Rejoicing with the Truth

I am a lousy photographer. With that warning, here be my attempts to show the costuming fabulosity that occurred at Costume College last week.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51592109@N08/sets/72157631011205972/

Life has been particularly atypical for the last two months, thanks to a temporary re-assignment at work. I'm now back to my usual duties, which is both sad and a relief. Enough of  that.

I have done a lot of sewing in the last couple months as well. Pretty much every chance I got, that wasn't at work or otherwise committed. First in June I had to finish up my bridesmaid dress for Bro. No. 2's wedding and my dress for the rehearsal dinner. The wedding was lovely (Saturday June 23rd), and both dresses were finished on time. The buttons made it onto the RH dress in the car on the way down the day of the rehearsal, and I put the hem in the bridesmaid dress right before getting dressed the day of the wedding. No worries! :p

I have no shame about sewing up to the last minute, provided that it actually does get Done In Time. That did NOT happen at Costume College last year. It didn't bother me too much at the time, but looking back I really regret the time spent staying up late and holed up in my hotel room sewing and being stressed instead of enjoying time with friends and hanging out.

So I made a determination this year to not be sewing at Costume College. Maybe a little beforehand, on the plane and with fancyfrocks, but not otherwise.

The problems are (1) inspiration doesn't strike easily for me, and (2) I have little experience in deadline-geared sewing, especially in a working/no school situation.  Making the two dresses for the wedding ended up eating WAY more of my time than I expected. In particular the RH dress, which was FABULOUS and you will definitely see it here later.  But it dominated June, so apart from diddling with the 1780s something-or-other I'm working on, and thinking through and sourcing stuff for the Semi-Secret Gala Gown, that was all I did.


Enough of wimpy woes, though! My life is good, and I am very blessed by God.

A way I keep motivated is by accomplishment.  I have literally made a list, beginning with things I have already done, just so I can start by crossing things off. I get an adrenaline rush from crossing things off!  That's one reason I hate making muslins and patterns, because there's nothing to complete.  I've done a lot of that recently, for both the 1780s pink wool and the Gala.

The timing of the Independence Day holiday and the end of my job reassignment worked out really well.  I got nearly 12 hours of steady work in on the Gala dress Friday, from finishing a last component muslin, to cutting out EVERYTHING, to completing construction on the bodice. (Down to the fastening! I'm SO proud of myself.) I could have put the rest of it together then, too, except I wanted things to hang a bit.

Saturday and Sunday I didn't have nearly as much time and Sunday I wasn't feeling so well, but I chipped away some more, finally bought some desperately-needed materials for accessories, and finished two simple components.  (See, finishing? Yay for accomplishment!)  I've also realized I need to go back to Dallas to get some more fabric, but both should still be there and it won't be expensive. I had the perfect amount of main gown fabric, jenthompson!

I still have a lot to do, though.  Time for a list!

First, Saturday was a crazy weather day. Let me explain:




To sum up:
* I started the day with fog and near 100% humidity, plus a steady south wind.
* By 12 noon the fog had disappeared, humidity had plummeted, and the wind was rising and shifting.
* By 2 p.m. it was 77°F with very low humidity, and the wind was from the southwest, steady at 31 mph and gusting to 45 mph. (!)*
* By 5 p.m. the wind was full from the west, still warm and dry, but the sun was dimming. The wind picked up a lot of dust southwest of us, and the western sky had a distinctly reddish tinge.
* By 6 p.m., due to the dust, visibility had dropped from 10 miles (a perfectly clear day) to 4 miles.
* By 8 p.m., the wind was from the northwest, still strong and gusty but dropping, and humidity rising once more. Temperature slowly falling.


So in one day, we go from warmish for January and wet (and windy), to quite warm and dry (and VERY windy), to very warm and dry and dusty (and still windy), to cool and damp (and still more wind). Honestly, I'm used to change, but this is one of the few days in which "If you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes" really seems to apply. As far as I can tell we had either two weather fronts move through or off, or one front and a dry line, in less than 12 hours. Even without precipitation, the wind directions and humidity changes are pretty clear.

* I had the windows open, because it was warm and I love the wind. I admit that 45 mph is a bit much inside the house! The only real casualty was a light bulb, when the wind blew one of my vanity lamps over and off the dressing table. The bulb didn't break, but the filament did.




Second thing - I've got so much to plan! I didn't make it to the DFWCG planning meeting on Saturday, but a terrific schedule for the year was decided on. Including a Dallas/Fort Worth area costuming retreat at the end of July! And speaking of that, I realized I need to send in my Costume College info if I'm doing that (which I really want to), and really plan out my costumes and sewing for the year. So a post on that will be coming up soon!

If I can ever manage to upload pictures, I've got lots of show of the house, plus the costumed tea the Guild had last Saturday, at which I met padawansguide for the first time in real life. :D 


As for my two minor victories: In the last week, I found two Somethings that had been inexplicably missing for months!  One was my two pattern boxes with ALL of my regular-small-envelope patterns. This includes all my modern stuff, most of my 1860s patterns, and nearly all of my vintage patterns. They went missing in the move and I couldn't find them anywhere.  I finally found them in the stack of boxes with school books and papers; someone had put them in a bond paper box, then stacked loose leaf papers on top, so just taking the top off the box made it look like a full box of paper. Yay!

The second find: All 9 paperbacks of C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series.  When I organized and boxed almost all of my books last February (while iced in for a week), I set them aside because I'd acquired the next "trilogy" set (nos. 10-12), but wanted to re-read the whole series to refresh it in my mind. And somehow I lost track of where I put them! So despite intermittent, frantic hauling around and poking through the boxes all summer (in the heat of the garage YAY not really), I never did find them. And although afraid to look, Sunday on a whim I pulled out my boxes again and finally found them. They were all there! I have no idea how I overlooked them, but SO MUCH RELIEF. I was really getting afraid they'd been thrown away sometime. Nine paperbacks are a bit bulky to overlook for a year!