Mistress of Disguise

The 4-day weekend was super busy, but I did indeed meet my sewing goal of getting the first tier done! Hooray!


Things learned - I like the 2:1 ratio of the ruffles-to-tier, but 2:1 was waaaay too much for the tier-to-skirt. The ruffles ended up folding over on themselves and looking really bushy and terrible, and since the ruffles are kind of the showcase of each tier, that was a major problem. I ended up chopping off 1.5 panels of finished tier, and ended up with a ratio just under 1:1.5, which still looks nice and full but doesn't interfere with itself.

2:1 on the left, 1:1.5 on the right. You can see how bunchy and stacked the ruffles got with the 2:1.

But, this is great news, since it means I'll be using even less of my plaid than I anticipated, and I won't have nearly as much ruffle to make for the other tiers! 

As for non-sewing stuff, I made a big pot of chicken stew, which lasted us a couple of days and freed up more sewing time. On Saturday, M went to Six Flags with a group of his gaming friends, and since I didn't have to take him into account for lunch, I made myself some baked fish and bratkartoffeln (German fried potatoes with onions.) To stretch the soup, I made some cheddar bay biscuits to go with it, and that extended the soup until Sunday's lunch. Sunday dinner was a frozen lasagna, because I have absolutely no vegetables left in the house with which to make anything. 

Intended to do a grocery pickup today, but WTH, prices on produce have gone up AGAIN. A 5-pound bag of potatoes used to be under $4, and how it's $7! For potatoes! I checked the bulk stores, and Sam's has an 8-pound bag for the same price, so I guess I'm going to Sam's for my produce from now on. Yeesh.

Threw a beef roast into the crock pot this morning to make things easy on myself. Since I was working up until bedtime on Sunday, I'm going to give myself tonight off before I dive back in to making ruffles again. Tier 2 will be faster since I can use the bit I chopped off the first one, so I'm hoping to see Tier 2 finished in two weeks instead of three. 

The days passed slowly on my mini-vacation, making it feel much longer than it was. Which was actually a good thing. I feel like I've been off work for a month instead of a week, and I felt very rested by the end of it. The days were not boring, they just seemed to stretch out forever. I blame all the damned summer sunlight. My body doesn't want to know that it's evening until the sun is down, and when that doesn't happen until 9pm, then the days seem stupidly long. Because they are. 

Anyway, Tuesday after work I picked up M and the baby and we headed to the airport to drop him off. We splurged on taking the tollway the entire way there and back, rather than fighting rush hour traffic on some of our worst roads, so we'd be on the road for as little time as possible. When I got home, I gave the baby a cool bath, some fresh clothes, and a bottle to rehydrate her, and she was happy as a clam.

Wednesday, as I sat and ate breakfast, I watched Tookie shuffle over to the sewing corner and pee right in the middle of the floor. This spurred a Great Cleaning Tornado - I swept and scrubbed the entire living room floor, rearranged the sewing corner by moving the desk to a different wall, moved the project baskets so they were both underneath the desk, took the crinoline and its petticoats out of the closet and set it up for upcoming Dickens sewing, washed a load of dishes, and deep scrubbed the cat closet. The baby and I then did a quick grocery pickup at the nearest Walmart, making it as fast as possible because of the heat. Feeling very accomplished, I made myself a taco dinner.

Thursday I decided to get started on the ruffle monster dress project. I sat and stared at my fabrics for an hour or so, redoing my math over and over, before finally cutting anything. After seeing the difference in how nicely they gathered, I was very determined to cut my ruffles parallel to the selvedge rather than the cut edge. To keep my math easy, I tore some 60" wide panels, which I then cut into 4.5" strips that would get sewn together into one big long strip to be hemmed and gathered. I say this as though it all happened on the same day, but it absolutely did not. As of right now, I have one ruffle strip sewn together and hemmed, and the gathering stitch has been run through it, but the ruffle has not actually been gathered or applied yet. 

Anyway, I do have all the strips cut for the first tier of the skirt. The plan is for 10" of each tier to be the plaid, 7" to be plain black, and to have three gathered ruffles (I originally planned knife-pleated ruffles, but that would have eaten way too much fabric) applied to the plain black piece. Yes, this will take forever. It's already taking forever! After five days of as much work as I could muster between baby duties, I have only managed to assemble one ruffle out of nine. I am glad I am starting this project now, which hopefully means I will actually have it done by December.

