Y'all remember that wedding dress I made for Armida? The one that took lots of weeks of my time and that I've been promising pictures of from today's wedding?

Wonderful Husband just got an e-mail from Armida saying that last night the dog broke out of his crate and savaged the dress.

Now while I'm sorry that a nice piece of clothing that I put a good deal of effort into has been destroyed right before its intended use, I can't even imagine what Armida is feeling right now....

So this is the explanation of why I won't have any pictures of the wedding dress for y'all.

Still aching in all the "gardener's butt" places, but feeling remarkably good. Why, you ask? Because the wedding dress is done. I'm stitching together a dry-cleaners sample (for any dry-cleaners Armida needs to take it to to practice their chemicals on first to make sure the dress won't melt) and tonight I'm ironing the dress, and tomorrow Wonderful Husband is delivering it to her along with leftover fabric and a spool of ribbon for lacing. But it's done, it's done, it's done, with nearly two weeks until the wedding~!

The Summoner dress is largely constructed. To do on that:

cut out a mockup of a sleeve and make sure it'll work
cut out, trim, and sew on the actual sleeves
lacing holes for the back
a placket to go behind the lacing
hem the dress
make and sew on red trim lines for the front (match to the sleeves?)
make and sew on cross-lacing trim (match to sleeve/cloak trim)

Then I get to make the cloak and the headdress! ^_^

So I woke up this morning, somewhat later than usual (which I attribute to going to bed somewhat later than usual) and started to go about my day, only to discover I ached in places I don't usually ache unless I've been gardening or cutting out fabric on the floor. It is a testament to my fuzzy state of mind that it took until I was ironing seams flat on the Summoner dress before I realized that the reason I was aching was because, yes, I did cut out the Summoner dress yesterday.... I am not the swiftest on the uptake most days.

In any case, having reached a point of impasse yesterday, having to wait for the glue on the boning tips to dry before I could proceed with the wedding dress, I started in on my AX costume. For reference, AX is on Friday. We'll see if I can make it, especially since, having now finished said skirt seams, I'm back to the wedding dress.

finish sleeve edging
shorten sleeves 4"
attach sleeve edging
tack bodice overlayer to bodice underlayer
sew sleeve elastics in place
bone bodice center back
refinish skirt center back openings
set in lacing grommets
sew ribbon to top of lacing at center backs
hem skirt
hem skirt lining
spray out remaining blue construction marks
get garment dry-cleaned
deliver

Bleeding on the wedding dress has finally occurred. Got my thumb with the needle while slip-stitching in the bodice lining, and it got on the lining. Luckily it's just the lining, yes? Dabbed saliva on it to keep it from setting, and it will hopefully come out when it's dry-cleaned. In any case, I'm superstitious enough that to me this means the dress will come out well and she'll be happy with it. Did a few fixes to the waist seam as well, topstitched the bodice underlayer (will pin and stitch the overlayer to it later, after I see it on her), and sewed the sleeve elastics in. Have pinned on the lacing strips, and the dress is currently back on my dressform, waiting for Armida to arrive and look at it before trying it on. Working with one of the edging cutouts for the sleeve cuffs while waiting for her... think I can make it work after all. Hopefully.

The house smells like the sabzi that's in the crockpot, and I have to reflect that I am probably a slightly odd person in that running out of things makes me happy. I've finished out two spools of thread on this dress thus far, and I finished out three different spices and the remaining ginger on making the sabzi this morning....

All the skirt seams are now finished. Somehow, miraculously, I haven't actually bled on the dress yet. My index and middle fingertip on my right hand, though, are looking rather ragged and worse for wear. I know, I know... I should use a thimble. But for this I need to be able to feel the needle coming through the fabric. One more night of sewing and then she's coming over on Thursday for a fitting... good job I was never intending to have the grommets in the dress by then. Going to pin lacing strips on instead in case things need to be moved.

Watched some anime tonight, partially while sewing, partially during dinner, for the first time in a long time. Watched episodes 0-2 of Emma second season. They've added an extra character and some extra elements to the storyline, but thus far it's working okay for me in comparison to the manga. They've animated her ball dress in the opening, though they've gone for a paler color than I'd hoped. Ah well, it's still very pretty....

