I finished my robes:

Including the trial and error of sleeves again. Borrowed my sister’s rip stitch/seam ripper. Used it often. ‘Cause sometimes I don’t pay attention and forget there is a wrong side to one of my fabrics. I need to get myself one of those. (yea! Wists!)

With ghetto Ravenclaw patch printed on dark shirt iron-on paper. It’s actually 2 pieces overlapped because I’m frugal and tried to save paper–the printer objected. LOL Well, I wasn’t going to pay $10 for a patch that might have arrived on time.

Took this, my wand, and my bag from previous HP swap:

put on something close to the uniform (wrong colors, oh, well) to Borders. Their Potter Party STUNK. Boring. Tons of people standing around. Some monotone dude reading off raffle numbers. That was all. I should have gone to Diagon Alley in Oak Park. :,(

Not much effort at dressing up. Saw one attempt at a real robe. One reconned Quidditch outfit. Scarves, glasses with tape, generic witch hats, capes, the occasional Hogwarts tie.

They didn’t even count down to midnight. Someone randomly started a countdown–at 12:02 AM. Sad. I heard that the last release party had high schoolers acting out some scenes and parts.

Instead of following directions, I’m assembling red dragon my way. Sorry, sewing is not meant to be done with body parts after the thing is stuffed!

So this time, I have sewn pieces together, then added the body parts to the flat pieces (the above is deflated, if you look closely–the main body is not stuffed). The feet & arms are stuffed because I can’t seem to seam them unless I have a better idea of the final shape.

The innards.

Still needs a tail tip, wings, ears–maybe, horn, and a face stitched on.

Dress project stalled by uncooperative secondhand Singer machine. Am using battery-operated mini Rex Sew. Except I was naughty and impatient and worked on my Harry Potter costume before ol’ Singer balked and wouldn’t tighten any stitches, no matter how I fiddled with the tension bar.

Bobbin casings suck. They always give me the most trouble, catching the top thread and doing stupid stuff. I ran out of black thread because of them.

Am going cheap with HP costume. Printed up a Ravenclaw crest from the internet and have..err…pieces of it on dark shirt iron-on paper (I was trying ot be frugal and use up some left-overs. The ornery Dell printer balked and spit out partials). Some creative cutting and ironing, and I think it should pass.

Also adding a wand pocket for the snazzy wand from my last HP swap. (ran across idea while researching HP stuff).

I think I visited Hobby Lobby about 3x this week. Way more than usual. Hunting around for supplies for my swap angel package and stuff I wanted to try.

Who knew swap angeling was so hard? I think it’s just that I keep forgetting what she doesn’t like, and I’m always forever wanting to got overboard on swap packages.

There’s Star Wars fabrics on sale everywhere around here, it seems. I want to get a bunch of the kiddy-cartoon style fabric (now in clearance bin for $3/yd! :/ I didn’t get it on sale!) Saw some fun ones at Hancock fabrics, too, when I was looking for boning for the swap angel package. I think I got the wrong kind for this dress. Oh well.

First she didn’t like the print on the stuff I picked–which is a shame ’cause it would have been beautiful! Dragonscale/skin like. Now it’s wrong side out, and I’m going to try stenciling. Boo, so much more boring!

I made a shrinky dink-decorated spindle, but then checked the file I have–no plastic! D’oh! Spindle 2.0 will have permanent marker on it.

No plastic severely cuts down on the addable swap journal I want to make. Might have to just deconstruct a typical one somehow.

There’s a big mess in the tv room. WIPs for this package everywhere, plus some stuff that doesn’t belong to me. and then cover that with dog hair. Dog hair everywhere. If you vacuum, it comes back, because the source lives and sheds still.

I’m a swap angel!   This means I’m making a package for someone who got flaked on.  It’s for the Dragon Swap. Fun!  Pictures coming soon.