Sunday, May 5, 2019

That Thing About Life and Lemons...


All the pleated pieces awaiting final assembly
The wet pleating process is awesome.  The skirt & sleeves dried exactly perfect.  They’re crispy & they change color in light like the original designer described the real dress.  My original bodice was awful. Patterning for smocking is very different from patterning to get a tailored fit, so the yoke looked stupid & broke up the line of the dress.  I fussed with the original pieces & it looked horrible no matter what I did to it, so I revised the design, got out some draping fabric & spent a couple hours draping & basting on myself in a mirror trying to get the fit & look I needed.  Draping is something you do on someone else or on a dressform that matches the measurements & shape exactly, so doing it on yourself is difficult & frustrating. It takes a certain level of skill & a special level of crazy.  I finally got what I wanted, cut it out, made it up in the real fabric, wet it & pleated it.
While it was drying I started working with the wig & headpiece.  After trying to force the whole thing to sit properly on my head with all the extra weight of my own hair, I realized there was no way with the tight fit of the dress I would be able to dress myself.  I can’t even hope to get the wig on myself once I’m in in the dress (it’s nearly impossible NOT in the dress). Also, I can’t drive in the wig assembly so I’d have to get dressed and have my hair fixed after I got to work.  There’s no way I’ll be able to wear it at work tomorrow.  I need a dresser with mad wig skilz and at least an hour of help to get me into my clothes.  So at 3PM I did a hard stop.  How do you blog crushing disappointment?   There is no way I can make this work alone, even though I had enough time to finish the dress.  Sometimes, life just sucks that way.  I’ve put a little over 8 hours into the dress. It needs ~3 more to finish. But not tonight. Tonight I just need to rage at the universe for tasks that take 2 people.

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