Diary of a Costumer

I had a last minute sewing/Halloween-ish marathon the end of last week. It was pretty crazy. For Halloween itself, I wore Jane during the day, because I was looking for something easy. (Yeah, I don't know what easy is - I just didn't want to wear a wig or ballgown). When I got home, I finished doing party prep, and then changed into Ariel (see - wig and ballgown!). We managed to take a few pics before it got dark outside and everyone from the party turned up (and the trick-or-treaters). I think I had about 15 people over, but naturally, I forgot to take any pics until after about 5 of them had left. And I had less trick-or-treaters this year -- probably only about 170 or so, so the kids who came after 8pm got to take two pieces of candy. We had one group show up at like 9:35, which was weird. 

Then I spent all of Friday working on the Queen of Hearts. I fixed/re-sewed all the seams that needed to be fixed, made sure it fit okay, re-styled my old huge 18 th c wig, and then ran out to Home Depot to try to get discount decorations (none left) and to Value Village for the same reason, plus a deck of cards to make a collar out of. There was basically no Halloween stuff left there either, but I did find an amazing deck of giant cards with red backs, and returned home to make it into a collar. It was perfect! The collar took me a little longer than I had anticipated, so I was a little late to the villains party, but my costume was very well-received, and people especially loved the collar. 

On Saturday, I went to a Disney photoshoot at Point Defiance Park. It was my first cosplay photoshoot, and I was a little nervous to talk to people I didn't know, so I only shot with three photographers, one of whom was my friend that I went with. But hopefully all the pictures come out nicely, and it was nice meeting them and the other cosplayers as well. I would love to do another Disney shoot! Then I came home, took down my outdoor decorations, and went to another Halloween party. 

On Sunday, I had a brunch date, and decided in the short time I had afterwards that I wanted to add long sleeves to my 1840s dress for the shoot that evening. I probably shouldn't have. They wound up a bit tight, and made me late. I also hadn't thought about the fact that the time change on Sunday meant that we had one hour less in the cemetery than what I wanted. Though in hind sight, I guess that was a good thing, because my phone also freaked out, decided it was full, and didn't actually save the last 30 or so pictures I took during the shoot. I'm still super pissed about that, since some of them had looked really wonderful. The cemetery itself is so cool, and I really want to go back when we have more time to explore more of the gravestones. Most of them are from the early 1900s, and we even found the grave of the founder of Tacoma! It was really neat, and we got some gorgeous sunset shots. 

Anyway, there's some pics from all of those events on instagram, but I need to go through and edit the rest of them.

In other sewing news, I have 9 fireworks left on the skirt, and have started the hem. I still have to hope that I can simply duct tape the lights into place, so I don't have to sew them in, since that's way more work. And I made some matching ears to go with my Dole Whip Disnebound. I also decided I needed to make a Harry Potter skirt for Universal. That is assembled except for zipper, waistband, and hem, which I hope to do today. I have also started on some of the alterations for the caroling group. I have nothing on my plate for tomorrow except sewing (like, I think I don't even have to leave the house!) and my weekend is fairly open, too. Which is good, since I need to finish everything and pack. I leave Tuesday for Disney World! :)

Had a little time for sewing on Tuesday, so I managed to get 6 fireworks embroidered on the skirt (I am now thinking there will be about 35 total), and while I was doing that, I also cut out the lower sleeves for Ariel, sewed them together, and attached one of them to the puffy part of the sleeve. Earlier that day, I had to wait on a rental car to be cleaned, and I had luckily brought along Rapunzel, so I was able to sew a bit more of her hem. 

I will have more sewing time tonight, so I'm hoping to embroider a whole bunch more fireworks, and ideally, finish the Ariel sleeves (which means that dress should be done). Then I can turn my attention to fixing everything that needs to be done to the Queen of Hearts. 

(There's a picture of the fireworks skirt on Instagram)

Two posts in two days? Amazing. 

