I Promise I Didn't Fall Off the Face of the Earth

Wow...I can't believe it has been about 6 weeks since I posted here, and the last post was only a sort of post... OK, back to it! So much has happened since I last posted that I will try to get as much detail in without making this the length of the combined works of Shakespeare. :)

The first major thing... COSTUME COLLEGE!!!! It was fantastic! I had so much fun and learned so much that it's hard to do it justice when you cannot see how animated my face is or me waving my arms around with enthusiasm...but as I am not going to post a YouTube video of myself singing the praises of the Costumer's Guild West...I will have to do my best to convey to you how great it truly was.

So the blow by blow on my costume... It was the first time I had done a waistband facing and on the original pattern I used it was a single layer of fabric rather than a lining and a lace overlay like I was doing. So there were some slight modifications and I was a little nervous about it and about putting in the invisible zipper with the bulky lace layer.

Turns out my invisible zipper was just that...invisible. :) Victory!

After I got this done, I started to concentrate on the beading of the neck piece...which was a huge amount of work. I had already done the long beaded strands, but I still had the whole medallion and the straps to bead. My primary problem was figuring out how to construct the neck piece so it would have enough rigidity to hold the weight of the strands but still go around my neck.

I had a mildly unexpected work trip the week before CoCo to Dana Point, CA - don't get me wrong, this place is beautiful and it was a really enjoyable trip, but personally, it was terrible timing for me! I had so much to do for CoCo that having this trip really put a wrench in my progress. That being said, I had a wonderful time, met a lot of great people in the industry I work in and professionally it was a beneficial venture and I am glad I went.

Some dolphins we saw while out on the Regatta. :)

So when I got back I had a weekend and a few days to try and get everything together. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was not going to get the corset cover done. I wasn't sure I would get the gauntlets done either, but I was going to try. So I continued to try to get the neck piece done as that was the brunt of the work that needed to be done.



I ended up using a cardboard backing for a legal note pad for the center, and matte board for the strips. In hind sight, the medallion circle was too big for my neck, but it didn't really matter...in hind sight, I would have beaded all the velvet and then glued it to the sturdy backing instead of trying to poke a needle through velvet and cardboard...it meant I used a thimble the whole time, which slowed me down...and often times I needed pliers to get the needle through the backer...not my smartest moment ever, but you live and learn...and now that I have done this, you don't need to make the same mistake....I do what I can to help my peeps! :)

When I left for CoCo I had the skirt for my costume mostly done, but I still wanted to add some layers of tulle under the skirt to give it the fullness the original costume had. I got up super early on the day of my flight (we are talking about 3am) and started cutting and sewing the gathering stitches into the strips of tulle to be sewed in later if I had the time. 
As this post is getting rather long...I am going to cut it off here for tonight...by Friday (I promise it will be up) I will post how things went once I got to CoCo. I have a lot of info about the classes I attended and all of the things I learned.