100 Things: First Thing! An Unseen Monster of Purple and Pink Shininess
Was a sewn Thing. Because I only finally cleared off my beading/work desk this weekend, and jebus there's a lot of fabric in the house and its getting on my nerves. Also, this is for NYCC, and this is the last free weekend I'll have to work on big costuming before con. Hopefully I can knock out some smaller polymer clay stuff for other ppl before that, tho.
After some nasty shade about my Steampunk Delenn 1.0 costume at DCon in 2013, I realized a) many self-appointed Steampunk experts are douchebags, b) I really hate wearing corsets. So having made a Regency coat (out of leftover tableclothes from my vending days) for a friend's wedding last year, I decided that worked in the Delenn pink/purple color scheme enough to make that my 2.0. Regency women did wear corsets, but it's easier to cheat and pull off the look without one. W00t.
I just needed an underdress to match, and from the QOTCP wedding costume I used the same underdress pattern but with new fabrics, b/c Delenn doesn't wear leopard print. (Yet? They might be rebooting :-P) Obviously a modern cut, but it fits nicely under the purple coat and matches the lines.
Ironically, I had more old table-trimmings in my stash that would work for making the new underdress. At first I was just going to use this shiny pink foil fabric, of unknown fiber/foil content:
But ... its just too pink. I really dislike wearing tons of pink. But I had still more tablecloth bolts, including this purple ... georgette? Is that what this is? Its a meshy material, most likely synthetic. Luckily, historical accuracy is not an issue here ;-) And the two fabrics looked good together, which is why I got them for tablecloths in the first place.
The teal swatch is for maybe doing Delenn 2.5 as a teal coat with this dress for Arisia, but I have too much sewing to do already. Yeesh. Its a cheap reorderable taffeta (luckily) at one of my usual shops, so I'll revisit this idea when I finish my 30 sewing projects. So maybe for DCon? I do really like the coat pattern.
Putting it together was as annoying as I expected. The pink foil frayed, but only in one direction, and the meshy purple was hard to cut out in the very simple series of rectangles that made up most of the pattern. And then there were lots of mis-sews that had to be picked out and redone cuz I'm a spaz. I got a fusible tape for the seams, to try and keep the fabric together long term, but that didn't work out. At least not so far, I have more idears. I put the invisible zipper in backwards and gave up on fixing it. I really hate sewing with invisible zippers, actually. Regular zips are far more straightforward to attach.
Doesn't look so bad from this distance, close up there's a lot of rough edges and weird seams, and it came out a bit short b/c of the uneven pieces of fabric. I just used white ribbon for the spaghetti straps b/c making it out of this fabric would have been really awful. At first I was dismayed at how many creases there were in the pink foil, but then I remembered most of Delenn's costumes have odd textures/patterns printed on, and I think it actually works under the mesh.
And this shows another level of shiny. I still have more junk to get out of that hallway, but now most of it is in the closet behind me.
Here is the finished outfit, clothing wise, so this monster of a dress is barely seen anyway. But the dress's high waist fits nicely with the coat's empire waist, and the long skirt and ruffle (tho single-layer versions came out longer, whups) fit the theme.
I also started the pleather backpack, and ... eek. The tutorial I used as a guide was for medium weight fabric + interfacing, which is not the same as using heavyweight pleather :-/ Although the order of assembly is still helpful. Next time I'll look for more pleather guides, and I'm more than a little worried about my leather-hoodie project now. Playstation (my machine) is miserable. But I have to finish this silly bag b/c I hate using shoulder bags everyday. Still have a whole bunch of pleather leftover, I can make a better backpack later.
I also want to make a bunch of small items this week before September is over. Probably earrings, and pins festooned with polymer clay "Trinkets" from my vendor days. I have the idea and materials to do something with them that would make them more listing-worthy. Probably earrings too, tho I'm not sure I have any sterling hooks left. I could just mostly-complete them and add hooks next month.
After NYCC, my next costume-deadline is Halloween weekend, which is also NYC's MES larp weekend for November (they decided against moving it to the first full Fri-Sun weekend). So instead of working on the CIC dress (postponed for Arisia), Ima work on my Lost costume for Friday night's game. Might be fun to put it on at work and then wander around before game. I can edit/finish an older project for Requiem. Maybe make the pleather hoodie for Accord (its also supposed to be a magic wolfie item).
