from theatres before I have a chance. 

The Mary Poppins base skirt is done (I think). I'm not 100% happy with it, because it's still very poufy at the waist, though putting in the taffeta layer as 3rd from the top did help pretty significantly, I think. (It also blocked out the red, which I figured it would.) I think if I were to do it again, I would somehow develop the patience to cut 5 layers of organza as a circle skirt, and do it as a circle skirt instead. Because it doesn't spin all that great as it is now either. That said, I'm not redoing this, or at least, not any time soon. (If it really bothers me after wearing it for Halloween, I'll take it off the waistband, and drop the three or four lower layers onto a yoke before I wear it to Disney Expo or CoCo.) I already wound up having to rehem three of the organza layers once I set in on the waistband (luckily it's all a rolled hem on the serger, so that's not too terrible). I decided to only put lace on two of the underlayers, instead of the 3-4 I was originally planning on. I put it on the red layer (4th from top), and on the 6th from top white organza layer. I think that's plenty.



So anyway, now it's time to embellish the top layer. I bought a whole bunch of appliques off of ebay, and hopefully I can figure out a way to machine sew them on. Plus my ribbon arrived at the end of last week, so I can add all my velvet bows, too. I think I'll try to knock the embellishment out tomorrow, and then move on to the bodice mockup on Tues.

I thought these were cool pictures - I hung it up high to try to see what the hems of the inner layers were doing, and it looked so sculptural, so I had to take a pic. And then I took more pics as I added the lace.

I haven't been posting, but I have actually been productive! I've kept up with my motif-a-day on the Anna skirt, so I now only have four left, which is nice. I also finished my Jolly Holiday parasol. On Friday, I sewed on most of the trim around the edge of the parasol, and finished it yesterday. I also attached the trim at the center top. And I drew on the face/feathers of the bird on the handle with a fine point sharpie. I'm really happy with how it all came out! I'm thinking that when my velvet ribbon gets here, I will attach a piece of ribbon to be used as a tie to keep the parasol together when it's closed, since it doesn't quite want to stay closed as much as I would like it to. But other than that, it's done!


I've also made significant progress on my spats. I started with this rather terrible Simplicity spats pattern, and proceeded to go through three mockups before finally getting it right. The main problem was the slope of the ankle/shoe, and the fact that the original pattern hardly covered my shoe at all! It works now, though. Mine are made out of one layer of canvas and one layer of matte satin. I sewed the outside edges right sides together, turned, then serged the rest of the sides as if I was flatlining, then sewed the three pieces together. I'm currently working on binding - one is done, but I have to cut out more bias to bind the other one. Hopefully I'll get to it tonight, though I am already feeling pretty tired. Other than the binding, I just have buttons and buttonholes, and the elastic under the foot, and they will be finished.

This just shows how different my final mockup was from the original pattern! The second picture is the spat, minus binding/buttons/etc

I finished the cuffs on the villains dress, and sewed on all my buttons, so it's nearly finished. Hopefully I'll have plenty of time to set the zipper in tomorrow. I'm also a little worried that it's too long - I tried it on today for the first time, albeit without a petticoat, and the skirt seemed a good 1-2" longer than ideal. I'm thinking the petticoat will balance at least some of that out, but I guess we'll see once it's finished. It's also still kind of baggy looking in the back, but I guess I just have to get used to that with a dolman sleeve bodice. I do think the black cuffs, collar, and belt do a pretty decent job of balancing out all that bold print, though, so at least that's a plus!