Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

Hmm… I’ve been up to some crafty things this weekend. On Friday, I pulled out a Faberge egg needlepoint canvas that I’d started long ago. I just had the background left and started on it while watching some anime. I was filling it in with plain old tent stitch so it went relatively quickly. I finished it up tonight and I think I’ll turn it into a Christmas ornament after I find some fabric for backing. ^_^

This morning, I went by the Rag Shop to see if there was any good stuff left for cheap. It’s really disappointing that the chain is going out of business since it was one of the only places I could get sewing patterns locally and the only other big crafts places I know of in the city are in Staten Island, which is probably the toughest borough to get to without a car (not to mention the $9 bridge toll if you do have a car >_>;). The store here was probably one that had been doing well, too, since it had just moved into a new, larger space last year. -_-

Anyway, the needlework stuff was almost gone as well as the fabric. Didn’t find anything I wanted in either section. There seemed to be a lot of fuzzy yarns like Fun Fur left though. (Maybe, because they’re really only good for little things like scarves? A whole sweater in one of those would probably look weird.) I’d always thought it would be fun to play with some of that stuff but had never bought any before since it was $5 for a little ball. Picked out a bunch of different colors and got 14 skeins for $2 apiece. :-D I’ll probably crochet a scarf or two and work bits into tassels mixed with other threads. (My brother asked if I was planning to get a cat. >_>)

Went to Barnes and Noble later in the day and browsed through the stitchery magazines. I picked up an Australian embroidery magazine called Inspirations which had some interesting looking stuff like stumpwork which I haven’t experimented with before. (For some reason, that particular store seemed to have mostly imported needlework magazines and few of the American ones. O_o) Might not actually do anything from it right away but it’ll be good to stash away for when I want to do something different. I’ll probably work on a couple more little crafty projects and get my sewing room set up before getting back to costume making.

Speaking of cosplay, I’ve been meaning to write up a list of potential costumes. Maybe, I’ll work on that tomorrow after I finish up some paperwork.

Well, MangaNext is over. Not the most interesting con experience ever but that’s partly since I was sitting in Artist’s Alley for a large chunk of the time I was there. It was nice to see people again and to get to talk to some new ones though. ^_^

Friday turned out to be kind of boring. My father dropped me off at the hotel around 10 in the morning but there wasn’t really much of anything going on until mid-afternoon. Sat around in the lobby until registration opened, got my badge, and then wandered a while before going to setup my table in artist’s alley. Stayed there until about 6 when I packed up and went to hall cosplay judging. A bunch of people recognized me as Count D, more than I would have guessed; I wasn’t sure how popular Petshop of Horrors was since it seems to be one of those rarely cosplayed series.

Unfortunately, my brother only got a few pictures of my Count D costume before my father and sister showed up to pick us up and they were impatient to leave. So, I don’t have any full length photos or back views. T_T Have to put the costume on again sometime and get better pictures.

Out of what I have at the moment, this is the one the shows the most of the fabric painting. For fun, I messed around with the eyes on this one in Photoshop since I know I’ll never talk myself into spending the money for contacts to actually do the mismatched eyes. *needs expensive toric lenses* >_>;


( More pictures )

Saturday was much better attendance-wise. Sat in artist’s alley again until it was time for cosplay chess. I got to be a bishop on the magic side as Terra. Boy, I wasn’t prepared when they told us we could talk after all. I threw together a fireball from fabric scraps as a prop the night before but didn’t really know what to say when attacking since FFVI didn’t have voices and I haven’t played the more recent ones yet. ._. The fireball got stuck for a moment, too, when I tried to pull it out of my armwarmer.

Afterwards, my brother took a few pictures of my Terra costume since he hadn’t photographed it before. (He wasn’t at Otakon when I first wore it.)

( Terra pictures )

Then, I wandered around until my father showed up and had dinner with him, my brother, and my brother’s friend. Heard the results of the hall cosplay contest (I won Best of Weekend with my Count D costume. ^_^) and watched some of the cosplay cabaret before going home. We ended up skipping Sunday of the con since there wasn’t anything we really wanted to do that day.

Next con for me will probably be NY Comic Con in February. I’ll probably just go for a day and wear one of the costumes I already have instead of making something new. As much as I like cosplaying, I’m kind of glad that I can finally take a break from making costumes and catch up with some other hobbies!

Something I’d like to do this week is dig out some needlepoint canvas and work on some stitchery. I found a needlework magazine amid the clutter on the desk a few weeks back and there were a couple of pretty projects in there I was tempted to start but I was holding off because I needed to finish Count D. One’s a needlepoint perfume bottle with beaded and metallic accents. And the other is a floral beadpoint purse. ^_^ I think I’ll start the bottle first since I’m not sure how many of the bead colors I have on hand for the other piece.