Anyway, slight update to the sewing plans. I went to the thrift store on my way home yesterday, and apparently Fate/Value Village really wants me to do a Dole Whip Disneybound. Last time I was there, I found a short-sleeved yellow sweater with a pineapple on it, and yesterday, in the dress section (aka, not where it belonged), I found a yellow and white striped house dress, with what appears to be just enough fabric in the body of the dress to make into a skirt. They are not the exact shade of yellow, but so close that they still match. I washed it, and cut the yoke and sleeves off last night, and am stopping at Joanns for some waistband elastic today. I think I am going to make some ears to match, but otherwise, it's done. 

In Rapunzel news, I am now about 1.5 motifs away from finishing. Unfortunately, if I followed the pattern I've been doing with the rest of the embroideries, that half a motif would be the same one that I started with. So there's going to be a random half of pattern 2 shoved in between 4 and 1. They meet right around the side seam, so hopefully it will at least not be that obvious. Not sure I'll finish tonight, though, since I will probably only have about one hour at home before I have to leave to go usher a show. 

The BB-8 baby dress is finished and in the mail! Picture here: www.instagram.com/p/B2tH5vBAP7W/

Of course, while I was doing the embroidery, I found out that when I brought my machine in for service a couple months ago, something must have been put back a little wrong, because when I started embroidering at the 600 speed (medium), it started breaking needles repeatedly. It turned out they were hitting the needle plate! I was able to finish it at the 350 speed (slow), but that really slows down the embroidery time. I talked to the service people and they said it's still under warranty, and they can do a rush repair on it, so I'll only be without it for a week, but that's still obnoxious, since now I have a bunch of embroidery I need to do. I'm going to bring it in on Sunday, so that I can still use my machine tomorrow and Friday, when I should have a bit of sewing time, and I'll just be without it next week, when I have rehearsals and shows every day, and probably won't have time to use it anyway. 

We opened The Butler Did It, and other than having a very drama-filled tech week, both tech and the opening weekend went very smoothly. Now I'm able to get back to some of my rehearsals for Secret Garden, which is really nice. I was pretty much caught up on all the blocking for the whole show yesterday! It's a lot to learn, but I can already tell this show is going to be so good. I'm super excited!

Anyway, I have an amazingly rehearsal-free evening tomorrow, and I'm also not working on Friday, so I have the day free. I was waffling between seeing Downton Abbey and sewing, but I think sewing is going to win out. I really want to cut out and assemble the circle skirt for the fireworks skirt, so that the hem can hang out for a week before I actually hem it. If I manage all of that, I will also probably start on the sleeves for my Ariel dress, or possibly hem the Rapunzel Dapper dress, which has been hanging out for over a month now. 

I really don't feel like I made that much this year. I'm not sure if that's because I just started sewing for the first time in two months, or if it's actually true, though. So here's what I made:

1830s plaid silk dress and yellow bonnet, made for wearing in Oliver, plus the Victorian Festival and Costume College


Blue wool coat, which I basically wear every day


Burgundy and mauve striped silk bustle dress, for the Victorian Festival and Costume College


Burgundy silk Regency dress, as a pattern test for Laughing Moon


Ripaway mermaid tail and Cinderella costume (and some other bits) as costumes for Disenchanted, for which I was Costume Coordinator


1890s Plaid "ice cream parlour" shirtwaist and navy walking skirt for Costume College, but also worn in The Music Man


Yellow 1890s Gala Gown for Costume College, including choker, royal order, bracelet, and petticoat with detachable train


A white cotton Victorian-style robe, which turned out to be the most practical thing I made for Costume College


Elephant dress for my friend's new baby

1910s white cotton and lace dress, worn to Snoqualmie Railroad Days


3 skirts and 3 playdresses through my etsy shop

Dapper Merida for Dapper Day; Also worn in White Christmas and to Christmas tea


Disney-print 1950s jumper dress


Princess Anna Frozen Fever


A bodice and skirt combo for the Silverbells Carolers, plus a few alterations for them

A "Totes Ma Goats" totebag as a secret Santa project


A skirt for my mom

A Marauders Map Fleece Blanket for my dad

The beginnings of an 1883 walking skirt (not finished, though I started cutting out a bodice mockup yesterday)


I guess that's a decent amount of stuff after all. But if I'm going to be on track for CoCo this year, I can't just take a two month break from sewing again!

