Project the Third: Bodice, Assembled!

Sometimes you find motivation in the strangest of places. I can be terribly lazy at times, thinking to myself, "Hey, I got all those pieces cut out, it won't take me any time at all to sew it together. I can go play WoW (or watch this British mystery marathon, or whatever)." And we all know what happens then. Now, I go to lunch at the same place almost everyday. And there's a woman there I'd been talking to about this Steampunk Avengers project. Last week I find out she's moving away and she'd asked if it might be done so she could see photos before she leaves. And I thought to myself, "Hmm, dunno. I'll see what I can do!" So Tara, thanks for the motivation! :)

This weekend I sat down in my sewing area (which looks like this, by the way):

Yep, no large open areas here! That spot is just big enough for me to sit down in, and I sew with the machine peddle under my thigh. I know, I know ...

... with the piles of fabric I'd cut out a while ago...







 
... and I started sewing. Much, much basting. Much, much hand sewing (I will be a master at slip stitch when this is done). Many moments where the in-progress texts you are sending to your co-conspirators become a little strange (note: even though texts are all about brevity, under no circumstances shorten the update that you are putting all the boning into the bodice of your costume to "boning the Enchantress" ... that's just wrong.)

By Saturday night, I had this:

That gives you a pretty good idea of the size of my sewing area. The bodice is laid out in the "well" where I sit. Yes, really. Anyway, that's the bodice all put together with those fantastic little clips holding the bias tape over the neckline edge that I'd still left to sew. This was about 7 hours work, I think. There are three layers in the bodice and a fair amount of sewn-in structure. You can see a piece of the boning by the small scissors at the top of the picture. By the way, those are titanium scissors that my husband gave me. He'd discovered them while working on his clone trooper. They so rock.

Anyway, so Sunday I got back to work. At this point all of the machine sewing I could do on this was done, and only the hand-work remained. Remember how much I hate hand sewing? Yeah, still hate it. But now I'm better at it! End of day Sunday:

I have it laid open here (ie, the zipper and neck tie at the back aren't closed) because I was working on the fringe. In some of the depictions of the Enchantress, she has this long fringe skirt, so we opted in this costume design to fringe the bottom of the bodice and also to fringe the bottom of the front of the skirt. This was probably another 4 hours of work or so, then my fingers got really mad at me and rather insisted that I stop sewing.

Anyway, on Monday, the gloves I'd ordered showed up. :)
 

Yeah, I know it's not exactly the same shade, but you know what, I'm good with that. They aren't the same shade in most of the drawings of her either!














And that's the update. :) I still hate hand sewing, and I really suck at zippers (yes, I'll admit it), but the bodice is together! And now my co-conspirator (that would be "Scarlet Witch") is back from her vacation, so hopefully I'll soon get an opportunity to make sure it all still fits (luckily, it's worn over a corset, so there's a secondary fitting mechanism that does not involve, hopefully, my taking this thing apart again).

No wine recommendation, I'm afraid. It was terrifically hot here this weekend, and my sewing spot is right by a window, so I was pretty much on ice water and the occasional Diet Dr. Pepper all weekend. Besides, handsewing needles + titanium scissors + alcohol = much blood. :) Safe sewing, people!