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Showing posts with label Verily I Rock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Verily I Rock. Show all posts
Right after I decided to look for new hat options, I happened to find myself in a thrift shop, wiling away an hour while waiting to pick up B. from work.
Halloween stuff was already out, which generally means "the ugliest, weirdest clothing that got donated to us." This particular shop had a bin full of vintage hats, most of which I adored. Among the items was a green straw hat.Now, what you're seeing is what I consider 'After - Part 1.' I did not take a 'before' photo, because that was one sorry hat. It had a faded golden ribbon, with an equally faded golden suede bow, and some really ratty yellow netting. There were stains on it. It looked like someone had squashed it up and stuffed it in a pocket for a few years. But I saw some potential, and it fit nicely on my head. I bought it and began tearing off the yellowed decorations while walking back to my car a few blocks away. It was rather embarrassing to be seen with it! The photo is also not so great, I was in the basement and only thought at the last minute that I should get a before spraypaint shot.
P.S. Same thrift shop had ANOTHER rocking chair. Y'know, THE rocking chair. In great shape. I did not buy it. I am very curious about its history, though!
Back to the hat! I did a little research, and the Internet crafters said I could fix it with some steam. They were right! I watered up my iron, and grabbed a large can I use to store plastic bags in. It's over 6" wide and has a metal bottom. I fitted it over the metal end (it was still a little loose, but close enough!) and tied some ribbon around it to help hold the shape, and began fake ironing around it, letting puffs of steam do its thing. Eventually I grabbed a lightweight scrap of upholstery fabric and began ironing the hat with that as a layer in between. I even laid the can on its side on the edge of the ironing board and ironed the sides of the hat. It made a HUGE difference. I even sprayed the hat with some water to see if that would help. I don't think it made a difference. I eventually turned the hat and can upside down and left it to dry.
Internet crafters also assured me I could spray paint the hat just fine. I had used the Design Master brand for my fairy wings with beautiful results, no cracking or flaking, so I dashed to Michaels to add to my spray paint collection. Lots of shaking, several coats and waiting about half an hour or so between outside and inside, and I am now the proud owner of a second Poppins hat base!
I bought some vintage millinery cherries on Etsy, but frankly I prefer the wooden cherries I painted. 'Nice' daisies are also hard to find. I am still on the lookout, but these will do.
Et voila!
I found the white cotton prairie blouse on eBay, and am much pleased with this cosplay. Judging from people's responses, they are pleased, too! I have a coat, too, but unless the event is outdoors it's generally too hot to wear.
Now I need to work on what to carry in the bag. Everybody expects a lamp for some reason. I kept explaining that I only pack a lamp when I'm moving house . . .
August 28, 2015
I don't know what it is about Myths and Legends Con that brings on a massive creative spurt, but this year I again found myself madly sewing in the weeks leading up to the event.
It really started with the custom corset by LoriAnn Costume Designs. When I got it, it immediately started whispering that it didn't WANT to have anything to do with Steampunk, and began suggesting fairy to me. I remembered how awesome this fabric had looked in B.'s orange office, and then I began thinking of various ways to do a layered skirt, and then found myself researching wings . . .
The results amazed me.
The peasant blouse was a McCalls 5050 pattern, with the lower sleeves added from Simplicity costume pattern 4046. I found the Simplicity pattern instructions so convoluted and strange that I went right back to the McCalls pattern.
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SKIRT TUTORIAL
The skirt was a lot of fun, once I figured it out. Math got involved. It's a handkerchief skirt, but not in the way you're probably thinking of. Imagine you're taking a bunch of actual handkerchiefs and sewing them together.
The diagram hopefully helps explain my pattern for each square. I did not include seam allowances, so add those as you please. I don't think I actually did at all, and it didn't make any significant difference in my final skirt.
You'll need:
Fabric - the amount you need will be determined by the number and size of your squares, see below.
A sewing machine, and ideally a serger, or at the very least a rolled hem foot.
1" wide elastic
Before you start, decide how many squares, or points, you want on your skirt. You can have as few as 4 and as many as . . .well, it'll probably get a little crowded around 20. You can also do multiple layers, just cut a smaller square for the outer layers.
A is your preferred length of the skirt, or the highest point of the skirt hem. Measure from your waist to the shortest desired length.
Now you'll use this number to determine B, the side of the square. Take the skirt length and multiply that number by 1.414. Cut out your squares by that many inches.
Example: I want my highest hem point to be 8.5". 8.5*1.414 = 12.01". Cut out 12"x12" squares of fabric.
