1 Year, 1 Benjamin

So way back in November of 2016, I was cast as Morticia Addams in my college drama club's production of The Addams Family Musical. In order to get myself in the mood of the piece, I got myself some really cheap coffins from Michael's when I was at home fleeing Hurricane Matthew, and I figured I could paint them and store my jewelry in them and just generally have them by my station in the dressing room and it would be cute and all that. As you can probably guess, that never happened, and I've been using these coffins to store my bobbins.  I finally got around to painting one of them for this week. I was going for a "burial at sea" kind of theme, which is why I used the greens and added the octopus. I sealed it with a clear gloss that I had lying around, and was left with another no-cost project. Yeah, everything's pretty self-explanatory, and I like how this one came out! What I had: Coffin Paint Clear Gloss Paintbrus

Like I said, I was expecting to get busy, so I'm trying to cram in 3 crafts this week.  The first craft was to finally patch up a pair of shorts that got caught in the washing machine last year.  I already patched up the biggest cut as soon as it happened, but with more wear and tear, the weak points started to give in and form more holes. The worst part is that I've worn these since I've noticed the tearing at the bottom, but I didn't notice the hole in the middle of the butt until I sat down to do this. When I do a quick patch, I start by cutting out a piece of fusible interfacing that covers the entirety of the area.  If your interfacing and garment you're repairing have stretch to them, it's important to make sure the interfacing stretches in the same direction of the clothing.  Next, I iron it down to the inside of the shorts.  This provides something for the stitching later to go through instead of the delicate fabric aroun

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

So, a little bit of background, I work as a Temporary Recreation Aide at a County Park in Central Florida.  When I first was hired last September, basically my job was to show up, do what they tell me, and answer the phones all day.  Around October, my old boss essentially got promoted (I think he got elected to some sort of environmental council, but I'm not sure), and after about a month or two of limbo, our new boss came in with a vision to make the park even more interactive. One of the new things he wanted to start was to have themed months, where each month on Thursdays and Saturdays, we would have a craft and activity in the Nature Center that revolved around the month's theme that people could come in and do and learn a little about the theme while also having fun. January's theme was birds.  I was tasked with coming up with 4 bird-themed crafts to set up and have kids come around and make to take home.  I must have a pretty great job if I get to browse Pinte

I know, I know, I'm falling behind.  Let me live. So it doesn't fit as snugly as I would normally make it, but I dance in this dress and wear a thick tutu under it, so I'm fine with it being a little loose. This post will probably be more of a picture dump than anything, but I'll try to make sense of it all.  I was originally planning to have to draft the pattern, but I wound up finding a Simplicity Pattern (S8330) that had the exact type of bodice I was looking for, so I used that.  I did draft the skirt, but really I just made a circle skirt and cut some tentacles out of it.  I didn't have enough fabric to do it properly, which is why some of them are really short or really thin. Original sketch for the dress.  Marine Biology fun fact of the day:  Squids have 8 arms and 2 tentacles. So my goal this week was just to install the zipper back on a costume that I made for a Halloween dance last fall. Long story short, I made this before I brought my