Mistress of Disguise

The weekend was stupid and frustrating, but at least things got done. M decided on Friday night, after I'd gone to bed, that he wanted to do the storage unit move on Sunday instead, so all of Saturday morning I was anxious to get started and losing my mind that he was still asleep at 11. Once he told me about it I calmed down a bit, and got started working on the ballgown bodice. I got the pattern assembled, mocked up, altered, mocked up again, and the final pattern transferred to pattern paper.

Sunday M got up and headed out, and it was just me and the baby for most of the day. While she was napping, I managed to get the bodice cut out, assembled, and lined. For dinner, I tried one of the recipes I found on XHS, honey garlic chicken. It was very easy, and tasted incredible. Lots of sugar, though, so not something I can make too often.

( Recipe below. )

After the baby had gone to bed, I managed to get the boning channels sewn into the bodice, and started drafting out the bertha for the bodice. Went to bed when I couldn't figure out how to cut out the bertha from my tiny scraps of silk chiffon that were left without completely botching it because I was too tired.

Monday was a holiday, and it was supposed to be the day I would move the remaining contents of the storage unit to the new facility. M got up late again, so I got a late start, which was nerve wracking. I got to the old unit to find it a hive of activity. Everyone was moving, and the place was buzzing. M had left me a lot more stuff to move than I had hoped, so I made a game plan and dove in. I managed to move all of the rolled bolts of fabric in one go, but the Jeep was really packed to the rafters. I may have too much fabric. 😅

Trip #2 consisted of a bunch of bins full of randomness. M had said that he'd moved all the boxes and bins and had left only the loose items behind that needed to be packed away, but that was not the case at all. He called me as I was on my way to the new place with that load and told me to come home and he'd take care of the rest. -_- Reader, he did not take care of the rest. He went to the old unit, assessed the situation, went to the new unit to see where I'd moved stuff, and then came home. Flames. Flames on the side of my face. 

He's going to get some large totes from Walmart to put the rest of the loose items into, and then he's going to move everything in one go. So he says. Chance has tomorrow off of work, so he's going to grab him and have him help again. This entire move is driving us all insane, and I will be incredibly happy when it is over. 

Sunday night I made hamburgers because they were fast. The baby went to bed without a fight, and I had time to attach the facing and piping to the bottom edge of the bodice, and to get the bertha bits cut out. Need to make a Joann's run for more ribbon for the bertha, which I really hope they actually have, given the state of things. I may just leave the bertha off so I can finish the bodice to a wearable state first, and then focus on decoration later. Bodice is around 70% done right now - I need to tack the bottom facing to the lining, cut out and add the sleeves, finish the neckline, and sew in the hook and eye closure. Fiddly, hand-sewing stuff mostly, blah. Going to try and get the facing done and the sleeves at least cut out tonight. Fingers crossed.

Had a very pleasant weekend, which started with M and I in the kitchen making spaghetti together on Friday night. Spaghetti is always a big production for some reason, and I discovered that our peppers had rotted in the fridge, so I had to wait until the baby was asleep (M was working late) to pop over to Sprouts and pick up some fresh ones. Cooking commenced when I got home, and M was done working by that time, so we cooked and chatted, and it was very nice. We ended up with probably the best sauce we've ever made, even though we did nothing different.

Saturday I was up before the rest of the house, so I had some quiet alone time to get some sewing done. The skirt has reached a point where there's too much going on to be able to wrangle it into the sewing machine, so it is hand-sewing from here on out. I finished the back pouf and stitched it into place, and by that time the baby was up, so I packed my sewing away for the day. Made sausages for breakfast, which we had with some fruit and cheese. Sometime during the afternoon I finally got around to chopping up our very, very stale hamburger buns and turning them into bread pudding. M had never had bread pudding before, and he proclaimed it "fucking awesome" so that's something I can do again when we have stale bread lying around.

