Oooooo, I Love Red Tag Fabric!

Found the most beautiful brocade back in the red tag discount section of the fabric store. I'm going to make it part of the bustle of my Halloween dress. I'm not even thinking about historical acuracy, not enough time or money. I think I've almost figured out how to make this work. I'm going to take a basic pattern I already had (top C and skirt F) out of the light blue and then use the gold and the brocade to fashion the bustle as a separate piece so I can wear the dress again. Life would be so much easier if I had a dressmaker's dummy, but I should be able to make it work. It looks great in my head, at least.

The pattern for the dress I liked wasn't available in my size to begin with and then the store only had the smaller size. I bought the smaller size to give me some ideas of how to make this work, if nothing else. If anyone has suggestions to make this project easier, let me know. Hopefully there will be work in project pictures coming.

So Glad I Wasn't Alive in the 1880's

I finally got Chris interested in an idea for Halloween costumes. If I'm going to make something decent, I have to start about a month ago. Unfortunately, the pattern he decided he likes is this. Not bad until you consider that puts me in the position of having to make myself something witha bustle. I've already got enough of a natural bustle, I shudder to think what I'm going to have to do now. I'm looking at this (the full length dress, not the saloon girl versions). It's the only thing I've seen that I think I can handle both in terms of construction and self confidence. Of course, the don't make that pattern big enough to fit me, so it will probably end up being a combination of that pattern and a couple plus size formal patterns I already have.

The good point is that I get to add some tatting into whatever I do! Period appropriate and all that good stuff :) I'll have to make myself a choker with some of the velvet ribbon. Sigh, as if I need one more project on my growing to-do list. The madness never ends.

Conversations with my Body

I have found myself talking to myself more often these days. It's not a matter of going stir crazy anymore. I've begun to bargain with myself. I've always done this on some level. When your body begins to break down and betray you little by little, you start to see it as a foreign entity. You separate yourself from the traitor. My mind still works fairly well but my body doesn't seem to be working with the same operating system.

I remember back in high school having to go up or down a flight of stairs to get to every class. I used to charge up the first five or so and get progressively slower eventually mentally pleading with my sluggish limbs to carry me up the last two or three stairs so I wouldn't be late to class. It seemed like the end of the world looking up that flight of steps. Boy, those were the days.

Now I'm verbally pleading, begging, and threatening my body to get me up the four stairs at the front of the house so I can get inside where the temperature is more moderate, where the bathroom, bed, computer, etc are. It seems a million years ago that it wasn't really so bad until the sixth or seventh chair. Now my downfall is the third.

There was a time when I could get up from the ground. At least, I think there was. Now when I fall, I have to wait for Chris to get home and help me up or scoot on my behind to the bed and hope I can roll over onto my knees so I can sort of flop up and pull myself up with the sheets. Straightening from a sitting position is nearly impossible sometimes. It just feels like I'm losing the fight by inches.

I suppose this sounds like a pity party, but that's not my intention. I'm honestly just trying to preserve a piece of my current experience to look back on someday when I've lost a few more precious inches. I suppose the best way to explain is to say that there was a time when I could run, when I could sit on the floor and get back up again. I know there was, but I don't remember what it was like. I'm hoping that someday I can look back at this post and say to myself "Look, it's a struggle, but it's always been that way."

I may have a traitor for a body, but at least I'm fighting back, even if it's just verbal threats.