Dear Constant Reader,
After not feeling terribly motivated for a while, I did a bunch of costuming in June. Most of it was improvements to existing acts, which I had been meaning to get to for a while.
I’ve been using the same pair of gloves for a couple of acts and I wanted Mina in Furs, one of my most performed numbers, to have dedicated gloves. I found a pair of plain white satin gloves in my closet and Devastasia had some great embroidered net fabric, which I cut out the motifs to make appliqués. I won’t lie, the hand sewing was fussy and tedious, but I love the result. I might add some rhinestones later, but I think they’re pretty as they are now.
The other act I do a lot is a striptease into a fan dance. For a while now Scratch has been suggesting I put some lace on the top of the undies. I had some lace fabric left over from my Lili St. Cyr lingerie project* which had a lovely decorative selvedge. It was a little tricky to make sure the tear-away still worked, but not too bad. Here’s Phyllis the mannequin modeling them.
 |
 |
I still need to do a bunch of rhinestoning, but I think they compliment the bra much better now.
And for the same act, I made these pasties to compliment my black and white fans. The pastie template was from Manuge et Toi and those hypnotic fan staves are by Donna Touch.
 |
 |
Next step, I want to make a g-string to match the pasties.
I also had a couple of non-costume projects. I have a table top ironing board, but the legs got wonky and it wouldn’t stand up any more. Rather than buying a new one, I made an ironing pad for the top of my sewing table.
It’s a piece of special insulated fabric, which is usually used for pot holders and the like, sandwiched between two layers of cotton quilt batting, with cotton print fabric on the outside. The insulated fabric protects the table from the heat while the cotton absorbs the moisture from steam. It takes up much less storage space than the ironing board did. Way better than a makeshift ironing surface made from a folded towel! (Note to self: put towel back in the linen closet) And best of all, almost everything came from my fabric stash**. Although I did have to drop a few bucks on the quilt binding.
Lastly, I’m contributing to a community quilting project and I had been dying to make a Storm at Sea quilt. I’m glad I started with this single block because it is hella challenging piecing. I love how it looks and do hope to make an actual quilt for me some day. In my copious spare time…
What have you been up to? Sewn anything lately?
*someday I’ll tell you all about that project because I’m very proud of it, but I need decent pictures.
**actually, I think this is the only project on this list for which I actually had to go out and spend some money.
These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 18 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page.
Oh, The Glamourous Life! 
Leave a comment