More Beading

Beading!

So I've started on beading the dress today. It's going to be a lot of work and I'm really hoping it doesn't look utterly rediculous when I'm done. I started on the zipper, using a techinque I'd seen in the Threads magazine that had looked pretty cute. It's sewing the zipper in by hand, and taking a tiny backstitch with a bead. In this particular case, I'm taking a backstitch every half centimeter. I'm liking how it's turning out so far. ^^ Now I just have the other side of the zipper to do. Should be able to get that done tonight



I'm also taking a little inspiration from one of my current favorite deviant art artists.

Anima: fencer girl by *Wen-M on deviantART
I couldn't resist throwing that up in here. I love the detailed style of clothing he gives his drawings. If anyone ever wants to commission me to make one of his outfits, I'd jump at the chance just for the challenge they pose. But I digress. He also draws tattoos for people, so I found one that has a bit of a flowery shape to it, and I'm going to use it for as a pattern for the rest of my beading endevor. Hopefully I'll get a lot of that done on Wednesday while at work. Although rather than calling working at the Complete Strategist work, it's really more like sitting around with not much to do for several hours. Or getting paid to read, write, sew, paint, or whatever else I bring to occupy my time.

Iron: 2, Marianne: 0

So I lost another argument with my iron yesterday. I wanted to iron the bodice pieces after interfacing and sewing them all together. The iron was set a wee bit too high and wanted to scorch my interfacing. *sighs* I didn't have enough interfacing to cut a new panel either. SO! This morning before I go in to work I'll be making a quick little stop to get new interfacing- one with a cotton instead of poly fiber content.

But I suppose blessings come is disguise sometimes. I was having trouble sleeping last night and didn't manage to fall asleep until about 3am. (another one of those 'blessings' I guess) But in the process, I decided I wanted to add a bit of embellishment to the bodice anyways. So I'll be grabbing some beads this morning as well. Should be fun. I haven't done any beading since my 40K project.



Here's this morning's progress picture. The skirt is just pinned onto the dummy, so it'll definately lay a better once it's sewn up properly, but as you can see, the shantung is no where near as shiny as the tafetta- it photographs much better. And the fabric is nice to work with too! No real slipping to speak of, doesn't wrinkle badly at all, etc, etc, praise, praise. Now I'm happy I bought almost two yards extra :D Well, one and a half once I correct my mistake with the bodice, but still! I can make something else to match or something. A purse or a sash for the dress or something. We'll see how it goes.

As for the background of the blog, I'll get around to changing it when I've got a free day later this week. It took me an entire afternoon to figure it out and since I didn't think I'd be changing it any time soon I didn't bother to try to remember how I did it so it'll take me an entire afternoon again. In any case, I don't have any problem reading it! I get a nice shiny white background upon which to type. :p

My dress for Jessie's wedding and other stuff from this past week

AnnaMarie, I'd just like to say that I really appreciate the comments. ^^ Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Or that could just be the ginormous fleece blanket. Who knows. Things have been a lot better this past week. I got a lot of work on my suit done. Lining the sleeves was a bit tricky, but I finally got the little buggers to behave. Now I just need to ease them into the arm holes. The thing about suit or jacket sleeves is that the sleeve head is actually 2-3 inches larger than the arm scythe. Now logically, that doesn't make much sense, after all, they need to match up, right? Why be annoying and frustrate the heck out of sewers internationally by making patterns where the pieces don't go together like a nice little jigsaw puzzle? Most sewers end up with puckers or gathers that just scream "home-made."

