Diary of a Costumer

Well, we didn't win the Disney Trivia night, but we had a lot of fun, and I did win the costume contest! Surprisingly enough, I think it's the first time I've ever actually won a costume contest, so that was nice. I'm also debating about switching out my 1912 dinner dress in my CoCo lineup for Rapunzel, instead. The real issue is transporting that wig when I already have so many other costumes to pack!

Here's a bad pic from the event:


Oh, and I did no sewing today. I better get on that tomorrow! 

My etsy shop is live! Okay, granted, there's not much there yet, but I'll be adding more soon. Right now, it's just my Rapunzel and Anna embroideries, but I'm planning to add kids Disney-inspired playsuits soon, too. I'm also thinking of selling some of the vintage hats I never use, too, and maybe even some old costumes that I no longer wear or fit in, but that probably won't happen right away.

Anyway, here is a link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LadyRebeccaFashions

I finished all the quilting on Flynn, tacked down the back flange in a few places, and added the armseye flanges. Then I antiqued the studs for around the armseye with black nail polish, and studded the doublet. So finally, on to the clasps.

I thought those clasps were going to be the death of me. They were by far the most difficult part of the entire project, and took probably 6-7 hours to complete. My bf found pinchy clasps and buckles at the store, and then he worked on taking them apart and totally changing the makeup of the buckles. I wish I had a before/after picture of them, but he basically took some sort of metal grinder, and ground off the back piece to make them just into hooks. He also took the middle part out of the buckles. Then I had to make little strips to hold the end of the buckle to another fabric backing piece, much of which had to be done by hand, because the tubes wound up being too narrow, yet too thick to turn with my tube turners. On the other side, I had to make enclosures for the hooks to that all that would be seen was the rounded end of the hook. So in each piece, I made an eyelet, sewed up the sides, inserted the hook through the eyelet and stitched the hook to the enclosure, and then closed it up. Then of course, all these pieces had to be sewn to the doublet.

Naturally, while sewing all the pieces to the doublet the morning of my party, I ran out of thread. Luckily, my bf was with me and ran out to go buy some, so I was able to finish without too much stress.

I also sewed three snaps on the shoulder of my Rapunzel bodice and on my wig, which was a huge help. It really lightened the load. I'm a little worried about how hot it's supposed to be at Disney on Halloween, but at least my neck won't get tired!

I wasn't entirely pleased with how the bodice wound up looking on me, but I don't think I'm going to stress about making any changes before we leave on Thursday. For one thing, I don't think that either a) there was enough boning or b) that it was strong enough. In particular, since I only boned on the seams (though there are a lot of those), there's a place on the front where I really feel it could use more support. In addition, I didn't give the bodice enough flare at the hips, so it really wants to ride up as I'm wearing it. I had to keep pulling it down throughout the night.

But here's what you really care about - pictures!

The lovely Flynn Rider, sans belts (we're working on figuring those out before Thurs)


You can really tell where the bodice needs the boning in this first picture - it's almost like it's gapping weirdly over the waistband of my skirt. Any suggestions that I could do easily in the next two e




We will definitely need to take more/better pictures. We took a few really quickly before the party, but it started raining, and it turned out that almost every single one my bf took of me were blurry. Silly phone camera. 

I worked on the Rapunzel sleeves for a few hours last night, but unfortunately didn't finish them. The ribbon stripes are on, the pouf is attached to the mesh lower sleeve, and the embroidered ribbon band under the pouf is on. All I have left at this point is adding the lace on the hem and setting the sleeves into the bodice. I think they're actually way to huge and poufy at the top right now, though, so I have a feeling I'm going to cut the length of the top of the pouf down by at least 1-2". I want to try on the bodice first to make sure, though.

I'm going to a Harry Potter trivia night tonight, though, so I doubt I will have any sewing time. But tomorrow, these sleeves and Rapunzel should be completely finished! And then it's on to Flynn. 

So, I may not have sewed much this weekend, but I did style my Rapunzel wig! It started with this wig, which I got on ebay. It was basically a blonde wig (of a nice quality and color) that was braided into one large braid. However, it lacked all the detail that Rapunzel has on her head. So I unbraided the wig, and wound up using nearly two packs of a jumbo #24 kanekalon braid, and about 1.5 packs of a silky #613 braid. (Of course, I bought a ton extra, so now I have three unused #24 blonde braids, if anyone is interested in purchasing them off me!) I wound up having to go to three different hair stores to find them. Thank goodness we were down in the Federal Way area anyway on Saturday! Neither braid color was an exact match, but by mixing them all together, I think it works okay.

