sakon76 | Entries tagged with charlotte costume

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

To Do:

~~--bow~~
--sleeves
--collar
--dye gloves
--dye fan
--type up documentation and get photos/screencaps printed for Lottie and Mulan

Wonderful Husband was all sorts of dye-y for me tonight. Whether or not the fan will end up working, though, we shall see. Depends on what the feathers look like once they're dried. But if it doesn't work, it's only an accessory.

To Do:

--earrings
--skirt
--overskirt
--bow
--sleeves
--collar
--dye gloves
--dye fan
--type up documentation and get photos/screencaps printed for Lottie and Mulan

And, I should note, the fabric for the overskirt is as bad as the fabric for

stitchy's overskirt was. In that I was looking like a refugee from a bad teenage vampire novel last night, and so was the living room floor.

Costume, I think, shall go in the luggage inside out to attempt to keep the other clothing less glittery....

Got up, ripped three 60" widths of skirt fabric, sewed them together, pinned center front and center back to the bodice on Marjorie. Lots more pinning to do this evening.

Unfortunately it looks I'm going to have to do my own hair. None of the hair salons within reasonable distance of the hotel seem to be able to turn slightly less than waist-length hair into a beehive. *sighs, adds setting lotion, hairspray, rattail comb, and curlers to the shopping/packing list*

Wonderful Husband put on October Project this evening to listen to while he caught up with the dishes. Lovely stuff, and somehow always reminiscent to me of LotR.

I'm very happy that my RSI seems to've gone away, given how much hand-sewing I've been doing on this project. I realized I had an additional step to the ones I listed earlier, that of topstitching the bodice so it wouldn't roll. Unfortunately it's enough layers at the seam that my machine would have thrown a fit, so hand-sewing it was. And since I had to do it anyway, I dragged out beads and sequins and made each pickstitch sparkly.

As I was later listening to the music and catching down the facing on the interior, I thought about skill levels. In particular, about how once you reach a certain level of skill, it's hard to half-ass things. I'm not the world's best sewer by any means, but I am far above where I was when I started cosplaying. And even then, as

hoshikage can attest, I was horrified by certain things. (Most memorably, sashes that weren't even hemmed and were actively fraying, and ribbon trim stapled on to the costume. These were two separate groups, BTW.) And as I've gotten better, it's gotten hard to go back to the way I did things when I didn't know a better way.

Which is basically to say that the inside of this costume is very clean, and that it is late enough that my thoughts aren't coming out with any grace. 'Night, all.

Still working on Lottie's bodice. I have the interlined fashion fabric layer done, the coutil lining done, the boning channels sewn in, and the facing done. Gotta ~~pin them together and sew, trim and clip seam allowances, turn, catchstitch down the facing, apply the zipper, and insert the boning. Actually, gotta tip two pieces of the boning first.~~

Then I get to ~~lace Marjorie into the corset, put the bodice on her over that,~~ and start the next steps.

To Do:

--skirt
--overskirt
--bow
--sleeves
--collar
--dye gloves
--dye fan
--type up documentation and get photos/screencaps printed for Lottie and Mulan

And this all has to be finished by Wednesday evening.

At least I realized why the dress is such a screwy time traveller. It's a costume. She's a 1920s girl dressing up in a pre-French Revolution costume, which explains the weird drop waist/panniers combo.

I was up until nearly 1am (and had a doctor's appointment first thing this morning), but the corset and hoopskirt are done! The hoop, in fact, is ATM positioned on Marjorie the Mannequin so that I can work on draping the petticoat tonight.

Costume #1 done and handed off to its owner/wearer, for her to bling up as she chooses.

Costume #2: corset binding needs to be stitched down on the bottom. Hoopskirt mostly done; tips glued onto the hoops and drying overnight. Marjorie the Mannequin to be dragged out and gussied up in underthings tomorrow so that I may continue work, draping things on her.

Helpful: pattern instructions that include a demo of how to make bias tape.

Less Helpful: instructions to cut bias tape 1 3/4" wide and fold in 3/8" on either side. Why not just do 2" wide and fold in to meet in center?

Not Helpful: instructions to make as much bias tape as will be needed for the project, and then not saying how much bias tape is needed for the project.

*backdoors things and adds up how much boning needs to be encased*

Every few years Wonderful Husband braves the fabric district with me. I have a theory that he does so as a reminder to himself about why he only goes with me every few years....

