The creation of Abigail.

I. Have. A dress form.

I am so excited by this I can hardly stand it! The ease of fitting, the ease of hemming the ease of EVERYTHING.

Not so much the ease of getting her from point a to point b. Thanks to my lovely partner in crime, somehow the job got done. With lots of hilarious pictures.

So, as most of you know, Uniquely you dress forms kick ass but they dont start out as ass kicking.

They start out as demonic torpedo tits ladies. with a sock.




Much like that.

LOOK AT THEM HONKERS. If anyone has boobs that looked anything like this I may just die.

Anyhow.

Then came the fun part of spending a while ripping seams and refitting the dern thing to SKIN TIGHTITUDE.

Which ensued with much laughter and such.




Walking at this point was very hard.




But somehow I was still having fun. How can you not have fun when Miss American Duchess is around!?!? It is impossible.

So sadly, there are no pictures of the event that was stuffing Abby into this now fitted stuffed sock. Event is a light way of putting it but it did involve a pair of pliers and grunting and comparing to birthing a child.

The end result was nice and now i have something like this





It is somewhat loose down there around the thigh area because the foam does not accommodate for quad muscles and the...abnormal size of my thighs in comparison to the rest of me XDXD.

I also learned a couple of things about my body:

my back dips in CONSIDERABLY when i stood up right between my shoulder blades and again lower down. Also I naturally stand tilted to the left. This i did not realize until Lauren kept yelling at me to stand up straight when I thought I was.

FREAKY.

But anyhow I have a dress form and am happy and she us currently dressed up in my day dress.

Scared the crap out of me in the middle of the night.










Ah. So much better.


:)

I wash my hands of you, but want to spoon you tonight.

Yes, I am speaking about my NEWLY FINISHED WEDDING CAKE CUPCAKE!

I will be the big spoon.

I dressed in quite a hurry for this quick photoshoot hot off the sewing machine after hemmed.

You get the idea of it, though.



Full view, me lookin crabby cause im hot and tired aya!!

There are lump and tugs and pulls because i hadnt stuffed my bust yet so its falling a bit flat. I should have interfaced the plaid middle but I was hasty and lazy. Haste makes waste!! But it will be ok.
(click on it for a better view.)




Shot of the side for the bows on the shoulders



Back shot, ignore that row there flipped up a little, didn't get tugged down by my photographer, bah :).


Close up of the bodice after i stuffed the bust. damn small bewbs.



Close up of the bow and broach, and an obvious view of me dressing in a haste. I didnt even make sure my collar was fully out, jees.



I am so suprised after I fixed the skirt how fast and well it went together!! Quite proud of it, i must say.

Leimomi, I owe you BIG TIME! Thank you so much for your impeccable eye for design

love tons



Cheers!

Vicpic dress, now in evil flavor!

Just another example of when I should listen to my gut when I KNOW I am taking a short cut and it is going to cause problems in the end. Cause it does.

So after the first tier was sewn on, it was time for the second. It was getting difficult because of the skirt base being ALREADY GATHERED because I am an idiot and started from the top and..well now that I look back on it I cannot for the life of me figure out my thought process.

So I had me one hell of a time trying to lay the already gathered skirt base flat and trying to gather and pin a straight row on a curved base.


Needless to say it was a horrible failure and it came out in a pretty squiggly sewn on line, not nice and straight. I deserved that.

So for the third row I got smart and tried to find a way to put the skirt on over my hoops and sew on the last row like that! Genius!




So I put em over a lamp. Go lamp.

So while it was up there i thought to pin and tack all the mess ups on the second row so it was at least straight..ish..

SO then it was time to sew on the third row. I had some trouble with this, gathering, trying to pin it so I thought I had a genius idea by pinning the ends to the ends of the skirt base and gathering it ONTO the skirt base so it would be straight and i didnt have to try and keep the gathers even and pin



Great idea in my head and it really did hold straight...but when i sewed it it pulled another giant squiggly line. At that point I was very tired and frustrated so I went to bed.

And in the shower yesterday morning I had an epiphany





In the end it was best to rip them all off and start over. Hey at least the most time consuming parts were already done, the sewing the squares together and the hem guards on all the squares.

So I started over and this time do it the RIGHT WAY with a rectangular skirt base.



One fourish yard rectangle of pink fabrics.

This time, I started from the BOTTOM row and went up from there



As well as using the rectangle to keep it flat and straight I pinned the holy christ out of it, and pinned em horizontally and just sewed below them so I didnt have to take them out every three seconds, and it worked out AMAZINGLY.



