Making a List (of Sewing Needs) & Checking It Twice (at least)

Heh. I didn’t even realize until now that there was a common theme in my post titles for yesterday and today (or I should say a common “thread,” this blog being so much about sewing and all). “Christmas in July” and “Making a List…checking it twice…”

Except that for that part about me giving the gifts to myself. But then again, some of my favorite gifts are the ones from myself. I always seem to know just what I want.

Thanks! I shouldn’t have!
Source: http://blog.altec-inc.com/

Anyway… Have you ever had those times in life where you feel like you’re waiting and waiting and waiting and then…bam! Everything just seems to happen at once? I mean, not bad things, but several good things you were waiting for?

Yeah, I can’t think of any times like that either. But this week seems kind of close to that in terms of this whole sewing and costume-making adventure.

I thought I had the arrival of the various “components” of this Costume Quest plot spaced out pretty well over this week and the next. The new machine and some practice fabric would come in time for me to spend some time getting used to the new machine by working on the DIY costume (using proper basting techniques!) and installing invisible zippers in scrap costume components, and then next week the professionally printed fabric would arrive after I had time for careful practice and planning…

But now it’s looking like there’s a really good chance that everything will be here by Friday (if not Thursday) including the professionally printed costume fabric!!

That doesn’t change the plan, really. It just means I have to discipline myself not to cut into the pro printed stuff before I’m comfortable with the new machine and installing invisible zippers, and basting, etc. It’s like how a pilot has to put in so many hours on a simulator and flying with an instructor before going solo. (It’s exactly like that, I’m sure. Flying and sewing, just two sides of the same coin, really.)

But really, it’s awesome and exciting that everything is converging, surrounding me in a good way. It’ll be like swimming in money, except instead of money it’s sewing supplies and fabric. And, of course, it’s kind of the opposite of swimming in money in that the stuff I’m swimming in represents a loss of money rather than an accumulation of such… Wow. My analogy generator is even more off than usual today…

So, you said something about making a list…?

Yes, the list…Lists, actually. These are by no means exhaustive and certainly not in any particular order:

Stuff I have/stuff that’s on the way–

• Black and Red Fabric for practice costume (arriving today)
• Black and Red Thread for practice costume
• Fabric marking chalk for light and dark fabrics
• Extra pins (finally got some)
• Sundry sewing supplies that I’ve had all along (shears, cutting board, rotary cutter, pin cushion, etc.)
• Sewing machine (arriving tomorrow) — delivery includes: walking presser foot; invisible zipper foot
• Invisible zipper for practice
• Professionally printed fabric (arriving tomorrow or Friday)
• Styrofoam head model thingy (needs padding to add a couple of inches of circumference)
• Other stuff I can’t remember right now

Stuff I still need/should get–

•  More invisible zippers (for practice and for the final pro printed costume)
• More black, red, and possibly blue thread (once I examine the final color and placement of the seams for the pro-printed costume)
• Worbla and black paint (for eye frames on practice and pro masks)
• Mirrored material for lenses
• An extra/better pin cushion (I like the idea of this long pin cushion)
• Somethin’ somethin’ for making the soles of the boots for practice and pro costumes
• Final plan/materials for eventual improved sewing work surface (a la my “futon mounted work table” idea)
• Ideas/plans/purchases of a good webbing material for the practice costume.
• Other stuff I can’t remember right now

Obviously, I need to take a bit of an inventory of my more immediate needs, and of course several of these needs can be put off until after the foundational work of making the actual costumes. But yeah, things are really coming together, as I said.

The funny thing is that this is all coming to a head right as I will not have very much time to do anything with it. I have Friday off, but that’s because I work Saturday, and then there will be the Sunday/Monday out of town trip, week of work, a long weekend out of town again.

But that’s probably good, since I mentioned a need to not rush the work on the final pro printed costume. And of course it is also good for me to get away from my projects and enjoy time with my GF and my family, maybe even spending some time in the wild world out of doors!

