A Week in Progress 6/25-7/3

I am clinging to productivity by the skin on my teeth this week. It has not been easy to keep focused but I am doing my best!

What have I been up to:

• Dryad Costume

• Teaching my partner how to sew

• Choreographing a performance

• Repairing Flareon

• Much less reading

Dryad Costume:

Most of my week has been spent doing a lot of hand sewing on this Dryad costume for Ren in the Glen. I decided to finish the edges of my chiton with a blanket stitch, because I didn’t love how they looked when I did a rolled hem. This way I reduced bulk AND I will be able to add a crochet leaf border to it later. Once I finished the edges I connected the top panels to the bottom panels and created the channel for the waist tie. I am whip stitching the bottom seam of the channel for 2 reasons:

1) it doesn't need to bear any weight, the top stich is overlocked and is very sturdy, and

2) I wanted to hide the seam from the front of the garment. The weave of the fabric makes this pretty easy for only being a single layer of fabric!

I am also continuing to crochet lots of leaves for this costume, but because I have wool yarn… I have also started to experiment with a felted belt. My test swatch felted beautifully, and I'm excited to see how the larger belt turns out!

Can you tell Takoyaki is “helping” by laying on top of all of my work? How am I supposed to get anything done when he’s so cute??

Teaching my partner how to sew:

While planning out Z's Ren fest costume this week he decided that he wanted to learn how to sew, and he wanted to start with hand sewing. I was as excited about this as I was unprepared for it, so I grabbed some scrap fabric and quickly patterned a little bag on the fly. Because it's patchwork, this bag is a little more difficult than it really needed to be… HOWEVER, Z is getting great experience with some tricky sewing and is picking up the skill more quickly than either of us anticipated!

Choreographing a performance:

Flareon is finally going to be performing on a stage!!! I made this cosplay 2 years ago now, and it's one of my favorites to bring to cons. I'm so excited to be working on a performance for it, because it really deserves to be seen on stage like this. It's big, it's beautiful, and fan veils are fun, ESPECIALLY when they look like fire. I chose Burn by Ellie Goulding for my song because it was the most family friendly song about fire that I could find when applying to the show.

I was a little anxious about creating a choreography for this piece at first because I am still recovering from surgery, and because using fan veils means I can't do my choreography cheat of slipping Fly Fusion combinations into opportune locations. I have to come up with ALL of the movements this time. However that ended up not being much of an issue. I am less limited in my mobility than I expected, and I am struggling to fit all of my fan veil tricks into the song! The performance will be at CONvergence Con’s Cirque du Bienvenue this Friday, July 5th, on the Mainstage at 5pm.

Repairing Flareon:

So this last topic is a great example of why practicing in your costume before a performance is a really good idea. About as soon as I put on the belt to begin practicing, one of my beads fell off… beads that I had wired on to this belt. The wire had lost its integrity over the 2 years I've been wearing it, and separated. I quickly re-attached the bead with some thread and finished my practice session, planning to repair the belt after this performance. Well the belt had other ideas and right at the end of my practice another bead fell of the belt. So I am going to repair the belt before the performance to avoid a costume malfunction. I am using fishing line this time, and I think it's already looking much better than the wire did. Thank goodness I have 2 whole days to repair this belt before the show! And while I'm at it, I will likely properly finish the inside of the belt… it has been unlined with loose wires for 2 years… at least it's getting done now!

Much less reading:

While this is not my typical level of con crunch (thankfully) I am still preparing for an upcoming con, which is cutting into my reading time. I have read a couple of short stories from The Starlit Wood, which is an anthology of re-imagined fairy tales. I like it so far, the stories are pretty different from the original fairy tales, however I have been able to recognize most of the inspiration stories. I'm hoping to jump back into more reading next week after the con is done.