I also got my Costume College limited classes registration back today! I got all four I'd wanted... one on lady's dancing slippers, one on masquerade masks, one on silk ribbon embroidery, and one on crocheted wristlet gloves! Huzzah~!

But for now, it once again being Past My Bedtime, I'm calling it a night. Oyasumi nasai, all~!

Did not get much done tonight. Still, at Wonderful Husband's urging, I sewed the bodice fashion fabric to the bodice lining and discovered two of the bones I cut were too long. Have cut replacements and dipped them in tipping fluid, will glue on the tips in the morning. Sewed one of the skirt side seam finishes, again by hand. Have to report that heavy satin doesn't seem overfond of being seam finished by hand... but I managed. Skirt pinned back on mannequin, inside out tonight so I don't have to flip it when I do more seam finishing tomorrow. For now I go to bed....

Lining fabric completely ironed. All pieces cut out.

Interlining fabric ironed. All pieces cut out.

Bitchy fashion fabric #1 ironed.

Have to cut pieces out of fashion fabric #1, iron fashion fabric #2, and cut pieces out of that. Hate this, but at least I know cutting is the worst part of the process... for now.

[Update One, 6:57pm]: All pieces of fashion fabric #1 cut. Dinner is in the oven, so this is my break point. I should probably figure out the changes to the pieces for fashion fabric #2 and cut them out after dinner, except that's beaded silk chiffon, which tends to fray a bit... ah well, I'm planning on sewing it all up tomorrow anyway, right?

[Update Two, 10:29pm]: Bodice lining all pinned together. Individual bodice fashion fabric pieces pinned to their interlining counterparts. The sewing machine is right over there, but I've hit the stage of tired where I can't think to talk straight, let alone trust myself to operate heavy machinery which has sharp pointy things stabbitying into fabric and potentially my fingers....

Well, this weekend has been... semi-productive. Probably would have been more so if I hadn't been pretty much dead to doing anything yesterday.

I'd cut out a Civil War chemise on Tuesday and I finished it today (Simplicity 7215), experimenting along the way with Guterman's 100% cotton thread. Nice stuff, if very fine. I used some lace I had (probably polyester, but at least not egregiously shiny) and an old card of celery-colored silk ribbon for trimming. It's currently in the dryer together with the last of the laundry. Unfortunately it looks like I took the corset pieces from the same pattern and cut them out of something, which means they're probably buried in the WIP pile on the futon. I also tightened the bolts on the fourth stair up today, which tends to come loose and rock every now and again; Wonderful Husband knocked off a rather goodly chunk of the shopping list (braving CostCo on the weekend in the process); and together we got the house cleaned up to near pre-Fanime levels of tidiness. I still need to run the vacuum over the floors before I go to bed, but otherwise I'm satisfied with the weekend's doings. Tomorrow (now that the table is clear) I lay out the fabric for Armida's wedding dress and start in on that.

I've also been poking this weekend at Afterwards 14.5. A word to the wise: sometimes when you tell your characters "Just give me the final chapter already and I'll go back and write you smut!" they take you up on it. I have no problem with writing smut: it's fun, and sometimes it can be very revealing of the characters. In more ways than one. ^^;; I'm slowly discovering that what goes on inside Godai's head during sex is very slightly different from what goes on in most characters' heads during sex. His mental place is an interesting visit....

Somewhat relatedly, my only purchases at Fanime were in the Artists' Alley. I picked up prints from two different booths, some of which I purchased specifically because they cast me in the mind of The Novel. I don't have them pinned on the wall by my desk yet, but they seem to be working because I've already realized that something that I thought was a throw-away line is in fact Incredibly Significant and it's all pieces of a puzzle starting to come together....

Having not been able to get our sewing night in earlier this week, I rang up Liz earlier today and we decided to make tonight our sewing night. So I cut out two aprons that I've been wanting to sew (one to match the new curtains, the other out of some awesome holiday fabric I bought for the purpose years ago... what's not to like about red and green jalepeno peppers with "Feliz Navidad" written between them in gold?) and made decent progress on the first one. But now it has hit just past ten o'clock and I am crashing hard... do not know why. Will give in to instincts and go to bed, as tomorrow is a crawl through the Fabric District with Armida to get fabric for her wedding dress. And I am intending to be good and not get anything for myself....