Pictured: The Legendary Land of “Outdoors.” I’ve heard tales of this place, but I thought they were only legends…
Source: http://site.recy-cal.com

Wrapping up with some moments of Gratitude:

Because my momma raised me to say please and thank you, I want to take a moment to thank some fellow bloggers/sewing enthusiasts/costume making enthusiasts. Again, not an exhaustive list, but some stuff from recent memory (the only part of my memory that is even slightly reliable)…

MachineGunMama: ALWAYS so supportive and excited with me and for me, and willing to share ideas and thoughts and opinions. Thanks! (Yay walking presser feet! And I am going to give that hand basting thing a try!)

Miss Leslie the Good Witch: She recently helped validate an idea that I was a bit dubious about. Even if she is just enabling my delusions, I appreciate it. 🙂

SaiTurtlesNinjaNX: A recent “arrival” here who jumped right in with encouragement and advice that is very specific to my needs because he underwent such a similar quest, trodding the path ahead of me, thus allowing him to share great wisdom. (Thanks again for the video that is uncovering the mystery of sewing 90 degree corners!)

And Everyone who actually reads and/or follows my little Costume Quest. Thanks!

Up Next: Tweaks to the Practice Costume Patterns and Plan, and maybe some pics of New Stuff

Christmas in July!

It’s been a long time since I got really excited about Christmas. For myself, I mean. Now, I get excited, but the excitement is for the sake of my daughter and my nieces and nephews.

I would like to say that my lack of excitement about Christmas for myself came about because I got older and more mature, and so on. But really, it started happening around the time I started wanting gifts that my loved ones can’t afford. This would be when my mom started buying me psuedo-gag gifts for Christmas, like Spider-Man Potato Head (I have two now, one from a Christmas and one from a birthday), or a Spider-Man poncho (which is probably child-sized, now that I think of it).

If you ask me, the web attachment should go on top of the wrist. Not that I’m being geekishly picky or anything… Source: http://www.coolest-toys.com

Anyway, my point is, I don’t lose sleep wondering what I’ll be unwrapping on Christmas anymore.

But that sort of excitement isn’t completely gone from my life! It’s just that it’s usually self-inflicted excitement. (That didn’t come out the way I meant for it to…)

Case in point: I just ordered the new sewing machine! Free two day shipping–one of the great inventions of the modern world (thank you Amazon)–will bring it into my loving arms by Thursday, along with a walking presser foot and an invisible zipper foot!

Ooohhh… Aaahhh…. Source: http://aromavita.net

The Singer 7258 Stylist. Check it out on Amazon if you’re curious.

I’ve also got some more fabric on the way, and an invisible zipper for practice. My plan is to practice with the new machine by taking another stab at the red and black fabric Spidey shirt, making the new mask pattern, and installing one or more invisible zippers in the first (disposable) red and black Spidey shirt attempt.

I plan to try basting this time around, as per my previous post, and will even try some hand basting at the suggestion of my blogging pal MachineGunMama, who reminded me that basting–as with so many things in life–is temporary (I may have paraphrased and added a smidge of melodrama there).

By then, I think I will be feeling comfortable digging in to the professionally printed project. I am super excited and eager to get started on that, and I think it is because I am so excited that I am being so careful and methodical.

There will be some other things going on too, which will be good. I do have a mild tendency toward obsessing over projects, so much credit goes to my daughter and my GF for pulling me out of my own little world of projects.

This coming weekend is my GF’s birthday, so we are going to a little town on the coast just a few hours away to stay overnight and take in the quaint main street shops, maybe do some canoeing, walking on the beach, and have some seafood. (I never knew I liked seafood until I ate seafood on the actual coast of the actual ocean; makes a big difference, as it turns out.)

 

Pictured: not where we are going. Source: http://www.visitnc.com

The weekend after that, my daughter and I are going to spend time with my sister and her family. My daughter always has a good time with her four cousins. They have a big yard where my handy brother-in-law has built a zip-line and a tree fort, and we usually cook hot dogs by the fire and do other things that we never do here, so it is a fun time for us all.

Smoky Mountains, the beautiful barrier I keep between me and my family.

So, those little mini-vacations will be a good breather before I dive too deeply back into my quest. And I’ll try not to spend the entire time talking to my GF and family about the new sewing machine’s 100 different pre-programmed stitches and large variety of presser feet.