I finished everything for Anna in time (and with some to spare!). Thursday night, I brought the bodice with me to rehearsal and finished stitching down all the binding. Friday, I finished the blouse, and brought the hooks and eyes at the neck to do backstage at the show. Saturday, I brought the skirt with me to the show, and had assistance picking off all the stabilizer from the back, plus I did the hooks and eyes at the waist. I wore it on Sunday to our cast party, since we decided we would all wear our Halloween costumes. 

Here's some pictures!



Overnight Sunday, I came down with a hugely swollen sore throat, so I decided to stay home from work on Monday. I was originally thinking I would rest a bit and then try to run errands, clean the house, prep food for my Halloween party, and sew. My body had other ideas, and instead gave me aches, sensitive skin, chills, and extreme exhaustion. I made it off the couch long enough to run to the grocery store and go to rehearsal, since I had already missed so many dance rehearsals and didn't want to miss any more. 

The aches and chills and such subsided by Monday night, but the sore throat remained and was joined by congestion, so I decided to stay home Tuesday and sleep a bit more as well. But I'm really not that good at resting, so after getting a couple extra hours of sleep, I cleaned the house, made food for my party (don't worry, I washed my hands a ton!), did laundry, and started packing for Disney. And went to rehearsal. Unfortunately, the sewing did not happen, so that means no new blouse for Disney on Friday, since I'm out of time at this point. Also no tam for Merida, though I think I will take bit of the plaid and make a hat decoration for a basic brown vintage hat I have. 

I'm at work today, but still with a very sore throat, congestion, and almost no voice, so I had to cancel the gig I was supposed to do today. I am dressed up in my Anna costume, though! And I took a bit of time out this morning and went to the doctor to see if it was strep throat. It's not, just a viral infection, so there's nothing I can do but hope that it goes away by the time I get to Disneyland on Friday! I'm having a Halloween party tonight, so after work, I'll be frosting cupcakes, and doing a little bit of last minute set-up. I also plan to serge the edges of some of the leftover Anna vest fabric to make a scarf for the Anna bound (wearing the vest at the park I think pushes it into costume-land). I also need to do most of the rest of my packing tonight, since I'll have almost no time to do it tomorrow with work and rehearsal. Then I head to the airport at 5:30am on Friday! 

Considering this was my last "free" (aka, not 100% busy) weekend, I definitely did not get enough sewing done!

The Anna vest is completely done. I completed the "in-between" embroideries (connecting that yellow swirly line on the sides of the vest and around the back of the neck), cut out the lining, assembled everything, and bound all the edges yesterday. 



I also fixed all my Anna bodice mockup issues, but when I went to cut it out on Saturday, I realized that a) I didn't have enough of the preferable fabric left over from the 2016 bodice, and b) the backup corduroy fabric I bought was stretch corduroy. So yesterday I ran out to the big Joanns, returned the corduroy, and found more of the original fabric (it's a faux-suede from the Home Dec dept, which is why I hadn't been able to find it at the smaller Joanns). Last night, I cut out the bodice front piece and completed the embroidery, but I still have to cut out the rest of the bodice and the lining. Assembly should hopefully be relatively easy, but I probably won't have time to do that till Friday because it's tech week. 

I also bought some of that new cotton sateen (or whatever they're calling it) that Joanns recently started stocking, and I might completely rebuild the skirt. The reason I've been holding off on the embroidery is that I'm still not in love with the length I had to cut it to, and when I found out that I didn't make the original a circle skirt because it was too big around for the embroidery, that gave me a lot of pause, too! I'm hoping that I can figure out the embroidery math on Friday, and rebuild the skirt if necessary, using this new fabric. I'm swiftly running out of time to do the actual embroidery - it takes about 32 hours, all of my weekends are booked with Music Man performances, I'm working at least 1-2 of the three Fridays between now and Halloween, and because I am jumping right into my next show, I think I only have two weekday evenings free between now and Halloween. Also, now that I did the actual math on that, I might be screaming inside right now... Not sure how I'm going to get this done. Plus the Anna shirt and a blouse for the jumper. 

By the way, I did wear the Disney jumper on Thursday. I got lots of complements, but didn't take very good pictures of it. I might add a bone in the right side seam, since that one seemed to want to slip a bit. The left was fine, probably because the zipper provided enough structure. 

