1 Year, 1 Benjamin

Happy Mardi Gras, y'all. When else are you going to get to wear feathers and purple highlighter? As a New Orleans native, I am blood oath obligated to wear obscene amounts of purple, green, and gold on Mardi Gras. The Orlando swing crowd is trying to get regular dances going in Disney Springs at The Edison, a really swanky industrial steampunk themed restaurant that sort of turns into a club after 10.  We tried Saturday nights, but that proved way too crowded for a bunch of dancers in a brand new joint on the busiest night of the week, so we're giving Tuesday nights a shot.  The Edison has excellent theatrical lighting for their own cabaret floor show, so I like taking advantage of it and wearing exceptionally sparkly things. "I was dancing and I looked up and saw the glitter.  It was like a spotlight turned on." -Our favorite lead, about me. The dance was promoted as a Valentine's Day themed dance, and everyone going was encouraged to wear red, bu

Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I wasn't sure how the taffeta would take being ironed, so I just hung it up in the shower and tried to steam it.  Didn't work that well. I'm working on a video for this week and next week's projects combined, so this write up may or may not be as detailed as the others. As some of you may know, I am a swing dancer.  Nothing too fancy; I don't compete or anything, but I like going a couple of times a month.  There's a square dance club in Orlando that gets taken over by the swing crowd twice a month, and it's always a really good time. Since there's a pretty regular group of people that go, I try not to wear the same thing every time I go.  Sure, I know I have a bunch of dresses I wear in rotation, but if I only wear the same one or two, everyone else only sees me in the same one or two dresses, ya dig? This week, my vision was to make a high-necked crop top with a white bra pattern und

What better way to celebrate world tutu day (2/2) than to fix up a tutu I made for my squid costume?  After all, what's a cephalopod without a cloud of ink? I'm going to apologize now for the quality of the photos.  I have really shaky hands and sometimes my camera can take good pictures really easily, and sometimes it just won't. Again, when I made this costume the first time, I didn't have my machine, so most of the sewing was done by hand and in the span of about 2 days, which left me with a wearable, but very sloppy ensemble. I decided to cut out the old stitches, then regather the tulle, and then sew it on by machine this time. The underside of the basque.  The lowest layer was actually not terrible, so I left that as is, but I redid the other 2 layers and added in a 4th. The waistband and basque is made of a stretch fake leather looking fabric that I got as a remnant, and then the skirt has 4 layers with a total of 16 yards of double layer black tull