But its Samhain weekend and I'm not sure I want to give it all to larp. On the other hand Halloween in NYC is one big obnoxious frat party, last year's Samhain ritual was aggravating (look! gf cookies! and we mixed them with the regular cookies b/c we're morons!), and I have a fellow larper friend staying at my place from out of town. Pretend debauchery is still better than none at all? I could also take that Friday off and go out Thursday nite... *ponders*
<3 Chrysilla
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, http://chrysilla.dreamwidth.org/
After some nasty shade about my Steampunk Delenn 1.0 costume at DCon in 2013, I realized a) many self-appointed Steampunk experts are douchebags, b) I really hate wearing corsets. So having made a Regency coat (out of leftover tableclothes from my vending days) for a friend's wedding last year, I decided that worked in the Delenn pink/purple color scheme enough to make that my 2.0. Regency women did wear corsets, but it's easier to cheat and pull off the look without one. W00t.
I just needed an underdress to match, and from the QOTCP wedding costume I used the same underdress pattern but with new fabrics, b/c Delenn doesn't wear leopard print. (Yet? They might be rebooting :-P) Obviously a modern cut, but it fits nicely under the purple coat and matches the lines.
Ironically, I had more old table-trimmings in my stash that would work for making the new underdress. At first I was just going to use this shiny pink foil fabric, of unknown fiber/foil content:
But ... its just too pink. I really dislike wearing tons of pink. But I had still more tablecloth bolts, including this purple ... georgette? Is that what this is? Its a meshy material, most likely synthetic. Luckily, historical accuracy is not an issue here ;-) And the two fabrics looked good together, which is why I got them for tablecloths in the first place.
The teal swatch is for maybe doing Delenn 2.5 as a teal coat with this dress for Arisia, but I have too much sewing to do already. Yeesh. Its a cheap reorderable taffeta (luckily) at one of my usual shops, so I'll revisit this idea when I finish my 30 sewing projects. So maybe for DCon? I do really like the coat pattern.
Putting it together was as annoying as I expected. The pink foil frayed, but only in one direction, and the meshy purple was hard to cut out in the very simple series of rectangles that made up most of the pattern. And then there were lots of mis-sews that had to be picked out and redone cuz I'm a spaz. I got a fusible tape for the seams, to try and keep the fabric together long term, but that didn't work out. At least not so far, I have more idears. I put the invisible zipper in backwards and gave up on fixing it. I really hate sewing with invisible zippers, actually. Regular zips are far more straightforward to attach.
Doesn't look so bad from this distance, close up there's a lot of rough edges and weird seams, and it came out a bit short b/c of the uneven pieces of fabric. I just used white ribbon for the spaghetti straps b/c making it out of this fabric would have been really awful. At first I was dismayed at how many creases there were in the pink foil, but then I remembered most of Delenn's costumes have odd textures/patterns printed on, and I think it actually works under the mesh.
And this shows another level of shiny. I still have more junk to get out of that hallway, but now most of it is in the closet behind me.
Here is the finished outfit, clothing wise, so this monster of a dress is barely seen anyway. But the dress's high waist fits nicely with the coat's empire waist, and the long skirt and ruffle (tho single-layer versions came out longer, whups) fit the theme.
I also started the pleather backpack, and ... eek. The tutorial I used as a guide was for medium weight fabric + interfacing, which is not the same as using heavyweight pleather :-/ Although the order of assembly is still helpful. Next time I'll look for more pleather guides, and I'm more than a little worried about my leather-hoodie project now. Playstation (my machine) is miserable. But I have to finish this silly bag b/c I hate using shoulder bags everyday. Still have a whole bunch of pleather leftover, I can make a better backpack later.
I also want to make a bunch of small items this week before September is over. Probably earrings, and pins festooned with polymer clay "Trinkets" from my vendor days. I have the idea and materials to do something with them that would make them more listing-worthy. Probably earrings too, tho I'm not sure I have any sterling hooks left. I could just mostly-complete them and add hooks next month.
After NYCC, my next costume-deadline is Halloween weekend, which is also NYC's MES larp weekend for November (they decided against moving it to the first full Fri-Sun weekend). So instead of working on the CIC dress (postponed for Arisia), Ima work on my Lost costume for Friday night's game. Might be fun to put it on at work and then wander around before game. I can edit/finish an older project for Requiem. Maybe make the pleather hoodie for Accord (its also supposed to be a magic wolfie item).
But its Samhain weekend and I'm not sure I want to give it all to larp. On the other hand Halloween in NYC is one big obnoxious frat party, last year's Samhain ritual was aggravating (look! gf cookies! and we mixed them with the regular cookies b/c we're morons!), and I have a fellow larper friend staying at my place from out of town. Pretend debauchery is still better than none at all? I could also take that Friday off and go out Thursday nite... *ponders*
<3 Chrysilla
Crossposted from Dreamwidth, http://chrysilla.dreamwidth.org/