An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away...Unless It's Poisoned Of Course.

Dearest friends,

It is with a heavy heart that I report the illness of my dear sewing machine. Something went wrong with it in the final phases of making Hermione's Yule Ball gown, which thankfully I had already managed to get to a wearable point. I shall have to actually hem it someday though. I'm attempting to diagnose the problem at the moment though because I want to begin my next project! Seems to be something to do with how the top thread and the bottom thread interact. If anyone has some experience with sewing machine troubleshooting please help me! (It's a pfaff for reference).

In related yet happier news, Hermione's ballgown was a huge success. There was much gawking as I roamed around the movie theatre at the Deathly Hallows midnight opening and some woman at a bachelorette party gave me a free pizza because mine was her favorite costume. Win. I impressed myself actually with how well the skirts came together when I hadn't actually muslin-ed it out. It was tremendously fun to walk in. However, if I were to re-do it I would hand dye the sheers. I don't like how it abruptly switches from maroon to pink. And I would smooth out the bodice a little more. Not bad for a first attempt though! I'm very pleased.

But looking a head to the future I'm eager to start sewing for Halloween! (Assuming my machine can be fixed!). A fellow costumer posed a link on her facebook to this wonderful artist's page creating more accurate versions of the Disney Princess costumes. While in Florida Kat and I had tossed around the notion of doing the princesses for Halloween. Though I believe she has decided on a more literally princess (Cleopatra), the idea was solidified in my mind when I saw the rendering of Snow While. I love the 16th century German interpretation so that's what I'm doing! I got fabric at Sew Low when Kat and I went last week! The only fabric I'm not 100% enthused about is the yellow for the skirt I picked out so that may be changing before the dress is actually underway. :)

That's all that's new at the moment in the way of costuming. I'll hopefully be updating more as things go along.
Cheers!
Thera

Yule Ball dress finished!

Back

Fighting You-Know-Who!

Free pizza. Win!

Triangle Torture and the Tonys!

Hola friends!
       Ive been plugging along with the bodice of Hermione's gown. I want to have this thing done by the time Kat and I head off to Hogwarts (side note- this is a literal statement. We're going to Disney/ Universal at the end of the month!!!) and that doesn't leave me much time. When I say "done" I really mean "mostly put together" though so we'll see. :)
       I think I finally have the boob pieces done after many many many attempts. I ended up cheating and adding a seam in the 2nd and 3rd triangles so it wouldn't pucker. I still think I could have draped it correctly if I could have done it on a dress form but oh well. It's done and made up in the actual fabric. I think I may need to take it in a little though and I want to find some nice bra cups to put in since I'm not very well endowed.
       Yet another trip to Sew Low (and Sewfisticated!) yielded the sheer fabrics that will make up the ruffles on the skirt and shoulders. I love love love the darkest one but the lighter one is not exactly what I wanted but I think it will be ok. I know what I have to do for the skirt but I've been rather lazy about starting it. When it comes down to the ruffles I think it will get a little more fussy.
        But tickets for the midnight movie release went on sale yesterday so that's been motivation to get this thing going.
That's all I've got for tonight. So sad the Tonys didn't feature the costume design award on air. Oh well.
Cheers!
Thera

Bodice so far and new fabrics!

Triangles!

Patterns, Pirates, and Banana Ice Cream

Hello Friends,

     It's been a while since I've updated the blog and I'm terribly sorry! Though to be fair, Kat and I have not done much sewing as of late. Blame it on contentedness though so I suppose that's a good thing. (We usually have sewing circles when one of us is being tortured by a member of the male gender). So all things considered, things are going well! But July 15th is fast approaching and I've got to get cracking on my Harry Potter costume regardless. Also, in semi-exciting news, a google image search of "Hermione Yule Ball gown" leads you to this blog (see last post) which Kat and I had a freak out moment about. :)

I'm currently hard at work watching Pirates of the Caribbean and attempting to draft the bodice pattern for my yule ball gown. I'm massacring a simplicity pattern but it currently looks nothing like what I started with so I won't even bother listing the number. I'm having a spot of difficulty with the triangle boob dart part but other then that it's going well. I just can't get it to not pucker at the top so far.

I took a solo trip to Sew Low (read that out loud lol) and got some lovely fabric for the base of the gown. It's a shade darker then I would have liked but otherwise perfect. I'll just tone down the dress on a whole. They have some lovely maroon chiffon that I'll get for the bottom of the dress. The part that cascades. :)

That's all I've got for now. I'll post some in progress pictures soon!
Cheers!
Thera

UPDATE:
Pictures, as promised!

