Since I worked so much on costumes on Friday, I decided to take the weekend off from "costuming." Jared and I worked on some outside projects on Saturday, and I'll possibly post about those later.
On Sunday we took the kids to a late afternoon showing of The Lorax. It was our first ever whole-family movie. The kids did great! Nora got a little restless toward the end, but the theater was empty enough that no one minded her switching seats every 10 seconds. Watching my children watching the movie was amazing.
I got right back to work on the gold costume yesterday, and I've spent most of the morning today working on it as well. I have only ONE step left before it's finished! More to come about that.
When I stopped to take a break from sewing today, I decided to take some pictures of what my little costume world looks like right now. I even let the kids play with Play-Doh for over an hour while I took pictures. Well worth the mess.
So, without further ado...
Here's where all the magic happens:
This is my faithful little sewing machine. It was a gift from my mom on my 16th birthday. I have used it for countless projects in the 14 years that I've owned it.
It has several stitch options but is otherwise a basic machine. And I love it. I inherited my grandma's fancy digital sewing machine when she passed away. When I finally got it out to learn how to use it, it was still threaded. I froze, knowing it had been threaded by her hands. I couldn't alter it in any way. So after a little more healing, I'll get it back out.
Jared bought me a serger over a year ago, and I just recently got it out of the box and studied the manual to learn how to use it.
It uses four cones of thread, and I've only found black thread and white thread so far. It has two blades that trim off the edge of the fabric as it stitches over the edges of the fabric for a professional looking finish.
It has a little compartment to catch the threads and fabric that get trimmed off. These are from my most recent serging on the gold costume.
These are some of my most essential tools. I use pins to hold the pattern pieces to the fabric as I cut out the costumes and also to hold fabric pieces together as I sew them.
That other thingamajig is called a seam ripper. I use it to cut out seams when I've made mistakes. I use it a lot.
When I needed to put buttonholes on the gold skirt, I had to bust out this baby:
Yep, the old Manual De Instrucciones. I'm a little impressed with myself that I still know where it is after 14 years.
If you look closely in the upper right corner, you can see where my grandma wrote 1998 (the year I received the machine).
There have been several times during the costume project when I realized I didn't have something essential. I would go to my basement and raid my grandma's collection of sewing goods. I used one of her vintage zippers for the gold costume top. I also used some of her elastic for the neckline of the gold top:
I love that you can see the price tag: 37 cents!
When I went hunting for hooks-and-eyes, I found these two gorgeous vintage boxes.
The Kodak box is filled with both vintage and newer hooks-and-eyes.
The smaller box is actually an old box of assorted fasteners. I love the aged, crunchy tape. Weird, I know.
The lid kept closing before I could get a shot of the inside, so my hand model Nora held it open for me.
And finally, these are the threads and bobbins I have used for the two costumes I've worked on. The metallic gold thread was in my grandma's collection. She still helps me with my sewing!
Now you know a little of what's spread all over my house right now. I hope to finish the gold costume and get some pictures of it soon.
Have a fantastic Tuesday! Happy Spring!
Jessica
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