What have I been doing?

Well, the blog isn't abandoned, as much as it seems like it. I've had a change of career and it took a lot of my attention for quite some time. On top of that, in the last several months I've lost a lot of weight, which makes it rather heartbreaking to spend a lot of time on a costume if the end result is that it won't fit you in a month. Case in point below: my Arwen Evenstar dress.


Oh yes, that's a rich blue velvet, a very thin, delicate satin for the sleeves, and silver embroidered net at the upper sleeves and neckline. Also, silver lace on the sleeves. It's also fully lined in a satin lining. It fit me perfectly when I made it. Then I lost almost 40 pounds. It's a mixed blessing when you have this sitting on your dressform in the corner mocking you.
I do intend to see about making some adjustments to the size if I can, and at that point I'll do a more in-depth post about the dress.

Other than that, I've decided it's high time for me to learn how to embroider, so I stuck some muslin in an embroidery hoop and played around to see what I could do.


I also found a book on long-and-short embroidery at one of those table sales where you're tempted to buy everything because they're all reduced by something like 90%, and I decided that I should try some of that as well.


I have plans for long-and-short embroidery once I've mastered it a little better. (Yes, I did just sew one petal and leave it there.)

The other thing I've been doing is sewing for my husband. I promised him a pirate costume for the pirate fair but it didn't happen. Given that anything I sew for myself at this point may not fit in a few months, I selflessly prioritized his costume for halloween. So my plan was to sew him up the vest, shirt, pants, and overcoat from Simplicity 4923:


But I was also aware that he has a piratey shirt that will do, and could just wear regular pants if I don't get everything done. (Guess what ended up happening?) Anyway, I'll give that one it's own post, but here are a couple of pictures of the in-progress piece.



You can see that the leather-type fabric looks a bit shiny (it isn't really that shiny in real life. It's much more convincing). $5/yard! I got a bunch, because you never know when you need to have "leather" for a costume and it's damned hard to find.

(On that note, I'm actually rather intrigued at the concept of using real leather for costuming. You can't really do a good Aragorn costume without it, so we'll see.)