My attempts at drafting the bodice in a pink muslin. And ice cream :)

The fabric I bought at Sew Low!

Bone of the Father, Flesh of the Servant, Blood of the Foe; You Will Ressurect This Blog.

Dearest Friends,
      We're back! After a little hiatus in which Kat and I worked a lot and did the whole Christmas thing, we're finally returning to our sewing circle with new projects. And that means this blog will be up and running once again! Yay!

Kat is planning on buckling down and working on her reenacting kit. On one of our Sew Low trips back in the fall she picked up a lot of really great linen. I'm not sure what exactly she's planning on doing with it yet, but it's a very pretty color. We also began work briefly on her shift one evening. It needs a head hole and some hemming, but is other wise done. I believe that is first on her to do list.

As for me, I'm thinking ahead to the final Harry Potter movie being released this summer. I have decided to make Hermione's Yule Ball dress from the 4th movie for the occasion. Originally I had real problems with the dress because the movie costumer (Jany Tamime) chose (an admittedly very gorgeous) pink for the gown instead of the periwinkle color the book describes. However I've gotten over it at this point. I want to make something that's recognizable and impressive and this fits that description to a "t". And since this is the very last Potter movie, I can't imagine dressing as anyone else. I was ten years old when I wore my Gram's old wool skirt and a Gryffindor tie to the opening of Sorcerer's Stone to be Hermione. And I'm a big fan of sentimental full circle. (On a related sentimental side note, I've worn that same wool skirt to every other Potter opening, movie and book, except the last movie and Goblet of Fire's book release.)

That's all for now! Check back later for some duct tape dummy pics!
Cheers!
Thera

Hermione's Yule Ball Gown

Done and done!

Finished product

 With Jack :)

At the castle

Maybe if I'm lucky I can find these guys to come with me :)

Our Triumphant Return To Blogging

Dear Friends,
      We are so nearly DONE! Sorry about the total lack of updates. My continued lack of a camera cord, and now a camera, have put a damper on us photographing our costuming process. And without pictures, I haven't felt inspired to write.
      As far as the sewing goes, my Rose costume is almost done. I'm now having fun playing with various accessories. In my last update I mentioned that I got the fabric for Rose's pink coat. Well the body of that is done and all it needs are the cuffs and the hem. I got crafty and used black interfacing to create the designs on the collar and cuffs. I paused the movie and free hand drew the designs and cut them out with the lovely rotary cutter Auntie Amy got me for my birthday, and then just ironed them on. The layer of fleece sandwiched between the body of the coat and it's lining makes it really nice and cozy. :)
The remainder of my dress came along pretty simply except for the back sashes. As dear old momma Ruth would say, "let me tell you what an Odyssey that has been". Eventually I got it to drape nicely and snap over the zipper to center it. The rosette at the top was an epic fail so I ended up buying a pre-made on that I think works pretty well. I also had to replace the zipper after having to cut myself out after one disastrous fitting...lol. It's all good now though. :)
Also, our lovely coworker from the Nurse House Don Perry came into work one day and lent me his daughter's Heart of the Ocean. So thanks again Don!

As for Kat, as Im typing this she is FINISHING everything. The last thing she had to do was make the "B" Boleyn necklace which she has just completed!!! YAY! We trimmed everything out last night and Kat had a great fabric find for some covered buttons that match the original painting pretty damn well. Last week we devoted an evening to hemming both the underskirt and the gown and put together the French Hood over three evenings.

I'm really really excited to post some pictures up on here but unfortunately that shall have to wait until Halloween! I plan on doing a really epic photo shoot with lots and lots of pictures sooo definitely check back. Also check back for updates of my cousin Georgia's "Janice" SNL costume!
Thats all for now! Off to FINISH my coat!
Cheers!
Thera

Shake It Like A Poleroid Picture!

Huzzah for photographs! I sadly, am still missing my camera cord, but I finally sat down at the family PC which has a drive for my memory card to upload the pictures. (I love pictures. I had 1008 pictures total on my memory card!) So here is the visual update finally to go with the last post!

Kat's dress so far!