In sadder news, it doesn't look like Tookie will live to see the end of the month. She is nearly 20 years old, and in the past weeks she has been declining rapidly. She's thin as a rail now, barely eats a bite or two, and is very weak. M and I made her a nest of blankets and towels in a cozy spot on the floor and put a bowl of water beside her so she doesn't need to go far. The entire time I was off work, I would pick her up and take her to the little box so she could do her business, and then carry her back to her nest once she was finished. I told M to keep doing that during the day while I'm at work, because she's too weak to get there on her own. Poor old lady. We're trying to make her last days as easy and comfortable as possible. She's been a great cat.

Most are from '53-'54, but a couple of examples also popped up in '59. Ruffles! On flounces!

Put in a grocery order while at work yesterday and didn't realize that the app had, for some reason, switched from my regular store to one across town. When I went to pick it up, I sat for 20 minutes wondering where my stuff was, only to finally realize what had happened. ~sigh~ Got home pretty late, so I just whipped up some jambalaya from a box mix and called it dinner.

Got on my game for Dickens and reserved myself a room for the festival. The Victorian house I found last year is already booked out for this year (Dickens weekend always fills up so fast!) but there was still a room available in my second-favorite find, so I went ahead and booked it. Can't beat that price, I tell you what. The entire weekend comes to to just over $300, even with Airbnb's fees and whatnot added on, so score!

Started editing video last night and got about halfway through before the baby needed feeding. I should be able to finish up tonight and have it posted tomorrow. I think going forward that I'm going to bring my laptop to work with me so I can edit during my lunch breaks, get a little bit done every day instead of having to push through getting it all done in a night or two and having to work around cooking/sewing/baby.

Posted my year-end wrap-up on my costuming blog last night. I didn't include the half-finished things that I started and am still working on:

- grosgrain petticoat - two ruffles and a waistband, and this thing will be done
- corded petticoat - three more bunches of cording to go, then a waistband, and this will also be finished. It's sort of on hold at the moment so I can work on the bodice for the upcoming costume outing
- 1840s dress revamp - I've pulled the dress out and started taking it apart to address its problems, but can't actually fix them until I have my corset finished and a new dress form made
- 1590s stays - half of one side is finished, the other half needs everything done, from boning to binding. I'll likely pick up working on these again over the summer, when events die off because of the heat
- 1906 corset - while I did actually finish this one, I have to take it apart and cut it down so it fits again. I've taken this thing apart more times that I can count now, it really is the never-ending project. I'm pretty sick of looking at it.
- 1872 corset - I finished the embroidery during the last half of the year, so now I can finally finish putting this thing together. I actually need to do this fairly soon, because I have a whole Dickens wardrobe to build and this is my corset for that, since this pattern is good for everything from the 50s to the early 70s.

I'm really hoping to be more productive this year. I have an 1890s bodice in the works for the museum event on the 20th. I'm hoping to make a cape, hat, and a muff to go with that, but that's my stretch goal and will be happy with just a finished bodice. But, the bodice needs the revamped 1906 corset, so redoing the corset is this weekend's task. Other planned projects:

- Kent State brocade dress for Dickens
- electric blue plaid 1850s dress for Dickens
- paisley wrapper made from shawls with eyelet petticoat for Dickens
- Augusta Auctions dress but in navy/orange for Dickens
- 1590s bodice petticoat in red damask
- 1590s redwork jacket using the TrulyHats pre-embroidered fabric that I bought ages ago
- 1902 evening gown for La Boheme

I also have a giant wicker basket full of half-finished projects that's accumulated over a couple of years, and I want to try and work my way through it to clear it out. Some of what's in there is fabric for the above planned projects. Other stuff is pieces I've hit a mental wall on and put in the naughty corner, like the 1890s aqua petticoat that still needs another five yards of fluted lace ruffle to be made, which is a pain in the ass and I don't want to do it. I'm just going to start at the top and work my way down, and hopefully it will be empty come December 31.