I now have one giant curtain. I did also gather up the waist line. I contemplated binding all the edges in the purple bias tape. While that would look really great, my time-line is fast approaching..annnnd I am really lazy. My crave for excess might beat out my sense in this matter but I guess we shall see!!

Also, for something completely different, a couple of charming pictures of my neighborhood on a beautiful august evening. I took them on my way home from college.

(please forgive the blurriness.)






Cheers!

Im losing more and more hair

By RIPPPING IT OUT IN FRUSTRATION.

GAH.

Epic slackertude.

So I had a whole weekend to pretty much dick around and do nothing but sew

However I really just did nothing in general. Besides get tipsy at one in the afternoon. Mmmm mimosa.

Ayhow, I did get a little done, like the first row of ruffles on the vicpic dress and the bodice finished and purchase new glasses.

I'll bore you with the dress though.




Got the sleeves with the cuffs all finished. Mostly, anyhow, I need to add a strip of the purple bias tape around the top to tie it all in, then add the bows on the shoulders and the buttons. Its closed by hook and eye tape, however.



So much fabric into such a wee little space. So the first row is all sewn into the skirt base. I put them on over my newly purchased hoops, which after putting them on I discovered desperately needed to be..readjusted lest I look like the satire fashion plates.

They are very large.

I'm hoping to get more work done today on this silly thing, like the last of the rows sewn at least together. Gathering up all of that fabric is killing me.

Bit -o- Progress.

Been working in small bits on the massive flounced day cupcake. My motivation comes and goes and the most in opportune times, I swear.

Anywho I spent two days and some more money on the skirt flounces which my knees hate my for. There is no comfortable position to do this process if you are a broken old crazy lady like me.

So this was the very long part



I took each of the panels (thats two shown there) and attached the plaid hem guard right side to the right side on the panel, then I will fold it over and hem both pieces, just like I did my Elizabethan hem guard. Just in a bigger way.

I stupidly didn't cut out the skirt pattern piece for the UNDERPART of the skirt that the flounces were attached to, so I improvised and took the skirt that when with the bodice pattern and will use that as a base, shown crumpled up here. Why I didn't take a picture of it laid out is beyond me.



Lump of skirt.

Now the tricky thing is, this under skirt is curved while the pattern underskirt was a big tube. Oh well, I will take some advice from a GENIUS and an awesome human and I will Make It Work.

So now all that is left to do is iron down all the plaid strips, baste em down and then sew all the panels together for the tiers, hem them, and gather them all to fit into the skirt. This is going to be incredibly tricky since I don't have a dress form. Will have to do this last step before the skirt is sewn up the back seam.

In other news, at the lovely fabs r us, I found my Dickens fabric!!






Lovely Olive green taffeta at dirt cheap a yard. Got the rest of it which was just over 8 yards. Not going to be NEARLY ENOUGH but I will find a way to make it work. I can always go back and get more, they did say they were going to get more...and the bodice idea is changing. Now I have to go to hancock to get the lovely velveteen that is NOT dirt cheap a yard but at least I don't need NEARLY as much of it.


Cheers!

Bouncing in time: 1850's Summer Dress, Final Edwardian shots

I am experiencing polar opposite sewing projects. The two week Edwardian went together so well it was INSANITY. Something I had never had happen before.

However, this combined three simplicity pattern dress, not so hot. I keep taking two steps forward one back. Also, there is so much needed for the skirt panels I am utterly baffled. I think I have maybe HALF of what I need? Christ.

Anyhow, first up. This is what I have gotten done so far on my VicPic 1850's summer dress.


This is what I have left to sew. You can't tell but there are..oh..16+ panels in white and 30 of the strip panels that will go on each flounce. This pattern is odd in the sense it wants me to pretty much just cut a bunch of squares. No. I didnt match up the plaid. I'm a bad girl like that.

Also shown are the sleeves and cuffs.



Bodice mostly done I have to finish the front edged and put boning in and sew on the purple bias tape. So far so good. Looking very...well..Young victorian girl like. /vomit. I hate it yet I love it all at once, hahaha.




Here is the horribly mangled back. I really cannot explain to you how bonkers this pattern is. How the back is sewn is some stupid method that makes little to no sense, so I did the bed I could. Not I have all this pinching and pulling and insanity that I have to pick out and somehow hand sew down..then cover with buttons and a bow. Ha.

Now for the good stuff; the finished Edwardian in action



Good view of the GLORIOUS HAT that I am insanely proud of.



Close up of the neat belt that was almost like wearing a second corset.



I seem to really like standing with my arms folded.

Not a very detailed picture but it works.



Im actually smiling




I dont know why these pictures came out so small and blurry but ok. Neat car out front.


All photos nabbed Courtesy of Lauren Reeser! woot.