Meanwhile, Kathryn has been hand stitching the black piping she acquired to the raw edge of her lower sleeves. Once that is done we'll move on to making the elastic casing on the the lowest sleeve and stitching the two sleeves together. Once that's done, apart from her hood and hems, Kat's dress is pretty much done! And then we can move on to trims! :)

All the skirts are complet

My costume is also on the brink of completion. I attached the skirts to the bodice the other night and began draping the pink sashes. I also threw in the invisible zipper last night. So far it looks amazing, but I've yet to get the zipper to go up when the dress is on my body. And even when it's not on me, it still is very difficult to zip because of all the sash layers being in one place. Hopefully it will work better when someone other then my father is trying to zip it though. And if not, I'm not 100% thrilled with how the pink sashes are sitting anyway so I may revisit that to solve both problems at once. And I may put two small side darts in the bodice depending on where this thing ends up sitting on me. Other then those tweaks, I just need to make the part if the dark pink sash that dangles down and the rosette for the back and hem up the lowest skirt and this thing in DONE. :)

As far as the coat goes, I decided that even with the new job I couldn't justify spending 80$ for the pink wool. However, I did find some perfectly colored heavy weave for 3.99 a yard that will behave like the wool would have. I'm just going to throw a fleece layer on the top body pieces in between the fabric and the lining to make it warm for Halloween. I'm really excited about this and am currently brainstorming the best way to get the black embroidery on the collar and cuffs so that it's still accurate without a machine that embroiders. (And I *do not* have the time to hand embroider it).

Bella jacket!

In other costume news, the Gods of Costuming blessed me with a very fruitful shopping trip the other day. I found at Salvation Army a shirt that's perfect for Jack's costume. So if anyone wants to run around and drown with me, the option is open. I just saw it on a rack and decided it was too perfect to pass up. :) Georgia wanted to hit up Nordstrom Rack as well where I bumped into the B.B. Dakota jacket the costume designers of Twilight used for Bella in the movie. It was about 50% cheaper then when I found it online last winter so I picked that up as well. Not that I ever really want to do a Twilight costume again, but on the off chance I do it's there. Plus it's rather warm and cozy on the inside so I've taken to wearing it in my everyday wardrobe.

That's all for today. I have to grab some lunch before work this afternoon.
Cheers,

Thera

Dress is almost done!!

With the hoop and bum roll

Kat's sleeve trim!

Undies!

"I wish I knew some sewing spells"

Textual Update

Hello friends!

I'm dreadfully sorry for the lack of recent posts on here. Kat and I have been quite busy but I seem to have misplaced my camera cord. I have lots of wonderful pictures of our progress that I have not been able to upload, and as a result I've been putting off updating here. What's the use of a costume blog after all if you can't see what we're doing! At any rate, this is the abbreviated version of our progress since my last post.

Kathryn's costume is still flying along! We gathered up the waist band of the underskirt and have begun toying with the idea of hoop skirts. I happen to already own one that I made for the aforementioned (last sewing update) Elizabethan costume I did. Kat's skirts are so beautiful and full and the hoop really accentuates them. We also started putting together the under sleeves. We discovered some beautiful little lace at Jo Ann's this afternoon that Kat hand stitched along the cuff of the undermost sleeve (the white bit). She also created the slits in in the middle sleeve and hand stitched down the facings that we fondly refer to as the vaginas (seriously they look very inappropriate...). She was also busy this afternoon cutting out all the layers that will become her French Hood! We went to Jo Anns to get the fleece for this and happened upon a 2 dollar simplicity pattern sale! Kat picked up a number of patterns for various future endeavors and I grabbed two that will serve as good guides for Roses' pink coat if I end up doing that. (Things on that are looking up! I just got a new job -huzzah!- and found some gorgeous salmon wool at Sew Low. Only trouble is I don't think they have the 6 yards I would need...so we'll see.)

As for Rose, I've finished the bodice for now. Kat and Mum helped me fit the over layer over my under layer and corset and I stitched them together by machine. I had intended to do it by hand but it came out very neat and a hell of a lot faster. Im very happy with how the two purple sashes came out. So now I've moved on to the 4 skirt layers. I cut out all the front pieces and then discovered I ran out of the pink and darker lavender. So I ran back to Sew Low to grab another yard of each to cut out the backs. This afternoon I finished all the raw edges, sewed the 4 sets of side seams and based all the skirts together at the top. Tomorrow I plan to attach them to the bodice and see what the hem situation will be. I feel like mine could be done very very soon. Oh and I also have to mess with the invisible zipper up the back.

Thats all for now because I'm falling asleep and this is boring without pictures.
Night folks!
Cheers,
Thera