The first thing I did was straighten the two kanekalon braids, since they have that weird frizzy kinkiness in them. I was really pleased to see that it easily straightened out with my flat iron on its lowest 300 degree heat setting.

I attempted to make a weft of the #613 to tuck up into a french braid on the right side of the wig. Most of it wound up falling out, though. Note to self (or others) - do not attempt to french braid an app 50" wig. You will probably get very tangled and very frustrated (like I did). Although it looks rather messy, I decided to keep the french braid in (I'm sure it would have been just as bad to attempt to undo it) and do a regular braid on the other side.

First, though, I had to do the bang swoop. I was hoping to get it to stand up a bit more than it did, but I think it gives the right overall effect. Unfortunately, I wasn't really thinking about the swoop when I ordered the wig, because this wig has a fixed center part, and only has a skin top underneath the part section. Luckily, I was able to pull some hair over from the other side and make it work. I hairsprayed the top and the underneath side, and then blow-dryed it on high heat, but low air until it dried, keeping my fingers underneath to keep the shape. I think I did that about 4 or 5 times until it got the shape I was liking. I pinned the bottom into place underneath the layers of hair I was going to be using for braiding.

For the braid on the other side, I took half of one of the #24s, separated it into three pieces, and braided it into the wig, attempting to blend the colors as I went. It made a nice big puffy braid which is quite pretty, and I pulled a couple pieces from the rest of the wig to help it curve around the back of the neck to the other side.

Then I basically tied those two braids into a loose knot, and used a claw clip to fix it in place. There are three claw clips total in the wig. I was hoping to be able to use bobby pins, but the hair is too thick and heavy, so it just pops the bobby pins right back out. Anyone have any suggestions? Otherwise I'm just going to hide the claw clips with flowers.

I did do another small french braid alongside the first french braid, but I only picked up three or four pieces into it before it met up with the other braids. The wig came with two tiny braids already done at the base of the neck, and I added two more, which I looped around the larger braids, and then incorporated into the big braid. Once the two larger braids met, I braided them together, weaving them back around to the other side of the head. I found, in braiding the larger braids, that it was very helpful to section off each piece of the braid with small plastic hair ties, to combat the wig's urge to tangle.

Once I got to the other side, I added in my other #24 braid and my #613 braid, holding them each by the end (instead of folded at the middle like they normally come). I ponytailed each one separately, and then rubberbanded them again to about half of the wig hair that was hanging down. I separated them all into three pieces, so that each piece was equal parts wig, #24, and #613 in an attempt to blend the colors. I also tried to make sure that the tiny braids were fairly evenly distributed. Then I started the big braid. It was very difficult to do because it was so long! I braided until I got to the end of the wig hair (which was quite a bit shorter, at this point) and then rubberbanded. One of the other alligator clips is also holding the top ends of these two incorporated pieces into place.

I didn't do pin curls when I tried it on yesterday, but I will definitely be doing them when I wear it for real. I'm going to try wearing it all day on the day of my Halloween party, so that I will hopefully be able to tell if I can manage the weight when we go to Disney World. At this point, I still need to add all the flowers, and I'm also going to try to rig some sort of snap set up to attach the top of the long braid to my shoulder so that it is not so heavy.

And if you made it through all that, here's a few pictures!

Thanks for your advice yesterday! I have decided to make a facing, and I'm also changing the lacing to CF. I found a few more examples of it, and although it doesn't seem anywhere near as common as back lacing, I know it will save me a lot of trouble when I'm in the convention center bathroom trying to put my bodice on!

At this point, I have cut out all the interlining and outer pieces, serged them all together, and sewed together three of the pieces. Tonight I plan to have them all put together, and I'm hoping that I might have some of the right sizes of boning already in my stash. Since it's unlikely, I'm sure I will be picking up some boning tomorrow.

I have to figure out what I want to do as embellishment. I don't think I have much/enough green left to make bias binding or piping, which is too bad, since that is what I would like to do, so I might have to buy more. And while I have a nice cream gathered lace in my stash that I could put around the neckline, part of me is feeling like I should go buy more fringe and use that, since it would carry the fringe up from the skirts. (Would it be weird to layer lace and fringe?) I have a really wide lace I can use for the sleeves, though I need to tea dye it first. I could probably manage that tonight as well. And I think I'm going to lace it up with ribbon, since it's front lacing, so I'll have to check the stash for that.

I also did cut out the satin for the Rapunzel sleeves yesterday, too, and serged it to the organdy interlining. I figured I ought to finish off the last of the pink serging I needed to do before I changed the serger to white. 

