Starting A New Hope Leia

Not wanting to be the only one without a full costume come Halloween.. I've started on a Princess Leia ANH Senatorial Gown for this year.

Although it's not soon, I want to give myself enough time to mess it up and fix it a couple times.

Here is my pattern (yes, I made it myself.. it's a T, how hard is that?)


The oh so fantastic polyester fabric (well the original was made from polyester.. who's to argue!).


Finally the Vinyl for the belt, and some button covers that will go in the center of each metal piece on the belt. I also have some white snaps for the back of the belt, but for some reason didn't take a photo of them.


The fabric is in the wash now, to get all the shrinking out of the way. Next step is to cut it out, sew it together, unstitch it, sew it together again, unstitch it.. etc etc.

BFN

Alms for the poor

It's live! That thing that has been taking up my spare time since the Showcase, and the main reason I haven't the time to blog.

http://www.almswear.com

Go check it out.. it support the poor with some seriously awesome t-shirt designs.

I'm not proud of my backend code, (front end is all my mate Matt Steger) I was in such a hurry, I sort of cobbled it together. If you push it too hard it might fall over, so you smart testing people out there be gentle!

BFN

Butter! I made some.

I read an article about making butter a couple weeks ago, and this morning I finally decided to try it. Honestly I can't believe how easy it is! I went to Whole Foods Market, and bought some nice organic cream, of course it was also very expensive (I did the math, it costs more to make butter than buy it :()

I left the cream on the counter for about an hour to get rid of the chill, and poured some into my micro food processor. I filled it about half way.





I turned the processor on for a short while, then opened it up, and was surprised to see it was already pretty far along!



I then poured out the buttermilk and gave it to a very happy Qyv and Druss. I added some cold filtered water from the fridge, and processed some more.



And poured that out, and added some more cold filtered water.



Finally I poured out the last of the water (as it ran clear) and turned the butter out onto some parchment paper. Using a butter knife, I rolled and squeezed more water out of the butter.



Finally I formed it into a blog, gave it one last squeeze, and put it in a jar!



Apparently this is called "sweet cream butter". I didn't add any salt to it, but I ran to the store and bought a fresh baguette with which I am about it eat it!

BFN

Really Red.. showing a big too much in front

So the dress I ordered in a mild panic actually turned out to be really nice! One minor adjustment is going to be covering up my.. ample.. cleavage.



Thoughts about how I might achieve that? I was thinking two things. One way would be to sew something onto the inside of the neck line. Either a small triangle of red fabric (hard to match), or flesh colored fabric (also hard to match). Another way would be to add some sort of "fringe" although I think that would go against the general style of the dress.
I could also wear a cami, or leotard that is flesh colored underneath.

Opinions?

BFN

Hit the panic button

I decided to hit the panic button today, as last night I came close to finishing the top for the rhythm outfit.. but the skirt isn't even cut out yet!

I bought this:


If my other outfit doesn't get finished, I'll have a backup. Honestly though at this point I don't care. I'm over it! The fabric you sew these costumes from is basically impossible to use. It slides all over the place, it crinkles, it makes the machine do funky things (even my shiny new machine) so that I spend half my sewing time unstitching stuff and starting over!

The whole showcase thing is just too much. I didn't mind match comp nearly as much, because I didn't have to constantly stress about costumes.

Perhaps if I were a better seamstress, or could afford to buy proper gowns it would be OK, but right now it's just not fun.

Wootz.