Struggling, at any rate. I can’t actually remember when I last posted. I’d need to look at it and check and I don’t think I actually want to know. Wait, yes I do.
LAST YEAR. OH DEAR GOD.
BUT I DON’T WANT TO GO ON THE CART!
You know what I’m blaming? Opera. So far this year I’ve made two role debuts (Mabel in Pirates of Penzance and Woodsprite 1 in Rusalka), and studied Czech diction because we did the Dvořák in Czech. And for that one I also helped out with costume alterations. Between that and working full time I have been one busy little sausage. At one point I worked out that I was putting in 50+ hour weeks. And my costume for the G&S was effectively a large lemon meringue pie (as is customary).
This is how I looked.
This is how I felt about it.
Understandably sewing’s taken a backseat while I’ve been putting in production calls and learning what sound a ‘ř’ makes. I had one mad rush when we did a Czech art song concert and the director told us she wanted brightly coloured cocktail dresses as a dress code. (FYI my concert wardrobe is the picture in the dictionary beside ‘funeralcore’) I had a grand total of 10 hours to either a) find something in the shops that fit the bill, fit me and didn’t break the bank (I actually had a breakdown in Emporium and had to go home. I was very stressed out at that point) or b) make something with the 4m of fuchsia silk a friend had made me buy on the offchance. Turns out that friend is pre-sentient. I went for hurriedly making something, whilst having an actual panic attack, and because I am completely incapable of doing anything the easy way, I went with the muslin that had been sitting on my dressform for the last 6 months that I’d pinned on there in a daze of admiration for tight pleats. You can see where this is going, can’t you.
I didn’t bother to hem it, and had only just finished the zip when my friends swung by to pick me up. This is what I ended up with:
WHY THE HELL DID I EVEN? WHEN ARE PLEATS SENSIBLE FOR THE TIME-POOR?
Again, why? And that’s not even the half of it, because look at the inside:
Yes, that bodice is fully boned. I still have no idea how I did this in 5 hours whilst hyperventilating.
Looking at it now I am completely amazed at what an idiot I am, and simultaneously thinking that my skills must be improving if I can turn out something like that under massive pressure.
Fortunately the other two/three things don’t have such dramatic backstories.
Thing the first: I finally used that chartreuse silk satin seersucker for something. A boxy cami with a creative strap arrangement and a by-the-seat-of-one’s-pants triangular panel detail.
By the seat of the pants as in, I only looked up a tutorial on setting in triangular panels AFTER I’d sewn it.
Thing the second: a ruffle-bottom racer-back cami in silk ikat with cotton lining, based on a Tibi one that I saw online that would have cost me $400 if I hadn’t had a metre of this still sitting in my stash from 2013. I made it yesterday, and because I was calm and everything stressful is finished, it’s all neat and pressed properly and symmetrical and stuff. This is the standard to which I could hold myself if I wasn’t so bloody minded under pressure.
I still haven’t figured out why I’m making all this summer stuff. It’s like 10 degrees in Melbourne right now.
And here they are all together with a skirt that I altered from a dress a few months back in order to be less 1980s French maid and more 1990s sailor scout. It hasn’t been ironed. I give no craps because you can’t see it properly in this photo anyway.
And you’d think the ’90s were back judging by the number of spaghetti straps in this photo.
Next up, as many button-down shirts as I can possibly make. They are my uniform, so I may as well make a ton while I have the time.
The Sewprano 