Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

After attending several events in the Boston area that have required the use of a hoop skirt, I had determined it was time to upgrade my Amazon hoop to something more substantial (especially since I seem to continuously step on the front of my skirts while dancing). While at Costume College, I purchased the Truly Victorian walking hoop pattern and some hoop steel, only to get home and realize I had not purchased enough steel to make the hoop as patterned. My initial thought was that I needed to order a second set of steel, but I was reminded by my mother of the old hoop skirt I had sitting up in our attic.

So a little bit of backstory here; I have always been interested in costumes. Starting in elementary school, I began planning my halloween costumes months in advance, often roping my mom into making something for me to wear instead of the cheaply made options found at party stores. And for a while, my mom enjoyed making my costumes. This resulted in handmade fleece Powerpuff Girl costumes, a white fleece cape to wear over my Cinderella dress (which I have since repurposed into a new, more adult cape to wear with my current Cinderella costume), and eventually a civil war era hoop skirt and dress made from a purple tie-dye patterned quilting cotton and a series of simplicity civil war patterns. I loved that dress and wore it several times for halloween, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back for my mom; I had to learn how to sew. Jump forward to 2019 with the need for a new hoop skirt that would support my pink ballgown. So with the date for Victoria and Albert Ball looming closer, I decided to cannibalize my old hoops for steel and create a brand new set.

Construction-wise, I followed Truly Victorian's Walking Hoop pattern with some minor adjustments. Instead of just pinning the threaded hoops to the support tapes and stitching them by hand, I stitched the casing in place before threading the steel into the casing. The only issue with this is that the front of my hoops are not perfectly finished, but I'll manage. In terms of wearability, the hoops do the job, except I'm still tripping over my front hem. It looks like I'll have to go back to the alteration board with this gown!

Out with the Old, In with…the Old?

After a nice vacation and a decidedly undecided hurricane (which luckily only left lots of branches and minor power outages in my hometown, but no internet and landlines for my house), I figured it was time to go through my bedroom and purge all of the unnecessary contents. Now at first glance, I don't look like someone who is messy - I try to be quite organized with important things. But, my room and sewing areas are typically disaster zones when I try to keep them clean. Which is why a yearly purge is usually good for me to keep things under control.

"I think it's pretty, I reply."

Yep, another blog revamp. I was getting a bit tired of the older dull blue. I wanted something with a bit more pop (plus the header was out of date and I couldn't find the right file to fix it).

Haven't done all that much over the past couple days - measurements on Monday went well but were quite long and tedious. I got there at 9 and left at 7pm because we had appointments scattered throughout the day. There were a couple points when I had nothing to because of such a gap in appointments.

Still have made little progress on the 1930's dress. I need to work on the sleeves and sides and the collar before I can move on to making the skirt. I also need to get buttons for the blouse and a closure for the skirt, so it looks like a Joann's run is in order today.

Blog revamp

If any of you have been reading this for the past year, you will have noticed a lot of changes (or at least within the past couple months). I've been experimenting with backgrounds and such to make my blog much less blah. So I now present to you my beautiful new blog (with help from a couple blog freebie sites - tehe)!

Now if only I could do this to the disaster zone which is my bedroom.