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darlingdeathbird
darlingdeathbird
13 October 2021 @ 11:15 am
La dee da dee da~ ~ ~  
The shortest explanation for why I've not updated in a little while is that I've had my nose in a sewing machine!

As I told a friend, it's like I've got a fever! And the only prescription is more cowbell costume sewing. I mean gee, I wish I could be this way about writing: wake up, get right to it, do it all day, make significant progress, go to bed satisfied and already devising my next steps. But that certainly doesn't happen.


Nevertheless, I slaved over the vest until it was done. It was a lot of tedious work, and towards the end I was about to cry because little hiccups were happening with the lining that I had to redo a handful of times... BUT, mostly it was exhilarating to see it come together. It fits and it looks a lot like his. I wanted it to have welt pockets with hooks inside to attach the chains, so it happened! They didn't turn out great, but they're functional and mostly blend in.




Ahhh? I will baby it until the end of time, yes I will.

The suit jacket was also started, like right away. Last Friday, the fabric arrived, and I was scared just to open the package and see whether the color turned out right, but it ended up being fine. Maybe a bit less warm of a purple than his, but honestly, the shade of his suit isn't clear, having appeared in so many different media (youtube videos, disney plus, magazines, picture books) of varying quality. Mostly what I mean is that my fabric is not the exact shade of purple that his suit is, subjectively, in my mind. lol But it's close. And when I saw that everything was okay, I got very excited and was already working on it by the evening.

Because I had planned and practiced the jacket so well, all I had to do was cut out my pattern pieces from a blueprint I had of the whole thing (version 3.5), cut out the fabric, and start putting it together. I had already laid awake at night devising the best order in which to do all the steps, so... it was incredibly smooth. And the fabric is marvelous. It was what I paid for (in total, it cost $220) It's like I'm creating a pajama tux. XD That's the best way to explain it because Ponte is such a fun, stretchy, soft material that makes wearing it feel easy and like I can be playful. At the same time, it looks refined and not too casual, and it's extremely well behaved... meaning it did what I needed it to do, didn't warp itself, or have trouble folding or fusing to interfacing, didn't get stuck in the sewing machine, wasn't sensitive to pins being placed in it over and over again. Dream fabric.

Here's an ambiguous progress shot... but it's easy to see from here that the tails were attached to the top without a hitch, and the pleats even worked out.



I have been somewhat at a halt with progress since the work week started, because it makes me so tired. I seem to need a lot of sleep, and I have trouble focusing in the mornings before work, even if I got enough sleep. The plan was that one of these days I would go to JoAnn's for more interfacing, but I just couldn't get my ass UP... Could not, would not, in a box, in a boat. All that seems to exist until 11am for me is the inside of my eyelids, and then I'm sipping my coffee like "whyyyy... why are you the way that you are, Jennifer?"

The damn suit needs more interfacing before I can seal it up. The only other thing I could work on was the sleeves, but they are a NIGHTMARE. I got some good advice from Zoey, and I will try again tomorrow, Jesus help me. I don't even believe in Jesus, but Jesus, if you are there...? This is what I will need you for, in my lifetime.

The pants, I don't even want to talk about pants yet. There are no pants to speak of yet.

~ ~ ~
 

Besides this costume? There is a *chef-kiss* beautiful lack of events in my life, and I have no problem with that. Nothing is going wrong. I'm more comfortable with work and everything that must be done there, I discovered that more CBD really helped, doc has me on a different triptan medication for migraines and it seems to work better, and the Boysenberry... also behaves. I love that car.

The license plates just arrived, too, so in due time, probably after Halloween, I will register for DoorDash and see what all that is about. See whether I can make some extra $$$.

I also got a raise - everybody did.

It's actually Autumn now, and it's pleasantly chilly, and all the delightful foods... Don't judge me, but I just eat the caramel sauce by itself. I bought the apples that go with it, but I find that they ruin the caramel because they're too tangy and watery, and to me it's not a good combination. lol So I eat a slice of apple by itself. Then I dunk my finger in the caramel. It's a thing that I do. I also slice up cheese, and instead of putting it on crackers, I eat a cracker and then a cheese, cracker, then a cheese. fff

Well, this entry is getting stupid now. Tata!,
🧡J

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Igenlode Wordsmith[personal profile] igenlode on October 16th, 2021 05:30 pm (UTC)
Nice pictures! What's the problem with the sleeves - construction, or setting them in? The traditional method is to shrink-fit them after sewing, using steam and a hot iron, but I doubt that would work with Ponte instead of woollen cloth, whatever its other virtues :-p

We have toffee-apples, which sounds like the same idea as your 'apples and caramel sauce', but even with good toffee the actual apple part tends to be very disappointing.
https://realfood.tesco.com/step-by-step/how-to-make-toffee-apples.html

And modern-day commercial toffee-apples tend to be covered in cheap pink boiled sugar instead of real toffee (possibly imported American 'candy apples', from a quick look at the Web) with the apples being almost completely flavourless, and are thus are not worth having on either count :-(

But I succeeded in making some very nice chocolate caramel sauce to pour over the remains of a rather overripe pear (and subsequently a chopped apple, on the following day), simply by boiling up some sugar in some melted butter with a tablespoon of evaporated milk and a few squares of dark chocolate. I don't think you're supposed to boil chocolate, but it had to be boiled in order to caramelise the sugar -- I should probably have cooled the sauce and melted the chocolate into it afterwards! It did go a bit claggy, but when I added a splash of water to thin it out a bit and stirred furiously, it turned into a beautiful silky smooth sauce (that subsequently set solid). And it was extremely tasty, and quite concealed the deficiencies of the pear :-p
darlingdeathbird[personal profile] darlingdeathbird on October 17th, 2021 07:06 pm (UTC)
Hey! I hope you've been well. Thank you!
Those sleeves, lol. Well, the biggest thing which made the sleeves a problem was that I was improvising a pattern that I thought would yield the right results, and I was way off. After some googling, I discovered that the type of sleeve I was trying to make was called a "leg of mutton", hahahah, so I watched a couple tutorials on that. From there, it was easy, because the other things I was doing were mostly correct. I used a basting thread to gather the pleats, and then hand sewed it to the jacket a couple of times, until I was happy with where the pleats were sitting. I'll post some pictures when I can. :)

Yeah, that link is usually what a candied apple looks like here, with the caramel. At the store where I work, we just have caramel sauce advertised along with stacks of apples. XD But that's fine, I think I prefer having the control to cut up the apple or use as much caramel as I please. Apples on a stick are a MESS! As for other candied fruit, which are covered in sugar and not caramel -- I don't think is an American thing, because I've never seen them in real life. Recently, I saw them in a video with Asian sweets, but I don't know where they are prominent?

A chocolate sauce sounds niiice, much tastier. If I were to pick a fruit to go with that, I'd probably say bananas. And I imagine you could dress them up with nuts or sprinkles and not make as big a mess.