Now give yourself a pat on the back, because you just used the math you never thought you'd see again after high school geometry!
a
=
2
d
2
d=diagonal, a = side of square. Since we only needed the measurement of half the diagonal anyway, I left the division out. All you need to know for this is: 1.414 x hem length of skirt = square side length.
OK, time to measure your hips. NOT your waist, your hips. You want to have enough room to pull the skirt over your hips, and the elastic will hold it in place around your waist. Take that measurement and divide by the number of squares you plan to cut out of your skirt. Example: 36" hips, with 6 squares, 36/6=6. This gives you C, the dotted line, where you need to cut. I merely took a ruler, and moved it down horizontally from the point until I got my length from edge to edge, drew a line, (make sure it's even) and then cut.
Next you have the fun of finishing all the edges. The serger made short work of that, until I somehow managed to snap off one of the fingers of the needle plate. You can either leave the squares all separated or sew them together from the cut corner to the next corner, marked D on one side of the diagram. I sewed the lower layer together this way, and simply serged them together. I used a contrasting thread, so did my serging on the outside so it showed.
Cut a length of fabric at least an inch longer than your hip measurement, and about 2.25" wide. Stitch the short edges together to form a loop.
Fold in half longways, wrong sides together, and stitch, leaving an opening of about 2" somewhere along the line. This will be the casing for your elastic.
Pin the cut corner edge of your top layer of squares to the stitched length of your fabric and baste. Then pin the next layer and sew everything down.
Now you can measure your waist, and add a little extra for your seam allowance. Cut your elastic to this size, and feed it into your casing, then sew the ends together. Sew your casing hole closed, and if you like, add a few stitches here and there, through the casing and the elastic, to prevent it from twisting around. I wouldn't recommend sewing it all the way down, because eventually the elastic will need replacing and it will cause a ridiculous amount of seam ripping (she says from experience in buying skirts with shot, sewn down elastic at a thrift store.) You now have a handkerchief skirt!
Please feel free to email me with any questions. I am writing this after an exhausting and unpleasant week, so my brain is fried. My inspiration was this little girl's outfit on Melly Sews, so hopefully that will help you where this doesn't.
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Finally, about the wings. I fell in love with EnchantedHearth's wings on Etsy (I originally found pictures on Pinterest), but her shop was closed, and closed, and closed, and I panicked and made my own. (she reopened it the weekend of the con, wouldn't it figure?)
There really isn't a pattern, just a 'jump in and do it.' I played with tissue paper, drawing wings until I got a size and shape I liked, then used that as my pattern. I left a little extra at the top so I could make a casing for the wire. Then I serged around all the edges. Well, 'serge' is a generous term, since my serger was broken. I ended up doing a really tight zigzag stitch on my sewing machine, and went around all the edges TWICE. It was probably better this way, since I don't have a lot of speed control with my serger.
I used a sheer drapery fabric that was mostly flesh toned, but felt they needed more green. I just couldn't find anything that had the mottled look I wanted, so I screwed up my courage and bought . . . spray paint.
Design Master Tint It was recommended by other people on the Internet as being good for fabric, so I took a chance. I also bought a glitter spray paint, because I wanted some sparkle. Then I took the plunge. I sprayed mostly around the edges, and particularly along the top, as the layers of fabric didn't all take and I had some obvious peachy spots.
This was a bad picture, since it was at night in the basement, but I loved the way they turned out. here's a better photo at the con:
I used green florist wire and simply stuffed them down my back, making sure they got tucked behind my bra strap and under the corset. I quickly learned about wing awareness and how to maneuver in crowds, but they held up great, and also packed pretty well. The paint made them a little stiff, but that was actually a good thing. I'm not certain if I left a trail of glitter, but there's still plenty on them!
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| Of course I brought a Mal to MaLcon! |
I also bought some pretty elf ears from The Implied Line, and got my face painted at the event. I didn't even know they'd have that, so it was a nice surprise!
December 22, 2013
I decided that this year, I was going to try my hand at paper snowflakes. This turned out to be a dedicated Pinterest Board as I tried to figure everything out. And I did! I'm very pleased with the results, which are below. I used white newsprint from a Dollar Tree scribble pad. They're not bright white, but it doesn't seem to matter. Only a few are my own designs, such as the one with the trees, and the last one, which is supposed to be a tangle of Christmas lights, but I didn't get it quite right. There's also a mini one in the first picture (they're about half the size of the others) that is supposed to be bulb ornaments. They look a little more like tomatoes. The rest I figured out from direct instructions or staring at ones that were already done.
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| Oops, stupid shiny surfaces. |
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| tell me this looks a little like a string of lights? |
December 19, 2013
A short story about some pictures. Well, one picture in particular.
