Female tusken failure

 So it was time for me to start with the soft parts of the female tusken, the main thing I have left to do.

After having stared at this image in high resolution for far too long I realised that there is omething strange going on with the fabric. The weave of the fabric continues without a break over the frayed edges and into the next segment. Either they have done some crazy pattern matching when cutting out, or the fabric simply isn't cut. The more I thought about the only solution would be if the fabric was pleated into tucks, and then those tucks would be cut open and the fabric frayed to create the edge. Tha would also explain why there is a female tusken whitout a frayed edge on the seams, it looks like it is inside out, and it might be possible that the tuck is so small that it didn't create a nice fray so then they just turned it the other side out. That is purely my speculation.

A huge issue here was to be able to work this by my own, it would have been a lot easier to work on a body.

Well some creatitivy with a styrofoam head and the stand for my dress making mannequin at least gave me something to work on, even if the head is way smaller than my own.

After a day of pleating and pinning and tacking this is where I was at. I felt like a Christmas tree when wearing it, definitely not the body hugging shawl of the female tusken. It was also way too short in the back.

I simply couldn't get enough fabric on the sides to shape it. With that I decided to give up on this experiment. I still think there is pleating going on, but I think that the shawl was probably first sewn together to get the silhouette, and then smaller tucks were made to create the fringe. Since I want to finish this fairly quickly I will probably go back to the common way of doing the shawl, which is to cut cut fabric strips and sew them together. Like I did with my first tusken female. Bonus is of course that it's a fairly quick and easy method, I only hope that the fabric I have, and that I have made some cuts in, for example the face opening, will be enough. But first it time to undo all the pleats.

I still think it's important to show when something goes wrong, it's so easy to just post the good results. And I am still convinced that there are tucks and not separate fabric pieces, I am just not the person to figure it out completely.

A UFO dress

 So with new inspiration I want to start on my sewing projects, but I also decided that I first needed to do a proper clean up of my sewing space. I live in a two room apartment, so my sewing space is a corner in my living room, not very big and it had gotten cluttered. So I sat down and made sure to sort everything back into its boxes, you know haberdashery, sewing thread, small craft things. While doing that I also found a bag with fabric in it. 

It turned out it was cut out pieces for a dress, and the description for the pattern was in the bag as well. It was the base pattern that I have used for the I heart SW dress, the little Greedo dress and the big Greedo dress. The last time I used this pattern was apparently in 2018 so I had no idea about the size of the pattern or what I had thought with it.

I sewed up the bodice and it fit. It's a very short bodice though, so I wanted to see if i could lengthen it, something I have done with the other dresses well. I didn't quite understand why I had cut out a variation fo the bodice with collar and decorative pleat down the side, which gives the dress a very vintage 1960s feel, and then I had cut it out in this very soft and patterned jersey, I had also cut out two sleeve ruffles for it.

Why I like this pattern is that it is very easy and goes together really quickly. I hadn't cut out a lining for the collar, so I folded it double instead, which made it quite narrow. I also skipped the sleeve ruffles and use the fabric from them to add a waistband to make it longer. All in all it took me around 2 hours to sew it together, of course it helps that I it's a knit fabric where I didn't have to finish any edges on the inside, and I now have a new dress and one less UFO in the sewing corner.

Inspiration is back and is called Project Toad

 After a January that had me doing nothing and feeling no inspiration at all, I feel that it's time to start doing something again.

In fact I'm now so inspired to start with new projects that I have put up a deadline that I need to finish my female tusken soft parts in February, see I even publicly write a date, so that I can start with the other stuff that I want to make.

I'm into two things - project Toad and linen napkins. The linen napkins are for my 16th century camp gear. Earlier this year I got a lot of old linen curtains that were going to be trashed. The linen is a bit too rough and not tight enough to use for clothes, but it will be great for household items. I feel like making napkins and towels will be a great thing to have going, and I can keep on testing embroidery and embellishment on them.

But the main thing is that I have decided to go for Project Toad! My husband has agreed to come one day to NärCon Sommar, and that he can be Toadbert.

Toadbert isn't the most common toad, but I feel that he fits my husband really well. I've given him the mission to find a pair of white trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt and a yellow tail, and brown boots. Cosplay is new to him, and I feel that it will be best to make him wear as "normal" clothes as possible. I will then sew the blue vest and make the toad hat.

I will of course make Toadette for myself. I feel that she isn't too complicated, but I have some decisions to make. How long do I want to make her dress? How long should her ball/plaits be. The length will also determine how big they are. I will get a longer plait with larger balls, but they might also be too chunky if I make them too big. 

For the toad head/hat I plan on starting with this foam pattern for a mushroom hat.

The pattern is from Pretzl cosplay, and is for quite naturalistic hats, but I think I can use the button mushrrom pattern and modify it ino a toad hat. Since a full foam hat is really warm I'm thinking covering the whole hat with fabric, and cut out venilation holes, probably where the white circles are. For Toadette's balls I'm planning on using styrofoam balls that I also cover in fabric.

Cover in fabric migh be trickier than just painting, but that will allow me to use the same fabric in the hat as in the vest and dress, so that it's totally matching. I'm also planning on using a fourway stretch fabric, might make it harder to sew the clothes but will probably be easier to use to cover the foam.

Well that's the plan and I am quite excited, now I only need to finish the Tusken and get my next paycheck so that I can start on Project Toad.