Colonial Williamsburg

Aaah, so much for getting back into posting.
Trying again.

This time with pictures from the Colonial Williamsburg trip we took in June, because AJ edited them so I don't have to bother with that!

First time there for all of us!
I could easily spend a lot longer than we did, pouring through the museums but alas AJ, Judy, and their partners... none of them museum people! 

2016 Photoshoot: Jareth

This costume was actually the main reason for that photoshoot weekend!

 I made this for Costume College 2015, but never actually finished it with a correct necklace/symbol and his chest piece. AJ also didn't completely finish her costume for that year, so we decided to make this photoshooting weekend the goal to get them done!

2016 Photoshoot: Jedi & Vilya

On another day we did two of my semi original outfits.
In 2008 I made an original Jedi, based a bit on Luminara Unduli/Barriss Offee. It's not really a feat of construction or anything, but since we were already taking pictures and I didn't have any it worked.

The other outfit was made in 2005 for a masquerade entry, the three of us were meant to be Elvish personifications of the three rings of power from Lord of the Rings. I was Vilya, the ring of air. As Elrond's ring, I based my design basically on a mishmash of his movie costumes just in all white.

2016 Photoshoot: Ayame and Hotohori

Oh man, I've had these posts sitting half finished in my drafts for awhile now.
Going to try to get back into the swing of posting with several "catch up" posts from 2016 (I don't even know what happened to blogging in 2016!)

So first up, back in September AJ & I took a few days off too photoshoot old costumes so we'd have pictures before tossing or repurposing them.
The timing kind of sucked for real life reasons, but I went ahead and did it and here are the results.

On day One we shot Ayame from Fruits Basket, which I made in 2006, wore for literally 2 hours in 2007, and has been in a bin ever since.

We also shot Hotohori from Fushigi Yuugi, made in 2005 dear lord.

I live!

Oh man, I didn't realize it'd been that long since I posted.

I actually really miss posting! But I feel like my house progress isn't really... postable, it's so slow and the differences are that noticeable unless you're doing it or 2" from the thing being sanded for the bagillionth time. And for sewing, I get so excited to sew when I *can* sew that I forget to take progress pics 8D  Or they're gifts and I have to wait.

I'm currently gift sewing so, more waiting, but I realized I DO have some things I can post!

... coming soon.

I figured if I put this reminder to myself here, I would actually do it! So hopefully :D

2015 Roundup

I kept putting this off in December hoping I could finish some things, but that didn't happen. Then I was kind of bummed because 2015 wasn't very productive in terms of measurable things. I did do a lot and kept very busy, but not in the way of  "I made xxx amount of things awesome!"

And the things I did make were different from my usual fare (such as branching out into gardening [very time consuming], canning [ditto], baking [yup, same], and home improvement [ooooh yes]), and I spent a lot more time reading last year and attempting to work out (uuuugh, why doesn't sewing burn more calories?).

But! I feel like 2015 laid the groundwork for loads of productivity in 2016! Especially in the sewing department, as I got close to finishing a lot of WIPs so those should be wrapping up in 2016.

So, here are some highlights of 2015!
Sewing!

Messenger Bag for my brother

Okay I've made a lot of bags now, but I really loved how clean this one looked. And I liked putting piping in 8D

D's Wedding dress!

I just realized I never blogged about the complete thing, so maybe I should do that. But it was a really fun challenge. Also very time consuming now that I'm thinking about it, so that's another place my time went XD

Pencil case for my sister!

A simple thing, but I love all the fun fabrics.

Reusable Cotton "rounds!"

Also super simple but man do I use these all the time. And do my sisters, so that was a success!

Jasper shirt!

Actually I'm wearing this shirt right now. I only made two items of clothing for myself in 2015, so it wasn't exactly stiff competition, but this was my favourite 8D

"My Favourite Little Bag"

This was a fun bag to put together, and I've been using it as my purse. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to stop doing that 'cause I've just been carrying too much stuff with me 'cause with this larger purse I forget to clean it out more :/ But! It's still a nice bag.

Non sewing things!

Basically, my beets were gorgeous, and I enjoyed making loads and loads of pickles (boo, couldn't find the picture of my loads of cucumbers and jars).

For 2016 I really plan on more of the same! More using up stash, more gardening, more blogging (it may not seem like it, but I was waaaay better about it in 2015 than 2014), more commenting on other peoples' blogs (ugh, delurking is hard), more baking. Really looking forward to finishing WIPs, that's for sure.
And in the way of using up fabric that I have, I think a few Regency dresses and at least one Victorian are in order. I want to do more periods (though, who am I kidding, Regency for life!) but they tend to require large amounts of just one fabric whereas I have mostly bits and pieces. Possibly these smaller cuts can be used to create proper underthings, so when I feel like my stash is small enough to buy more fabric I already have those done, but we'll see!

November Happenings!

I have loads of little things in progress right now, but nothing finished just yet so it feels like I'm doing nothing >.<

So here's just a smattering of pics of two things I've been working on.

I posted this pic in one of the random pic posts before. The stooooory is, in December 2010 I went to Japan and thought I should make myself a lovely coat to wear there. This is as far as I got, that's the liner in the pic, but the shell is at the same spot. When I went to set the sleeve I reeeeeally didn't like the shape of the sleeve head, but I didn't really have time to mess about with drafting a new one, and I wanted to add some things, aaaand I ended up getting a lovely wool coat on holiday sale anyway.

It's B5425 from Butterick btw, view C cut at A's length (also note, it's going to hit just above the knees on me and I shortened it a few inches from the A cutting length, so it runs long).

Anyway, so got that other coat, folded this up to finish later aaaand... never got around to it ;_;
I'm very much deadline driven, so I have loads of half finished "real" clothes that get pushed aside for costumes or presents that have to be made at a certain time. It's been sort of nagging at me since I moved though. Then one of the bloggers I read sometimes posted about finishing a quilt she started in 1991 and I was like whoa, I do NOT want that to happen to me! I need to go through my bins and finish what I want to finish and toss what I don't.
Then I started to read Lladybird's blog, and she has an excellent post on how she sews so much, and I realized that I *am* at my most productive when I do those things, I'd just never really thought about it before. But one of the things she doesn't do, that I clearly do (did?), is allow UFOs! (UnFinished Objects)

So that long story really is just to say, I'm going to finish this coat XD

That fabric is like ... twill weight. Which is nice, but not really coat-y. So I went to Joann to get some flannel to underline it with, and it happened to be 50% off, scooore.

More pics and rambling after the cut!