The baby napped late into the afternoon, so M and I lounged on the couch together while he played video games, then when Chance was finally awake, M headed out so they could do some work on the Honda. Baby went to bed without a fuss, and I enjoyed the solitude for the rest of the evening.

Sunday was a lounging day again. M slept late, so it was just me and the baby at first, then once he was up the baby went down for a nap. M took over the TV to play video games, and I got the skirt off the dress form so I could close up the last seam. All it needs now is a waistband, which I'm hoping to knock out tonight. 

The day was pretty chill, and we polished off the last of the spaghetti and bread pudding. M went to bed early, commenting that it was a nice weekend. I stayed up later than I should have so I could catch the first two episodes of Common Side Effects, which I enjoyed a lot, and then collapsed into bed around midnight.

Our snow storm that came through and dumped nearly a foot of snow on our northern counties decided that we didn't deserve any of that fun stuff, and instead pelted us with sleet for the majority of the day, then heavy rain, and then sleet again. We didn't get snow until the overnight hours, which settled on top of the frozen mud, and then melted to form a gray slurry on Friday afternoon. But, I did get two days off work, so even if it wasn't a pretty storm in my neck of the woods, at least I was at home.

Friday was a hellish day, though. Our visitor, who was now recovered from their brief cold, had passed it on to me, so I was sick and I had my period. I was up when the baby was up, and we were trapped for hours and hours in M's office/the baby's room with nothing to do except try and calm a teething/cooped up baby who was out of her mind because she was refusing to nap, all because our guest slept on the couch until 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We don't really have ready-made food in the house, and I wasn't able to cook because of Rip van Winkle, so I was starved for most of the day. M slept nearly as long waking up only at 2 (they had stayed up late playing video games, because of course), and by the time he woke up I was so enraged and frustrated that I had a full-blown breakdown and ended up sitting in the bathroom for 20 minutes and crying. Our guest felt bad enough about it that they offered to get a hotel room for the remainder of their stay, but we told them they just needed to set a damned alarm, for the love of god.

Thankfully, they did just that, and Saturday was much improved. The baby was in an excellent mood and very happy to play independently, so I managed to get quite a lot of sewing done. M and friend went out all day since the weather was warm and the ice was gone, and the baby napped very easily and for long stretches, which meant I had a lot of alone time. It was very nice.

Sunday was not as good, though. M and friend took a short road trip to San Antonio, and I was hoping that I'd have another productive sewing day, but the baby was an absolute nightmare all day long. She refused to nap. She stood in the living room and SCREAMED and had major, rolling on the floor kicking and screaming tantrums. She kept trying to dig into the kitchen trash, and I spent a stupid amount of my day just chasing her away from it, and then being screamed at for putting her back in her play pen. It. Was. Hell. (I have ordered a locking trash can to replace our current one because I am absolutely done with her trash fascination.)

The only bright point was that she was so exhausted by the end of the day that she went to bed early, at around 6pm, so that meant that I had a quiet evening to myself. It took me a while to calm down from my rabid frustration, so I took it all out on the pile of dishes in the kitchen so at least it was a productive rage. Made a stovetop lasagna for dinner that was mediocre but edible, then dove back into dressmaking and managed to finagle the rest of the back of the skirt. It now looks like this, and I am insanely pleased with it. It's all just pinned together at the moment, so the next step is to actually stitch it together.

The baby woke up at around 12:30, but thankfully a bottle put her right back to sleep. M and friend arrived back home shortly after. My night was very short, and I am dragging mightily today, which is inconvenient because today has been very busy at work. Thankfully, my slow period starts tomorrow, so the rest of the week should be relatively quiet. I'm going to spend a lot of time in the massage chair in our relaxation room because I deserve it, dammit.

Winter break was very, very needed. The majority of the first week was spent decompressing and de-stressing. Neither M nor I really do Christmas, but we do a Solstice meal every year, and this year we made up a corned beef roast with potatoes and roasted carrots, and it was lovely. There was a brief moment when I thought I would have to cook a Christmas dinner because one of M's friends invited themselves over, but they canceled at the last minute, so I was free of that obligation.

