My future self

http://www.extremecostuming.com/home.html

I think this lady is great. She is funny, creative, talented and absolutly nuts! I want to be her someday. :)

Started the dress :)

Ok so I am moving along on this...

The bag is done, except the drawstring is not attached. That is kind of tricky so I am waiting to see if I even want to put it on. It requires some fancy braiding once it is installed and I need to be relaxed and calm before I do it. Right now is not the time.

I laid out the ground on the new fabric for the collar and neckline (did that Saturday) and on Sunday I started the stitching...I am a few inches in the collar at this point.

I figured I don't have to buy the fabric for the dress until november when I get back from my show. That is how long it will take to get the embroidery done anyway.

Tassles

Well I made the tassles and attached two of three already to the bag. You have to weave the ends into the fabric itself. They look cute. I also attached the silk overlap on the top of the bag, this was tough, but it happened. The silk was really light and whenI folded under the edge to sew on and then wrap the silk over the top it created this dense color edge, I hated it. Luckily I had intended on the top linen flap to double over to give more strength to the pull string area so instead I flipped it forward instead of backward and covered up the line with the linen fabric, and it looks nice.

I sewed up one side of the bag aready to make sure I can get it lined up ok.I originally made both sides of the bag the exact same, in forsight I probably could have made the pattern continue from one side to the other, but I wasn't sure if it would have come out right once I joined all the pieces and stuff, so it is nice the way it is.

I will have the bag finished -- most likely tomorrow -- and I picked up the fabric for the collar yesterday half off at ac moore, I love the email coupons!!!! They send you a new one every week. It is nice. And hopefully I will remember about knitters this week, I wanted to hear the lecture too.

Embroidery is done

Well the embroidery for the bag is all done...yeah!!!! I finished it on Saturday, while I should have been at Crossroads, but finances prohibited me from going. The good thing after this paycheck I will be caught up totally and working toward a new laptop and some savings hopefully. Again...yeah!!!!

I was reviewing how the bag was put together in period, and found I needed a silk ribbon for the top edge...I had silk fabric but no ribbon. So instead of going to the store, I got creative. I took a section of the silk fabric and some Yellow Chrome pigment from my illumination kit and some distilled water...and bam! Instant yellow silk for the top edge and the inside liner. I also don't feel so bad about the hand dyed threads not being so even, cause the silk piece matches the mango thread almost perfectly and that makes me happy. :) So I have silk hanging in my shower drying on a pant hanger with another hanger attached to the bottom to give it weight and straighten it out. It looks pretty I will photograph it before I take it down. So now I can claim to have hand dyed something. And actually in the future instead of paying a fortune for hand dyed silks I will just do that again. It was kind of fun, and I can claim I did it myself as well. :)

I got my graphite paper and traced out the patter for the blackwork band again, it is still really light and hard to see...so we will see if it works. If not. the last ditch effort will be to make up a small light table type thing and do a direct tracing...we will see.

I will also be making a body double of myself with my big girl manequin. I will shape it and size it to my size specifications so I can use it to start making the dress. Plus later I can use it to show the dress not on me at northern lights for judging and stuff.

I will also be picking up fabric for the collar and neckline this weekend to do the actually embroidery on that. So things are going along well.

Above is the current bag status as of five minutes ago. As you can see the right side is lighter on the bottom than the left side. You can see on the right where the first skeins of silk ran out and the new ones began in the upper right corner. I have a couple little fixes to do (missed a thread in the satin stitching or crossed it over, there are three, can you find them?

Other than that, it should be finished this weekend, if not tonight if I get really into it, but I doubt it I have to fix the zipper on my boyfriends carhart jacket before he leaves on Monday for a very long trip for work. So that must get done this weekend too. Plus that means I may be able to come to Denny's this Thursday...yeah! Depends on finances at that point.

Setback Number Two

Well, I gave up on the blackwork for a while and went back to the color.

I ordered the silks and they came in, and all was fine at first, but I noticed there were darker variations on the new mango than the previous, and the green is really dark compared to the previous.

It is good that I got them all at the same time so the collar will be the same colors, but the colors are not as nice as I originally picked out, and the bag is now lighter and darker in areas which is really noticable.

I still can't find the charger for my camera so photos will be coming soon. I will have the bag finished by the initial October 20 deadline for the a&s competition in CT, but I don't know if I want to submit it with the color changes...we will see. Actually the embroidery will be finished this weekend, then I have to put it together, and make the pull cord. I already made the hanging cord with silk I had.