My friend, Blythe (an eerie Cassandra if ever there was one, and a fantastic author, too. Read her stuff!), referred to me as a dreamstress the other day. I love this term because it is an incisive encapsulation of the sort of sewing I do. I don’t sew clothing. Nothing you can find in a store will ever emerge from my machine, because bo-ring. I have made one ready-to-wear dress that I never ended up wearing and one hippie skirt that I never finished hemming. I’ll sew for mending sometimes, but I only make the sorts of things that you might want to take along on a trip to Faerie.
Anyways, NPR told me this morning that today is the anniversary of the day that the Singer sewing machine received its patent, so it seemed a fitting day to post a progress update on the coat I’m making.
Saturday was cutting, pinning, and Loki-appreciation day at Marie’s. We watched Thor, Thor II, and Iron Man 3 (no Loki in that one, but I so disliked the third Iron Man film that I wanted to give it another chance). Marie introduced me to the wonderfully insightful reviews written by Sonya Taaffe. I love the way she reads films and actors. These are the kind of reviews that make me want to go back and watch films again so that I can look for the nuances that she picks up on. Fantastic stuff.
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- The goal
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- Is it Marie Brennan or a dullahan?!
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- Skeptical Loki is Skeptical
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- Pinned front view
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- Pinned side view
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- Pinned rear view
Oh, and I guess I did some sewing. Mostly, I did some re-patterning to make a man’s coat fit a woman’s shape. I adjusted the front hemline to be assymetrical, and I did a bit of tinkering with the collar and sleeves. I’m a little miffed because the pattern I’m using doesn’t have the same seaming as the coat on the book cover. I could change it, but I really like the way the front hangs. I’m going to wait and see what Beth says. This might be the sort of detail that only another dreamstress would care about.
Dinner was a poke trio and a nojito: the proper care and feeding of your Dreamstress
I took Sunday off (well, no. I did a bunch of work-work and editing on Sunday. There are no days off, only Zuul), and I started the actual sewing last night while I caught up on So You Think You Can Dance. I’m really happy with how this one is coming along. The fabric isn’t slipping or crawling as much as I feared it would, and Thrace only attacked the project once. I’ve pricked myself a few times, but I haven’t bled yet. It’ll happen, though. It always does. The blood christens the work. Makes it whole. Makes it holy. It’s not a completed project unless you’ve bled on it a little bit.
(and this is when Beth emails me and lets me know that, really, she doesn’t need the coat, kkthxbai!)
Game tonight, friend’s birthday tomorrow, and I have proofreading to do for Women Destroy Horror, so I probably won’t be getting any more work done on this until the weekend. I expect I’ll finish the major work on Saturday and do the buttons and finishing work on Sunday.
Ugh. Buttons. I hate buttons. Maybe I can talk Beth into frogs or swing clasps…
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- Front view. I see you all judging my bookshelves!
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- This is what it looks like when it doesn’t look like anything
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- Rear view. I LOVE how the roses form a hexagon on the upper back. Booyah!