I managed to get a good deal of sewing done on the black and gold ballgown, and I'm just completely in love with how it's turning out. The skirt base is assembled and lined, the hem facing is in, the ruffles are on the front, and the apron front is pinned on. The biggest challenge was getting the knife pleats to set in the metallic chiffon. It was very drapey and very springy, so I started by lightly starching the entire length of fabric. Then once the ruffle strip was cut, assembled, hemmed, and the ribbon edge stitched on, I put it in the pleating board, sprayed it with a 1/1 vinegar/water mixture, ironed it very hot, then let it cool completely. Then I pinned each edge so the pleats would stay put, and took it out of the board. Since the ruffle is very wide at 15 inches, it was wider than my pleating board, so I had to re-press the top and bottom edges, sprayed with more v/w, and then press the entire ruffle again, and then stitch the top edge of the pleats since the pins did not want to stay in such a slippery fabric. Then it was another ironing to flatten everything out. Lather, rinse, repeat for the next 10 inches, and so on until the entire ruffle strip was pleated. A major pain, but it did work! Here's the skirt as it stands now!



The last thing I did before the end of vacation was to put the hem facing into the skirt train and get the ruffles started for the back section. The entire skirt now has a 6-inch hem facing that's stiffened with tarlatan, to give the ruffles some support. 

Unfortunately, I lost a bit of sewing time because one of M's out of state friends decided to come and visit, and their arrival overlapped the end of my vacation. I spent my last few days off furiously cleaning the house.

Their visit was only mildly inconvenient before, but now it's actually disruptive because they've come down with some sort of cold and they're spending the entire trip sleeping all day on the couch. This basically makes half of the house unusable, since I can't cook, or sew, or let the baby use her playpen, and it's driving me insane. On top of it, the baby has a molar coming in and has been having a terrible time. Hopefully it's just a little travel cold and it clears up quickly.

A winter storm is coming through town in a couple of days that's expected to dump several inches of snow on us (anywhere from 3" from the more cautious predictions, to 13" from the more alarmist forecasters) which means I will likely have the last two days of the week off. The county usually gives us snow days for these types of events, so hooray for an unexpected long weekend! Hopefully I can get more work done on the ballgown, as I'd really like to move on to the bodice fairly soon. Hopefully M's friend stays awake during the day so the house is functional again.

Busy, busy weekend totally unrelated to sewing or chores. M finally had the time for us to go to the bank and open the joint accounts, so we spent a good portion of Saturday morning doing that. The rest of the day was eaten by switching all our bills and subscriptions over to the new card numbers, cancelling unused subscriptions, and figuring budgets. We'll be saving hard for the next 15 months (the remainder of our current lease) and then taking what we have and putting it down on a house. I am excited to get out of the rental game, and am trying hard not to fantasy house shop.

Sunday night I had a bit of time, so I started patterning out the skirt for the black ballgown. I drafted it from a diagram in Peterson's Magazine from 1877, and while it's pretty good as-is, I think there should be a bit more volume in the back of the skirt, so I'm going to play with it a bit more. Still, pretty pleased so far.

Christmas break was approved, so at the end of this week I'll be on vacation! Hooray! 

Found two fabrics that pretty much perfectly match a dress design I've been noodling over for a while, so I went ahead and bought them. I feel like I need to not buy any more fabrics for the rest of the year, the past week has been really fabric heavy! Anyway, the dress is basically this one, but done in black and gold. I found the perfect pinstriped metallic chiffon for the wide lower ruffle, and the perfect black/gold African george fabric at a bargain price (I had to make a new AliExpress account to get the "welcome" discount, but worth it to get the whole thing for $45.) I don't know when I'll actually get around to making this dress, but at least I'll have the fabrics now.

Of course, now that I've purchased 20 yards of purple taffeta, this black/gown is infiltrating my brain and wanting me to make it for Navasota instead. Classic CADD, I tell you what.