On Saturday, we had a small farewell 18th picnic for theladysarah at Discovery Park, near my house. Although it said it was supposedly 80 degrees, we found a lovely shady spot, and there was a constant cool breeze coming off the Sound, so it felt pretty perfect. She baked delicious bread and apple dumplings, and we also had chicken, fruit, macarons, and lots of pink lemonade. Naturally, we went all out and dragged table, chairs, china, and crystal into the park, and everything looked absolutely scrumptious! That said, the next time we do an event here, I need a wagon. You have to park so far away from the meadow!

Here are a few pictures.






I also worked a bit more on Rapunzel this weekend. At this point, the bodice just needs sleeves and to have the "blouse" front panel sewn in, and the skirt just needs to have the lace put on the last 2/5th of the hem. I wound up redoing a lot of the lace on the bodice, because I realized that A) Rapunzel has pink lace at the bottom of the bodice, not white, and B), on the back of Rapunzel's bodice, the lace is faux-chemise trim, not bodice trim. So I did a fair bit of ripping out, but luckily the bulk of it was larger whip stitches, so it wasn't that terrible to redo. The skirt will be finished tonight, and I may also be able to start on the sleeves. 

Okay, not quite, but I did take the decorations out of the storage closet today. All I've put up so far is a little wooden "Boo" hanger, a beanie ghost on top of my TV, and Frank, my vampire on a stake. Of course, the dirt areas around my patio are so shallow that despite the fact I had made a little dirt pile to shove Frank's bamboo pole into, he has already fallen over. So I'll have to find a more secure spot for him. I may put my orange lights up tonight - we'll see how I feel when I get home. The main thing that's preventing me from doing the rest of the decorations is that there are several natural decorations spread around the yard, including a very meancing looking one who has spread his web from my front porch to the bushes. The only reason I haven't knocked him down so far is that he's not blocking any pathways. Spiders that block pathways get killed.

And now for more Rapunzel:
I got all the pink ribbon trim onto the hem of the skirt, and I have pressed/pinned half of the hem into place. I had forgotten what a pain it was to do a curved hem on poly satin. There's definitely a lot of wrinkles around the embroidery as well. *Sigh* I seriously don't know why I did this project with this fabric, except of course that I already had the fabric, and her skirt is satin in the parks. Stupid princesses. It was so nice doing the embroidery for Anna because she doesn't wear satin! Someone needs to remind me of this before I find myself working on another princess.

I also got about 2/3 of the lace sewn on around the neckline of the bodice. It went quite quickly, once I actually sat down to do it! I think I should be able to finish the lace on the bodice, and finish pinning the skirt hem tonight. I might even have time to sew the skirt hem, which would be nice.

Here's a pic of the skirt half with the hem pinned and the ribbon sewn on:

I don't know what I was thinking before, when I thought I only had two embroidery motifs left to do. Apparently I'm blind and/or crazy. Somehow, I must have gotten it into my head that it was a three panel skirt, which it most definitely is not. So the good thing is, my embroideries are not going to overlap. The not so good thing is that I still have three motifs (plus probably the little filler in the CB, plus probably those half motifs at the tops of the CFs) left to go. I only got one motif done last night, because my friend had a lovely spur-of-the-moment birthday party, which was much fun. So basically, there is no chance that the skirt will be coming with me to LA for hand-work.

On the plus side, I did finally decide on my boning for the bodice. I'm going with flat steels everywhere except under the arm, where I'm using the spirals. I sewed off the ends of the boning channels (breaking two needles in the process, of course), and machine-sewed the piping to the bottom of the bodice. If I have time tonight, I'd like to make the "faux blouse" section that goes in the top of the back, because sewing that in is more hand-sewing. That way I'll have one side of piping, two sides of lace, and the filler to be able to work on during the trip.


No pictures today, sorry. Though can anyone else tell me if they can see the picture from yesterday? Apparently it was visible, and as of last night, it wasn't. Clearly I'm going to have to figure out a different photo host than google. 

I got three more motifs done last night! I also managed to whip down most of the piping around the neckline. And I went to Joanns and bought stabilizer, more bobbin thread, and the ribbon trim for the skirt and sleeves. Now I just need to worry about running out of the pink embroidery thread! And unfortunately, the only store that carries it closes by 6pm, which is before I get home. And I will be in LA this weekend, so I can't go shopping then either. Fingers crossed for me, please!

Here's a pic of the skirt. Both of the fronts are basically done, though I might see about chopping one motif in half and putting it at the top. I have one motif on the hem so far.