Can you guess what it is yet?

 

Why do to do lists only ever grow?

No matter how much I get done my todo list grows. It’s just that I keep thinking of more things that need doing. I can see I am making progress but it’s slow and there are lots of small annoying jobs that need doing as well. I have to admit a fair number of them are likely to get done at my hotel on the Thursday night. I can clean boots there and sew on hooks and eyes. Infact sewing on the fittings at the last minute is just plain sensibke. I change shape often enough that even doing it that late in the process things still may not fit by the time of the show. Despite my eveil list of things left I can see progress is good and in general I am feeling pretty happy about the show. It is getting very frustrating not having any pictures I can post though.

It’s getting exciting now.

I’ve been making some progress on theis fashion show lark. I’ve got my evening wear to a point where I can see how it will look and I am so excited. I think it looks good. I’ve still got the structure in the lining of the top to do and some structural work for one of the other garments in the set, but at least I know it works.

The items for the fantasy category and coming along well too. I’ve got a base layer that works and a lot og the quilting done. There is going to be a lot of binding to do though, and I srtill need to test the fastenings. I’m sure I have some buckles somewhere which I need to find too.

I’ve got everything ready for the other categories I just have to get the work done. I feel so much more inclined to work on this now I’ve got at least one thing I can thing I can really see. I hope I will be able to find other shows to put this stuff in and in some cases other places to wear them.

Slow progress, but progress at least

Thursday turned out to be a non sewing day. Delivering quilts to Greenwich took a lot longer than I expected even without the side trip for more leather on the way home. Then it was straight up to Watford to see The Hamsters. It was a good concert and I got to meet up with a couple of people I used to work with. One of whom I hadn’t seen in far too long. It was a good night, but for some reason left me utterly exhausted on Friday. Porta loos are not complex and I shouldn’t have to read the instuructions multiple times to grasp how they work.

I got a little quilting done but no where near as much as I was hoping. My longarm thought this was the ideal time to start causing trouble. I don’t agree. I’ve spent a lot of time fussing over it now and it’s sort of working. It will do for what I need right now, but not for leather. So today I knew I was playing catch up and of course the machine still didn’t want to help out. It’s great when it behaves, but when it has a strop like this it is quite a pain. I’ve also been having problems with bearding. This is when the wadding comes through the outer layers of your project. In this case I am working with black cotton sateen. It’s the same fabric I’ve used many times before without problems but today I just couldn’t get it right. It has given me the oportunity to really play with my wadding and test the theory that changing which side of the wadding faces up will fix the problem. It doesn’t make any difference for me. I tried two bamboo blends, two 80/20 cotton poly blends and a cotton wadding. They all bearded about the same amount and behaved exactly the same both ways up. I also tried adding an extra layer of fabric under the sateen. That did help a little. However what made a larger difference was changing the thread. Some colours of thread made the problem a lot worse, some masked it but still pulled wadding through. Having tried 3 dark grey and a black I settled on the best dark grey. I wanted black but I didn’t want the bearding. Interestingly all the threads were the same brand the only difference would be dye and processing batch. Could some dyes be more prone to pulling through wadding? Could it be a humidity factor as the black thread is one I have used successfully on this combination in the past? When I have more time I will play with this some more. I would love to get to the bottom of the problem.

So with all that I have now completed the quilting I was hoping to have had done by lunch time and I have started on the cutting out. I need to make decisions before I finish the cutting out and I don’t think I should be doing that this late in the day so I will leave that for tomorrow. At least I have moved forward albeit more slowly than I would have liked.

Oh one last thought. Comment moderation has stayed on because I am finding more than half the coments coming though are spam. What’s more it’s getting more sophisticated with something that does relate to the post then the advertising,  I’m sorry that means comments take longer to appear but I think it does beat the alternative and as it appears humans are doing it manually there is no point using the validation letters to try and weed it out. What I find really frustrating is it must work for them to keep trying it, so people must be following the links and actually buying stuff. Why would anyone do that?

Consequences

I’ve been working on my bodice patterns the last two days. Given my weight always fluctuates wildly I knew I would have to leave this as late as I could to be fairly sure of a good fit, and yes I was expecting some fitting issues. I started by making up a test garment of a pattern I’ve used before and is customised to my shape. It wasn’t too bad except for the hulk feature at the back and shoulders and upper arms. OK I would have to start over.

Taking my measurements told I am now bigger in the back than I have ever been. Whups. So I redrew the pattern and tested the revised version. Hmm, now it’s way too big in the waist and bust?! Just before I went for the third attempt a thought hit me. Could it be I have only bulked up in the shoulders and upper arms? Well I now understand why tailors just grab seams and rip them. At this stage it saves a lot of time and works fine. I quickly extracted the front of the first bodice and attached it to the new (huge) back. Bingo, it fits. I can only assume all this heavy lifting and hand guided quilting has had an effect. When a leg of mutton sleeve is tight you know things are going strange. Still I have a solution now here’s hoping I can stay roughly the same size for nearly a month. Any bets?