Well the answer makes sense, but it's still as annoying as all heck. Nicer coats- particularly wool ones, are eased in and the actual fabric of the sleeve head is shrunk those 2-3 inches to fit in smoothly. Very sneaky of them, and fairly time consuming to do. I got one sleeve finally steam-shrunk down to proper size and all pinned together and started to sew it up, and then.... -dum dum dum- I ran out of thread. *headdesks* I'm using a really nice, very specific shade of charcoal grey silk thread that matches the wool perfectly. I can't exactly just substitute in a generic black polyester at this point like I could have it were going to be an internal seam or something. They don't carry the particular shade I needed at Jo-Ann's (my first stop because I was also getting fabric for my dress for Jessie's wedding) and they were out of it at G-Street (my second stop, because Jo-Ann's didn't have any fabric nice enough for my dress for Jessie's wedding.) So the suit coat project is back on the shelf for a while, or at least until after I finish my dress for Jessie's wedding and the curtains for Seth's co-worker.

So my dress for the wedding! I'm really proud of myself here. I managed to get all my fabric for it for only $110. I'm lining it with a nice tafetta, and the exterior is a gorgeous rustly shantung. Polyester, of course. I would have loved to get silk, but alas. $13/yard was in my budget, $40+/yard, no so much. *sighs* I looooove silk. It's so nice to sew on. We'll see how the shantung goes. The tafetta has been pretty good so far. What's really been a pain, however, has been the 12 yards of tulle. Fur now has a friend on the list of fabrics I hate. Fur, meet Tulle, Tulle meet Fur. You're both evil. It's not that tulle is difficult to work with, per say, it's just that there's so dang much of it and it's fairly delicate so you have to be careful not to rip it accidnetly. Oops, did that once when it got caught on a needle. Thankfully it was up near the top instead of down by the hem where it might be visible. No one will be able to find my little patching job unless they decide to go looking for it.



So there it is! My past two days work. That's just the lining of the dress and the tulle should flatten out a bit once gravity does its thing overnight. I'll start cutting into the shantung tomorrow- to which the last 3ish yards of tulle will be sewn (gah) as well as the sleeves. It's nice to know that there are square necked garments, but I'm still going to adjust the neckline a bit just to be sure. Better safe than sorry, right?

Let's see, what else has been going on this week? I really love that bookshelf we got, but it didn't end up making as much of a dent in our library population as I would have liked. *sighs* To be honest, although the books in in are double stacked already, it didn't even make a significant visible difference to the den. I think we need another two. Or three.

Then I melted the carpet this week. I'd just finished ironing a seam or something and went back to my machine to sew another. Seth was sitting right next to the iron and didn't hear or see it fall either. But a couple minutes later I came back and was like. "Hey, where'd the iron go." Brilliantly enough, face down on the carpet in a puddle of polyester. Seth hadn't even smelled it melting or anything, and at least the iron didn't take any damage at all, but that corner of the carpet is toast. After much flipping out, Seth went and talked to the apartment people. Fortunately they can come up and replace just the small area that got ruined rather than making us replace the entire thing. Note to self: when I get my own atellier, it's not going to have carpet. Or it is carpet, it's going to be those squares of different colors that you can pop out and replace as necessary. Darn iron. But in spite of that, this week went pretty well. Go me.

A bit down lately

So Abbey-dabby got her depature dates for Japan! I'm so excited for her and slightly jealous. I want to go to Japan! I'd also like to go back to Belgium and get some real chocolate again. These past couple weeks I've been feeling a little down and Galler chocolate would probably perk me right up again. It would be nice to walk around Liege and see what sorts of things have changed, drive by my old school, pay my respects to the WWII monuments and cemetaries again, and definately go by that 24 hour fritterie in Bruxelles 0again.

But yeah, been feeling a bit bleh lately for some reason. Maybe it's just that the nice weather has brought bad the detestible pigeons on our balcony or the fact that one of my online writer friends of four or five years now is off at some closed-door school thing. Not sure what it is exactly, but he doesn't get online anymore and I don't get to read his writing. *sighs* Which has thrown my own muse off. I haven't written anything substantial in about a month now. Or maybe it's the fact that we haven't gotten together with my usual gaming group to play and I haven't even seen on of the guys, Ben, in several weeks. Is it really so hard to get four people to coordinate their schedules enough to get together once a week? Well, at least this past weekend we got to hang out at Alex's house, met one of his other friends, and all played the Paranoia Mandetory Bonus Fun card game together. It was fun! Maybe this other friend of Alex's (who for the life of me I can't remember his name. I'm so bad about that) will join our little group permanently and even if Ben isn't there we'd at least be able to play something.