It was 96 degrees when we got there. Parking was dire; we had to turn the keys in at the rooftop lot I favor, and let them have the car to park it. Fortunately I'd remembered to grab my huge cotton carry bag with the thick padded straps, so we just kept putting the ubiquitous black plastic bags in there as we collected them. After trawling through numerous stores and practically doing the usual circuit twice, we ended up with 21 yards of fabric for the costume, the three and a half pounds of various fabrics I found at Michael Levine Loft, a pair of white gloves, a packet of petal pink fabric dye for the gloves, a white boa fan (for which I need to acquire fuchsia dye), and a sparkly tiara.

Now to find the energy to sew....

Current Mood: dead
Current Location: Greenwood

Working on this hoopskirt at the moment.

Corset, save for hand-finishing the seam binding on the bottom, is done. It even has had a try-on. Which revealed two things:

(1) The corset will give me the illusion of having a waist. However, it requires two lengths of lacing and is open in the back about 5" across down to the waist, and 4" across below that. I am having my need to lose weight driven in, but I have no time to do so until after Costume Con.

(2) The corset will give me a smooth line down as far as I require. But the next time I make this pattern, I need significantly smaller hip gussets in the front, need to redraft the side seam entirely, and probably need to elongate the waist area by an inch or two.

Went to writing class last night, corset and boning in hand, and proceeded to stuff the boning into its channels while discussion went on. (I usually do hand sewing or embroidery during that time.) Discovered that I was four short, so those got cut and tipped last night, and I glued the tips onto the flat steel bones, so those too should be ready to get inserted tonight. Meanwhile, I pulled out my roll of white silk bias tape and finished the top edge. (Honestly, it's a little silly how much of this corset's materials I had ready and premade.)

No class next week, because of Easter. Which has me scratching my head a little because last time I checked, Easter wasn't on a Wednesday....

Tonight I need to finish the embroidery and snaps for

stitchy's costume, so that she can pick it up and take it home for beading tomorrow. I also need to finish (and try on!) my corset and do as much as possible on my hoopskirt because I need to go to the fabric district this weekend, preferably Saturday, to get material for the dress itself. And to do that I need the underpinnings in place so I can have a rough idea of how much I'll need to buy.

Am both pleased and amused that I had just enough of the cream-colored taffeta to make both

stitchy's underskirt and my hoopskirt.

And, yes, I will eventually post pics.

Corset is all sewn, except for the binding. Which can't be put on until the bones are put in, and the bones are currently drying on the patio from their tipping.

Have I mentioned Wonderful Husband is wonderful? He cut and tipped all the bones for me.

And have I mentioned Disney is a pain in the ass design-wise? I'm doing a dress for a 1920s character that has a 1860s bodice, a 1950s waistline, and a 1700s hoopskirt. *kills them all*

But I am making a promise to myself to someday revisit this corset pattern and make another one with the aim of leisurely perfection.

Stayed up until midnight wrestling with the corset. Still not done wrestling with it. More wrestling to occur tonight.

Why is it that I had no problems whatsoever with the shiny-satin-and-lame costume, but working with cottons and silk is giving me a headache?

Still haven't quite finished

stitchy's costume... mainly due to running out of the gold thread for the appliques at 10:30pm on Friday. I ended up switching gears instead and starting in on my own costume.

And no, I did not have a panicked wakeup Sunday morning, realizing that I only have two and a half weeks left to do it....

The corset is, mmm, 75% done? One side just needs the boning, the other side needs the boning channels sewn in and the boning done as well. I'm not 100% happy with it, but given that this is the first time I've made a Victorian corset, I'm pleased enough. In pulling out the pattern (Simplicity 7215) I discovered the size I wanted was missing, and I vaguely remembered having cut it out at some point in the past. So I dragged out my WIP box, dug in, and found not only the interlining all cut, but also a second copy of the pattern, one size smaller, cut out of lining fabric. So I saved a little on digging through my shelves there, and will call that two WIPs down. :)

Today on my way home I'll be stopping to get more gold thread (yay, 50% off!). Noting that Joanns also has McCalls and Vogue patterns on sale at the moment, I browsed through both of their websites. Looks like the 80s are back in style, going by McCalls. And of course going through the Vogue site I ended up with a very, very long list of patterns that appealed to me...