I had a really productive weekend! Thursday evening, I cut out all my Disney print pieces for the jumper, but then realized I wanted to flatline it with taffeta. Friday started off pretty disappointing, since I spent a good amount of time trying to find my Brother PE-Design install disk to no avail (it must be hanging out with my missing Sims disk). I haven't used my embroidery software since I bought my new computer last fall, and I needed to change some of the digitizing I had done to the Anna vest two years ago, since I am a different size than the person I made it for last time. In the end, I wound up having to use my old computer, whose built-in mouse has decided to stop working. And of course, after all that, the digitizing print-out does not actually print at the scale of the actual embroidery, so I may not have needed to do all of that anyway. I also bought the taffeta for lining the Disney print jumper.

Saturday, I decided to work on two projects at once. I had the embroidery going for the Anna vest, starting with the CB and working outwards from there, and while that was embroidering, I cut out all the taffeta pieces for my jumper and flat-lined and assembled all the skirt pieces. By the end of the day, the skirt was fully assembled (minus the straps, hem, and sewing down the binding at the waist), and all five hoopings of the vest embroidery were complete. 



Sunday, I finished the straps and waist binding of the jumper and pressed and pinned the hem. I also patterned and mocked up the Anna bodice, but there's a whole bunch of alterations I will need to make before I can get that right. The main issue I'm facing right now is trying to get the bodice neckline not to gap above the bust point without having a CF seam, because there will be embroidery over the bust on the CF. I also managed to mow the front and back lawns, get probably about 60% of my outdoor Halloween decorations up, buy more embroidery thread (I was amazed I had enough of the ice blue to finish the vest embroidery), return shoes, go to rehearsal, return books to the library, get gas, and go to Walmart. 

Anyway, today I am hoping to complete the hem on the Disney jumper and add a hook & eye at the waist, though I also want to go to the gym after work, and I have rehearsal tonight, so I'm not sure what all will actually get done. The other next steps will be to cut out the lining for the vest, assemble it, and bind the edges, and to work on the bodice mockup more so that I can start the embroidery on that. And then start on the blouse to wear with the Disney jumper, though I can work on that while doing embroidery. 

As usual, I've fallen behind in my estimated progress. But at least this time, it's for a pretty good reason!

My roommate and I adopted a kitten on Friday, so most of my weekend home time was spent with her. Her name is Nymphadora Tonks (Dora for short), and she is a bundle of energy. Casper, my roommate's 3-yr old male cat, took to her almost immediately, and I think he really enjoys his cat uncle role. Lion is not so sure about her. I think he's quite jealous, and also that her tinyness and energy scare him a little. Half the time, he's fine around her, but at other times, he growls when she comes near. Hopefully he'll settle down soon. 






Anyway, I did manage to do some sewing yesterday. I had to clean the whole sewing room first, though, and make sure there were no pins on the floor. Casper and Lion are smart enough not to eat a pin, but I don't trust Nymphadora with them. After I cleaned, I finished the cuffs on Merida - I got too tired the other night, and figured it was better to leave them till when I was more alert. Then I was going to cut out the bias strips for Anna's skirt hem, until I realized there were weird streaks and spots all over the fabric! I will hopefully be able to exchange it after work, but that means I have to wash the new piece, so that might not happen tonight. Instead, I switched to Merida's hem, which wound up being an absolute pain to mark and pin. I did finally manage it, but by that time I ran out of the time to actually sew it. So now that's on today's to-do list, along with possibly cutting out the Disney print jumper. Otherwise, Merida is done, though I may make a tam to wear out of the plaid fabric. 

I didn't think I'd get any sewing done yesterday because we went to trivia, but I managed to squeak in a tiny bit afterwards. I set in the zipper on the Anna skirt, and completed the waistband. I was nervous about the zipper, because I've never done a zipper and pocket on the same seam before, but it actually set perfectly the first time, so I'm pleased with that. I hope the Merida zipper/pocket situation will go as easily. 

Tonight, I plan to dip dye the Anna skirt, and *hopefully* finish the sleeves on Merida. I have the evening free tonight, so I just need to keep focused and stay on track, and finish everything!