Our apartment is currently in a mess (which doesn't help either) as we're rearranging things a bit in here right now. When we moved in, we'd put our library in the den. Now we got a new bookshelf that's taller than I am! and have put it in the living room. So the books are migrating from the den to the living room which is a huge project. I really don't think anyone in my family really understands just how many books we have now. It's a LOT. Then the couch that's in the den is going to be tossed out and the den is then going to become my sewing room. The dresser that's in there will possibly be moved to in front of half the sliding glass door to the poarch where my ironing board was, in order to make room for ironing board and sewing machine. Then the ginormous mirror we bought at an antique store in PA for $5 is going to be in the den and if there's still room, the cutting table will go in there as well. But that may be stretching it. IF it does fit, we'll finally be able to get a real dinner table in the breakfast nook instead of eating at the coffee table in the living room. Of what I would give for a house of my own with enough room for all our things!

Townhome prices down south of the mixing bowl have gone to $250,000 from $300,000, which is a good start. We're hoping they'll get lower and that we'll be able to afford something north of the mixing bowl. The mixing bowl is where 495, 95, and 395 all meet, and it's evil. Anyone who's read Good Omens knows that I'm not kidding on the evil part. ;) Not to mention the fact that by the time we save up enough for a down payment on a house in the current market conditions - Seth says 10%+ at the very lest. We're doing pretty good with saving, but we don't have $25,000 in the bank. (or even $20,000 if we're hoping prices'll drop to $200,000) We're going to need a couple more raises and several more more years of living in a small apartment I think. *sighs* Someday. Someday.

The Suit Coat of Doom

This is the suit coat that has been sitting on my sewing table, ironing board, and sewing machine in various states of completedness since last summer. Or was it spring? I can't remember anymore. It was originally meant to be my fall project, but got pushed back in the face of my halloween/AUSA costume (featured in the background of the blog here) that ended up taking about 150ish hours mainly due to all that embroidery. I just didn't have enough time for it! So then the goal was to finish it in time for Christmas to wear home and show off. Maybe Dad would see it, realize I can sew well enough for something to be worn in public and he'd let me make something for him. I thought a nice felted wool coat to wear over his suits in the winter when he goes to church would be nice, but that's just me. But anyways, then before Christmas - right at the time I'd allotted for this suit! - Tina asked me to make her curtains. Which, of course, had to be done before Christmas so she could have them up at her daughter's wedding reception. So the suit got pushed off yet again. After all, it doesn't need to be finished for anything in particular. Then there were the costumes for my in-laws and now here we are.

Making a suit coat using traditional methods (none of that cheapy iron on interfacing here, I'm using hair canvas!) is one of the pinacles of sewing. I'm putting to use every technique I know, and learning a few new ones as I go along. A lot of the detail work has to be done by hand so as to be invisible from the outside. It's tough, but I'm really proud of my progress so far.

No, I'm not done yet, and I've got several projects pressing to get done, but I've decided that I'm going to finish this first. I misplaced my camera or else I'd post up progress pics, but today I finally finished the collar and got it properly attached. I'm grateful I bought a (really) nice (and fairly expensive at $20/yard, and that was on sale) 100% wool suiting. It's more forgiving of ittsy bittsy mistakes than other fabrics would be. I had to ease the collar in on one side more than I wish had had to, but a bit of steam and careful stitching, and it worked. You can't even tell I was worried there for a while from the outside! And hey, no one's going to be seeing the inside. ;)