Up Next: Making a List (of sewing needs) and Checking it Twice (at least)

Flattered, Humbled, & Disqualified

So, fellow blogger MachineGunMama–in addition to having one of the awesomest blog handles in the history of blog handles–kindly nominated me for an inspiring blogger award. This was way too kind, and honestly, I am afraid I have to disqualify myself, because I am unable to meet the criteria: In all honesty, I don’t consistently follow 15 blogs to be able to list them as part of the criteria for accepting.

Thus I must respectfully decline on those grounds (in addition to feeling undeserving in the first place), but I remain flattered and grateful. Heck, I’m just happy that anyone reads about my crazy quest to make a Spider-Man costume (or two or three).

MGM not only reads and comments, she encourages and supports, and of course inspires with her own obvious tenacity and passion in the face of her own life’s obstacles, be they parenting fears, financial stressors, moving to unknown realms, or stubbornly facing the frustration of daunting hobbies.

Come to think of it, what are you doing here reading this crap? Go read her blog instead. And I do want to mention those other blogs/bloggers that have been inspiring, encouraging, and supportive, even though there aren’t 15 of them:

1) So Sew Easy, for really giving me a great place to start with sewing and making patterns and encouraging me along the way.
2) Dinuvole Dicuori for stopping in with enthusiastic and supportive comments
3) LongBox Graveyard for resources and darn fine reading

And just anyone who reads and likes and/or comments (or just reads without me ever knowing!) and generally makes me feel like someone’s listening. Because as much as I like to hear myself talk, it’s always flattering when someone else seems to actually be paying attention as well.

And if you are still reading… One of the criteria for accepting the nomination was to list seven facts about yourself. I had already gotten that far before realizing that I couldn’t meet the rest of the criteria, so here they are anyway, in case you’re interested.

Seven facts about me

1. I think of myself as a Nihilist in Remission/pseudo-Existentialist. Because, really, Nihilism is kind of a non-starter when it comes down to it, isn’t it?

Feeling inspired yet? 🙂

2. Once I had my daughter, I finally “got” what my mom was always trying to explain to me about the feelings and perspectives of being a parent. My daughter is one of the things that put my Nihilism in Remission.

3. I have 7 tattoos. And I still have to mentally count them before stating how many I have. And I am not convinced that I don’t have one more that I am forgetting about…

4. I’ve been told I look like the following people at various points in my life: John Denver; Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver); Sting; “A Dungeons & Dragons Character”(?); Peter Parker (but that was after the first Tobey Macguire movie so let’s pretend that didn’t happen); Bob Harper (Biggest Loser); “German” (that one’s kind of non-specific)

5. I’ve had the following nicknames: BAM (my initials); Benjie (what my mom wanted me to be called, which calls into question the aforementioned love); Spot (by one friend in high school who thought that was a funny “dog name” alternative to “Benjie”); “Cool Daddy Ben” (by one friend in junior high due to some sunglasses I sometimes wore); “Leonardo da Benjie” (by one friend in junior high, in reference to my so-called artistic talents); “Bensu–the Wind” (by a friend in college for reasons I can’t remember–but we thought it was hilarious at the time…)

6. I have a third nipple in place of a belly button. I like to make things up for no particular reason.

7. Around fourth grade, I made serious plans for how I could realistically become a super hero (it involved Iron Man style armor). Nothing came of it. (But even if it had worked out, I couldn’t tell you, because that would compromise my secret identity.)

That’s it for today.

Next time, I’ll get back to those reasons my heroes are super heroes.

Not What I Said was Next, but here is some stuff

Non-Costume Related…

So, my daughter and I did not get around to Part 2 of her T-shirt screen printing yet. We did other stuff yesterday, which is cool.

We started with a typical lazy Sunday morning, watched some cartoons, she did some reading while I did some sundry domestic duties and costume design tweaking. Squeezed in some time on the treadmill, because heaven forbid I let my the calf muscle that’s been sore recently completely heal.

Once the GF was up, we headed out for brunch at a way-too-popular place where we had to wait for 45 minutes. I joked that the food better have miraculous properties to make it worth that wait. It did not, but it was pretty good.

