The Living Pine Tree

Just did a photo shoot with my amazing photographer (a.k.a. Mom) Thank you! The snow was deeper than we thought it would be where we chose to take the photos but Mom didn't complain at all  when she went down knee deep even though she only had her regular slip on shoes. What a woman!

Just starting the photo shoot and I already had snow in my boots.

 I had just fallen knee deep when Mom snapped the picture.

 Where in the world is Valerie the Living Tree?  I said it was deep. I went knee deep with both legs and fell forward trying to get up. Can you see me now?

 Sunburst!!!!

 I am one with the tree. Feel the tree, be the tree, I am a tree!!

Bwahahahahahaha!!!! I'll get you my pretty! Sorry, don't know where that came from. 

Cinderella Went to Town.

Just a few pictures of when I was dressed like Cinderella to celebrate the new Cinderella movie with the amazing costume designs by Sandy Powell. 

 I had 3 petticoats and a hoopskirt under a 5 layer dress. I found the fabric I really wanted to make the skirt with on Saturday night and had to whip stitch it in between  layers on Monday before work.

Back view of the dress. I don't have an elliptical hoop so it's not the same shape as Cinderellas' but it's close enough for me. 

 This is probably my favorite picture. The snow was so hard I was walking on top of it even in heels. It also helps that the shoes were my favorite part of the dress.

Had to have one of me sitting. I loved how  it just spread out like water when I sat down. 

10 Minute Table Runner

I saw this on pinterest and wanted to give it a try. Quick, easy,and fast. I LOVE that combination.  I'm rather happy with the outcome and an added bonus is it's reversible.

Cinderella 2015

I don't know if you have seen the advertisements for the new Cinderella movie but I fell in love with the fashions as soon as I saw it.  The way Sandy Powell designed the dresses being historically inspired but with a new and original take on them was phenomenal! Her blending of the fashions was perfect and inspiring. Lady Tremaine's costumes in the adds were especially unique and I think I want the green dress. But I really fell in love with Cinderella's ball gown and decided to make it since I had some of the fabric I needed already in stash. My wonderful Dad bought the underskirt fabric and the butterflies and crystals for me for Valentine's day.

For the basic design of he dress I used Simplicity pattern 5724.

Since I don't wear off the shoulder dresses or low front/back necklines some alteration was needed.

After two mock up tries I finally had a pattern that would work. Now I had to make the bodice. The only problem was I thought something was missing from bodice. I thought it was a little too plain, then while looking at some fabrics I had shoved in a corner I say a beautiful woven fabric that would be perfect! Well it would be as soon as I dyed it. So after sitting by the tote full of water, fabric, and dye and stirring for a half hour it came out a beautiful light blue making it absolutely perfect! The woven design came out a shade lighter making it exactly what I was looking for. 

After I assembled the bodice I put piping along the bottom to give it a nice finished look.

Color of the fabric after dying. 

  The skirt was made by taking four panels of fabric 42 inches long and 60 wide and gathering it to my waist size. I also had 3 gauze and netting layers on top of that making it a total of 4 layers to make the skirt. It was a lot harder to gather the skit to the right size than it sounds.

Gathering the skirt.

Piping added and skirt is FINALLY gathered.

It's gathered as much as I can get it to go and still it isn't small enough. I had to gather the gathers and force it together to get it to fit. I think I almost killed my sewing machine a few times. Poor thing. 

  Unfortunately because I had so much fabric at the top and didn't make it gored the top is a bit fuller than I wanted and the bottom doesn't fan out as much as I had hoped even though I have a hoop skirt on and 2 petticoat on underneath. Oh well.  I also spent about 8 hours gluing on a couple hundred crystals to the skirt of the dress. I don't have near as many as Lily James' dress and cant even imagine how long it took to put them on her dress since it's a lot bigger than mine. 

   I had a bit of a time trying to come up with a sleeve style I liked. I tried the ones on the pattern thinking it would be nice and be kind of a tribute to the original dress but very quickly found that I didn't like them at all!

They were HUGE and took away from the simplicity of the dress that I was going for. I ended up using the pattern for the over sleeve from the same pattern and changing the style of them just a little.

After the dress was assembled it was time to put the final touches on the dress. There was just enough of the blue gauze to put around the neckline. 

Here I'm trying to figure out where I want the fullness to be and the placement of the butterflies. The butterflies I got came in a pack of 6. three white and 3 gold. That was perfect because I needed 2 gold ones for on my shoes. I painted the remaining gold ones blue to match the dress as seen in posters.

 I glued them and the dress if finished!  Though I might add some blue gems to the neckline gauze to add a little sparkle. 

Oh yes, as you see the dress is done but what is that at the bottom of the dress? 

Glass slippers?!

Not quite but as close as I could get. I took a pair of my dress black pumps and spray painted them white. After the white dried I sprayed the with blue but it didn't match. They also crack when I tried them on. Uh oh!  I figured I could make due with them for a few hours of one day so I when I saw a pearlized blue pain in clearance I thought it might tone the other blue down a bit so it wouldn't clash. I had to paint it by had so there was going to be some brush strokes which I wasn't too happy about but at this point I was willing to give it a try anyway.  It actually didn't look bad at all once the paint was on. And to my surprise once I sprayed it with a sealer they didn't crack or creak at one once I put them on. It was like they came like that.

 After gluing the butterflies on I then spent 2 hours putting crystals on the shoes to make them more "glass slipper-ish"

And that's it! My finished Cinderella outfit complete with 'Glass slippers'  in less than 2 weeks. Longer than it would take if I had a fairy godmother but a lot more satisfying!  Hope you enjoyed the outfit. 

Cream and Gold Waist Cincher

I am making the blue ball gown based on the new Cinderella movie coming out this month and decided I needed to have a waist cincher! Lilly James as an extremely small waist that is amplified by the overall largeness of the skirt. To get a similar look I was going to have to do something drastic.  I have a corset but I didn't want to be fully laced up so I made an under bust waist cincher. This is the second time I have used a busk and am totally in love with how easy the corset/ cincher is to put on. 

 I modified the pattern I was using (because I have never gotten the hang of drafting my own) and added vertical boning to the top of the corset. It actually looks a lot better on me than my dress form and that has to be a first!

Looks a little better from this angle.....if you squint. 

Evergreen Gown

I finished the sleeves and added a green swag over the shoulders.The only part left was adding branches to the skirt.  After hours of hot gluing branches to my skit it was finally done! Only one tinsy winsy little problem, I wanted the branches to be a darker green. sigh. I put a large bad over the top of the dress took 2 cans of spray paint and went to town on it! It looks much better now. :D

Not sure why it's different colors in the pictures but the true color is somewhere between the two pictures. It has some lighter branches mixed in but they aren't as bright as they look in the pictures below. Weird camera.