So now the body of the suit is finished. It's all ready to be lined and have the shoulder pads and sleeves attached. I also got a lot done on the sleeves today too. Most of the time was spent hand basting the interlining in as well as catch-stitching the hair canvas that goes at the cuffs. Now that was fairly tedious to do. You have to do it really carefully to make sure you only catch the interlining and interfacing on the catch-stitches and not the fashion fabric or else it's extremely obvious from the outside. But it got done and I got the facing sewn in as well and all the pattern pieces for the lining laid out to be cut- which I'll do tomorrow. Between the nice charcoal grey wool suiting, black china silk lining, and hair canvas interfacing, I'm half wishing I had sprung for the silk organza rather than just the poly for the interlining. *laughs* But hey, have to draw the line for the budget somewhere. China silk is pretty cheap. I think I got mine for $7 or $8/yard, but silk organza is more expensive since it's used for wedding dresses a lot. *rolls eyes*

Speaking of weddings, Jessie - that's my sister in law - is getting married this spring. I'm making my own dress since frankly, it's easier than finding one to meet her specifications. Knee- or tea- length, short sleeved, and black. You'd think it'd be a simple request to fulfill, but most dresses I've found tend to be either (a) too short, (b) sleeveless, or (c) hideously expensive. I'd picked up this pattern when they were having a $1/pattern sale because I knew that someday I'd have to have a modest dress pattern :D Aren't I a genius. The square neckline may take a little adjustment though, as I don't think they even make square necked garments. But I guess I'll see how the mock up goes first. Not that this is going to be difficult to adjust once I know if I need to or not. Ah well. But the suit comes first!

I need a gun

Sometimes the crime in this city really freaks me out. Seth and I intend to get a gun in the near future. It's really just a matter of taking the time to go over to the NRA, sign up for a conceal carry class, shooting a few guns to see what I like best, and buying the dang thing. When I get police alerts for the area like the following:

The Alexandria Police report two other attacks against women that occurred over the weekend.

The first attack happened just after midnight Saturday. Police said a woman was walking in the area of Beauregard and King Street when a man grabbed her. The victim screamed and fought her attacker and the man fled the scene, police said.

The second attack happened just after 1 p.m. Saturday at a McDonalds at the intersection of Glebe Road and Mount Vernon Avenue.

Police said a man tried to push his way into a bathroom that a woman was using inside the McDonalds. He is described as a white Hispanic man. He was wearing a black jacket and black pants.

The police stated that none of these incidents are related.

Anyone with any information about these cases is asked to call the Alexandria Police Department's Criminal Investigation Section at 703-838-4711.

Armistead Boothe Park Incident

At about 6:45 Sunday evening, an unknown suspect attempted to abduct a woman visiting Armistead Boothe Park. The attacker grabbed the woman and tried to force her away from the park, but she was able to successfully fight him off and escape without serious injury. He fled through the park, possibly through the community toward the Trade Center.

The victim, who is not a Cameron Station resident, fled the area and notified police. Numerous Alexandria officers, as well as a K-9 unit and police helicopter form Fairfax County searched the area extensively but were unable to locate the suspect.

The investigation has been assigned to an Alexandria Police Detective for follow-up. It has not yet been determined whether this incident is linked to a series of other attempted abductions in the City's west end and in Fairfax County over the last several months.

The suspect is described as a Hispanic or light skinned black male, about 5"8' to 5"10' tall, weighing about 180 lbs. He was wearing a black ski mask, black hoodie sweatshirt, black shoes and light blue jeans.

Anyone with any information about this case is asked to call the Alexandria Police Department's Criminal Investigation Section at 703-838-4711.

AND there's been another guy assaulting women all over the area from Falls Church down through Alexandria and a few of the other burbs in the area that they haven't caught. I may not be living in the poshest of areas in N. VA, but I'm not exactly living in the slums here either! And then there's the stories that Seth hears about at work. It's a downright scary world out there.