sewing and procrastibaking
On top of doing a fair amount of sewing today, we discovered that the fridge/freezer were a little warm because they had stopped cooling. So they have been effectively 'off' since at least yesterday some time, possibly longer. Erp! My friend came over to do crafty things with me today, and she wanted to make the Shepherd's Pie from her "Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook", so in addition to making that we also attempted to use up some stuff from the freezer and fridge. More got thrown out than used up, mainly because it had been defrosting for who-knows-how-long, but we stir fried some mixed veg, did turkey cutlets in white wine and mustard sauce, made a pumpkin pie (to use up piecrust and eggs) and brownies (to use up the other egg). Lunch was the last of frozen seasoned chicken breasts and frozen peas, and couscous from the cupboard. When we went out to get the ingredients for the shepherd's pie we grabbed a 10lb bag of ice, but it started melting in the freezer so fast we got another 16lb bag! Hopefully that keeps the freezer fridge-level-cool.
In between Cooking All The Things and Procrastibaking, I did manage to actually get significant chunks of stuff done. The pleated band on the skirt had been worrying me, but after putting eleventy billion pins in it I got it sewed down along both lines with little trouble (though I first pinned it flat along the top, then realized that the measurement I took to make the band was at the hem, so of course the top edge had to be scrunched a little bit to fit! Cue lots of repinning, eurgh. But that's on, and I hemmed the sleeves and put them in, and made pleaty bands for them and sewed them on as well. I decided (after carefully finding cream fringe online) that I wanted it to be white, so I cut a scrap off and let it soak in bleach solution to see if it would bleach nicely. It turned a lovely off-white shade, so as long as I can find neckruffle lace of a similar color, I'm going to bleach my fringe.
While I was working on sleeve ruffles my friend had fun tipping the bones I cut this morning with heat-shrink tubing. That stuff is fun, yo! So I need to put a few more boning channels on the corset, but at least the bones are aaaaaaall set. I still have to get grommets for the back, but assuming I settle for the cheapo craft store kind they'll go in very quickly, so I'm not worried about that.
Left on the dress:
tack down the facing
attach neck ruffle
bleach and attach fringe
put on buttons
buttonholes/hooks and eyes under buttons
pleat up sides at the back
lace or self-fabric stripe across sleeve ruffles
parasol pocket (last!)
green ribbons a few places on skirt of dress
Left on the corset:
boning channels
put in bones
bind edges
grommets
lace on top (last!)
I hope to do some facing-tacking tonight, so that at least that's out of the way and I can pull out all those poky pins. They made trying it on to test the sleeves very precarious!
In between Cooking All The Things and Procrastibaking, I did manage to actually get significant chunks of stuff done. The pleated band on the skirt had been worrying me, but after putting eleventy billion pins in it I got it sewed down along both lines with little trouble (though I first pinned it flat along the top, then realized that the measurement I took to make the band was at the hem, so of course the top edge had to be scrunched a little bit to fit! Cue lots of repinning, eurgh. But that's on, and I hemmed the sleeves and put them in, and made pleaty bands for them and sewed them on as well. I decided (after carefully finding cream fringe online) that I wanted it to be white, so I cut a scrap off and let it soak in bleach solution to see if it would bleach nicely. It turned a lovely off-white shade, so as long as I can find neckruffle lace of a similar color, I'm going to bleach my fringe.
While I was working on sleeve ruffles my friend had fun tipping the bones I cut this morning with heat-shrink tubing. That stuff is fun, yo! So I need to put a few more boning channels on the corset, but at least the bones are aaaaaaall set. I still have to get grommets for the back, but assuming I settle for the cheapo craft store kind they'll go in very quickly, so I'm not worried about that.
Left on the dress:
tack down the facing
attach neck ruffle
bleach and attach fringe
put on buttons
buttonholes/hooks and eyes under buttons
pleat up sides at the back
lace or self-fabric stripe across sleeve ruffles
parasol pocket (last!)
green ribbons a few places on skirt of dress
Left on the corset:
boning channels
put in bones
bind edges
grommets
lace on top (last!)
I hope to do some facing-tacking tonight, so that at least that's out of the way and I can pull out all those poky pins. They made trying it on to test the sleeves very precarious!