Lady of the Thread's Sewing Basket

Yay! I now have a full length mirror for my sewing room! My father had a big piece of plastic mirror cut at the store and even made little plastic brackets so he could hang it on the back of the door without drilling holes into the mirror itself. ^_^ My brother was complaining that it’s not completely flat against the door though and that it makes me look thinner as a result. :-P Also got some pretty curtains on sale for the sewing room but haven’t hung them yet.

The clothes for D’s new costume are nearly done and they look great. ^_^ I finished the tabard and now I just have to make the sash.

However… ARGH! I’m having pearl issues again and wondering if I picked the wrong thing when I got those light blue pearls. >_< I figured I should get a lighter color after finding the medium green pearls I did my first set of necklaces with came off looking very dark on camera. But seeing everything that I have now, the light blue kind of looks out of place with all the rich colors; I think it’s too pastel next to all the more saturated colors in the fabrics so I’m wondering if I need to go out and get another color.

And I’m finding that the weight of the pearls is making my layers bunch up unattractively on the right side of the costume. -_-; Going by the reference , the shortest strand should loop around the skirts with the ends at the left side of the waist and the center dipping down to about knee level while the longest goes down to the lower calf. That’s how long I’ve made my strands and the weight, especially on the longer strands, is pulling all the fabric against my legs and wrecking the A-line shape the skirts should have.

I’m annoyed because stringing pearls should have been one of the easier parts of the costume. >_< But I need a few sizes and resin pearls don’t seem to come in color larger than 8mm, which are too small to be the proper scale. (I’ve only been able to find the bigger ones in white, cream, and black and I don’t think any of those would be the best with my colors either.) So, that only leaves me with glass and Swarovski since they come in larger sizes and colors. My options seem to be either shorter strands or smaller pearls, neither of which would be as accurate. Suggestions on what to do, anyone?

Still tempted to try to put together that Kaleido Star costume I mentioned last week in time for NYAF. It’s this one:



I doubt anyone would know who the heck I’m supposed to be since Sarah doesn’t get much screen time in her stage costumes. XD; (Hmm… I wonder if anyone has even cosplayed Sarah before. I’ve never seen one and Kaleido Star cosplay in general is rare.) But it’s a pretty design and possibly doable within a few weeks. Plus, I should be able to cosplay the series with Carrie at some point in the future since she’s making a Sora costume. ^_^

Painting for the sewing room is finally done! ^_^ There’s still a lot to do, like moving furniture in and having my father replace the outlets, but I thought I’d take a quick pic to show what I have so far. The purple is a Benjamin Moore shade called “Amethyst Cream.”

I’ve hung a couple of my samplers since there were already hooks on the walls but I’ll probably move things around once more hooks are added. (Yay, they don’t have to languish in my room anymore because I didn’t have any place to hang them!) And the rug is one that used to be in my room before my mother took it out, saying it shed too much; I think the style is referred to as Aubusson. I’m a little tempted to take some photos with it (kind of like my icon) before I move all my stuff in there but don’t have costumes I particularly need photos of at the moment. XD;

Went uptown to the Met to see the Paul Poiret exhibit yesterday. It was nice although not my favorite of the Costume Institute exhibits I’ve seen over the years. The few fancy dress costumes included were fun and the animations showing how a couple of the garments were draped and sewn were interesting (although I wish it had been possible to see the real garments better since they were behind the screens where the sequences were being projected).

The other special exhibit I saw was One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movement. There was a rather whimsical beaded jacket with tapestry frogs. I also liked a box of chocolates which was actually made from bits of ribbon and fabric manipulated to resemble pieces of candy. :-D As for weird stuff, there was a heart-shaped (like the organ and not what you see on Valentine’s cards) teapot made of miniature bricks. o_O;

I also went up to the Chinese decorative arts galleries which I usually try to do when I visit the Met. They generally have textiles set up in one of the rooms but the pieces on display this time didn’t include any garments and weren’t the most interesting compared to what I’ve seen in there before.

A whole bunch of galleries seemed to be closed which made it somewhat confusing/annoying to walk around. There weren’t that many special exhibits I wanted to see either so it wasn’t the best trip to the museum. I finally realized I'd missed the Tiffany special exhibit, too. I wanted to see it since I love stained glass but I'd forgotten all about it and it closed a couple of months ago. ;_;

Went by my optometrist’s shop afterwards but it turns out he’s on vacation and won’t be back for another week and a half. I had wanted to see if he’d let me have a copy of my prescription without the toric so I could order powered versions of the theatrical lenses at Cosplay Lab (since the lenses I currently have for Count D barely show). I’m interested in getting the Violet Max contacts but not completely sure on the yellow. I’d really rather not have a cartoony solid neon yellow like the Moony style. Black Wolf looks the most natural (if yellow eyes could be considered natural ^_^;) and can be ordered in prescription. But it seems to have a ring of black around the hole for the pupil; not sure if it would make one pupil seem noticeably more dilated when paired with the purple. The Sunburst style, which I think is what novaraven has for her D costumes, also looks relatively natural but it’s not offered in prescription.

So, instead, I went to browse through a couple of the downtown fabric stores, looking for things that might be suitable for prospective costumes or for a summer skirt since I bought a bunch of cheap patterns at the Rag Shop a few weeks back. I was glad to see P&S Fabrics was back, across the street from their old location. If they hadn’t found a new space, I would have been stuck with no good place to get patterns locally since the Rag Shop is going out of business. Didn't actually find any fabric that I wanted though.

I also found that Pearl Paint’s home decorating store had been merged into their crafts store. Unfortunately, they seem to have dropped quite a few crafts things they used to carry. But they now had those little sample jars of Benjamin Moore paint so I grabbed a few. I’ve been trying to decide what color to paint the room which my parents are letting me have as a sewing room. Looked at those little paint color cards at Sears a few weeks ago and got nowhere since I wasn’t sure what would actually look good on a wall although I knew I didn’t want white. (My parents like boring white walls and that’s pretty much what our whole house is.)

The paint samples turned out to be rather helpful and I immediately choose my color after painting a square of each on the wall this morning. I even walked over to a paint store and had a gallon mixed this afternoon since there’s one just several blocks away. :-D I got a light purple shade called “Amethyst Cream.” The rejected colors were a pink called “Dog’s Ear” which ended up reminding me more of a cake covered in pink frosting than any dog ^_^;; and an orangey shade called “Coral Gables” which was just too bright and overwhelming. I love coral for summer clothes but I guess it’s just not to my taste for walls!

And, finally, vampricyoda's Anything Goes photo shoot is this Saturday but I’m not completely sure if I’ll make it because of annoying subway diversions. -_- Normally, I need to take the train towards Manhattan and then transfer to another train to get to the museum where everyone’s meeting. But with the diversions, the trains into Manhattan are not stopping near my house so I’d have to take a train going the wrong way in order to catch a Manhattan-bound train, which is just stupid. >_< And I would be doing this in the dress for D’s sister, which is not good with stairs.

I have a couple of other options, too, but neither is the greatest. The way I could get there without having to bother with transfers is if I got a ride into Manhattan with my father when he goes to work, hang around the city for a couple of hours, and then take the train back into Brooklyn. The downside is I’d have to be in costume by like 9 since there’s no good place to change/do makeup at the store. The other would be to take the bus to another station where I can get a train to Manhattan and then do the transfer to get to the museum. That would still be annoying and I don’t know how long it’d take since the buses can be kind of erratic.