B.'s office party turned out to have a 1920's theme. I attempted to find an ultra-authentic drop waist until I encountered an awesome red dress. It had a drape neckline, a plunging drape in the back, and a fishtail. It was perfect for any time period from the 20's to the 50's. I found it at Ross for about $30. I was very skeptical at first, because I'd never worn a dress with no back, but when I tried it on, I was amazed. I looked awesome in it and was determined to get a good photo of us. (B. always looks awesome in his tux.)
Fortunately there was a photographer at the party. Unfortunately she was following the '20's theme and giving everybody black and white photos. We BEGGED her to print ours in color, because bam, red dress. She graciously complied.
Unfortunately, my old scanner gave me some issues when I scanned the hard copy handed to us the night of the party. The colors came out weird, and no matter how much I tried, I could NOT get the fuzzies off the screen.
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| . . . Am I glowing? |
I decided to wait until the digital copies became available. When they did, well, this is what we got.
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| You OK? You're looking a little grey. |
Nice, yes, but it just loses a lot without the red. We tried to get color copies again, but they wanted to charge us more per picture. What to do? I'll color it myself! Naturally I turned to the Internet for help, and eventually got results.
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| Aren't we awesome? |
I admit it's not completely accurate, but I think it looks pretty good. I may do some more touching up sometime - for instance, B's lips should be a bit pinker, and his watch chain and buttons should be gold.
You want to know how I accomplished this, don't you? I lost my copy of Photoshop, so I've been struggling with Gimp. It's a bit of a learning curve, but eventually I just learned to search online for my specific question. I found two good tutorials. The first one turned out not to work for me, because whenever I attempted to perform the 'invert the colors' step, Gimp just turned my image blank. Perhaps it might work normally for you. I couldn't figure out the problem, so I found another tutorial, which basically uses layers and the multiply tool. I also found the colorize tool to work pretty well, especially for skin. It seemed to add a kind of subtle glow. It was certainly very simple to perform, but it took me hours to do due to trying to get in all the cracks and crevices and clean up all the sharp lines. Fortunately we were wearing red, white, and black! I only needed three or four layers.
I did two of the best pictures and called it good. I still wish I had gotten a photo of the back of the dress. I think this counts as my Red Dress. I always envisioned something poofier. Don't know about the Red Dress project? Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess, wrote on her site:
"I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies. I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be. And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”. Things like flying lessons, and ballet shoes, and breaking into spontaneous song, and building a train set, and crawling onto the roof just to see the stars better. Things like cartwheels and learning how to box and painting encouraging words on your body to remind yourself that you’re worth it."I'm not sure what made me feel more positive about myself: looking awesome in a dress I wouldn't normally dare wear, or being able to turn a black and white photograph into color. I hope to wear the dress a lot more, and hopefully others like it.
December 3, 2013
This is why I haven't been posting much. This project was just as time consuming as a miniature house, with many of the same problems. The worst problem was the price of the ornaments. There's lots of official ornaments and toys for sale, but they're all REALLY expensive. I couldn't justify the cost. However, I had a printer and fun foam and a great imagination, so once it dawned on me that I could make my own, I made my own.
The spider snowflake was a little easier to make than Jack. I found a pdf pattern to follow on the Instructables web site, and cut it out on regular printer paper, using an Xacto knife. I may go back and trace the entire thing out onto cardstock so it will last longer.
Since it was after Halloween, I found some great deals on colorful spider rings, which clipped perfectly to the branches. I also found some GREAT Jingle Bell spiders at Big Lots. I still need to string them so they can hang, but right now they're perfect just sitting on various tree branches. Small white balls for Jack's faces were really hard to find, but I was able to pick up a pack of red, white and green balls at Michaels. It was a tough choice between those and the ball with the fun swirls on them. I will draw swirls on the leftovers, too!
For a while I kept confusing Nightmare Before Christmas with The Corpse Bride, both of which would still be perfectly acceptable on the tree, come to think of it. I decided dancing skeletons would be perfect for the tree, and again, did image searches for what I had in mind. There's an old Disney short featuring dancing skeletons, which proved to be a great reference. I ended up making 5 of them, cutting them out of white fun foam. They're a bit fragile, and if you draw on fun foam with a pencil, YOU WILL NOT GET IT OFF. Oops. I glued button thread to the back of their heads in order to hang them.
So that's my Nightmare Before Christmas tree! So far. I have lots more ideas, but I was trying to keep it a surprise for my husband, and if I didn't 'give' it to him soon, I wouldn't have gotten anything else done. I'll put it up at Halloween next year with a few more surprises. Perhaps I might splurge on some official ornaments, too. I did buy two using a leftover Disney gift card from several years ago, but they were on sale!
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