We came home and all went our separate ways for a bit. I was sleepy but avoided a nap, knowing I would never recover.

My little girl went to her room, and I could hear her singing (turns out she was writing a song, which she later sang for me), and I was content that she was content. Well, can one be content while guilty? I was thinking I should take her out to the pool or something to enjoy the sunshine. But I was sooo sleepy…

I did rouse myself to do some more stuff around the house, and she did ask to go to the pool. So we headed out at what I thought was a late time in the afternoon, and found the pool populated mainly by just a few young adult sun bathers. We had the pool to ourselves for a while, then I got out, and was just getting K ready to leave when a bunch of kids started showing up.

She looked at me pleadingly, and so of course we stayed so she could play with the other kids in the pool for a while. Once we got hungry, we headed home, surprised at how long we had ended up staying. I was glad she had gotten some playmates besides me. I’m fun enough, I suppose, but it’s not the same. And I’m only good for about a half hour of playtime in the pool, tops.

We wound down the evening with pizza (frozen but good, especially the way food tastes good after you’ve been swimming for a while), a bit of video gaming, reading, getting stuff ready for Monday morning… It was one of those exhaustingly good days, and I slept through the night without waking up once, which is unusual for me.

Costume Stuff

So, I’ve done some minor tweaking to the Ditko design, and I have come to embrace it, especially after I modified the way I did the half-tone “retro comic color” look. I also tweaked the chest spider, made it’s legs more “surprised” in their configuration:

Now I am going to play with separating out the mask, gloves, boots, pants, and shirts in the pattern. I’m not totally convinced I can get it to a place where I feel confident about paying for printing it. I mean, it’s kind of like flying blind, in some ways, reconfiguring a pattern someone else designed… We’ll see. But if nothing else, I can have it printed with the sewing pattern “as is” and it will still be cool.

I also find myself doing a lot of patterning in my head (especially while I sat by the pool watching K play) regarding sewing a Spidey-shirt out of two different colors of spandex to get the basic color layout and then using a fabric marker to add the web lines… I don’t know. I need to focus my costume efforts, largely for financial reasons, but I can’t get that fully DIY costume out of my head…

And now…off to Monday!

Screen Printing “meh-ness” and Budget Delays

So, yesterday went by in a blur, in good and not-so-good ways, but overall a good day.

Non-Costume Stuff

We designed our shirts and exposed the designs on a screen:

I think whose is whose (is that grammar?) is pretty obvious. 🙂

I had actually intended to (A) make my Spider-face a negative of what’s shown above and (B) do solid fills for the letters and sun in my daughter’s design, as I always worry about the thin lines. And sure enough, that did come back to bite me later.

But first I had to rinse the exposed screens to clear out the exposed portions, and that meant leaving the screen to dry while we did other things.

We went to see Maleficent, which I enjoyed. I had heard such bad things about it, but I found it entertaining. As is often the case with movies, I could certainly see what there was to criticize, and what might have been done better, but I didn’t let that stop me from being entertained. I think too many people ruin movies for themselves by watching movies as if they are movie critics. Not that there aren’t movies that are so bad I can’t get past the “criticizeable” portions, but generally I try to allow myself to enjoy movies first, and critique them later.

After the movie, we were on our way to a late lunch when my daughter’s mom called, needing a ride to go and pick up her car. That put us a bit out of our way, distance and hunger-wise, but that just helped us enjoy our lunch all the more. We stopped at the store to get a few essentials and some T-shirts for screen printing, and it was pretty much early evening by the time we got home (or late afternoon, depending on how you look at it, I guess…).

My daughter went off to read while I got the shirts ready to print. I started with mine, and that turned into an “aargh” moment pretty quickly:

Now, I don’t mind the “faded” look, but this was a bit too much.

Oh well. I actually ended up getting a two-pack of white T-shirts for a good price, and I can still use this as an undershirt. I figured I would try again on the other one after doing my daughter’s print.

Now, this is actually STAGE 1 of my daughter’s, as she wants two colors, and the second attempt at my print:

Hers came out a bit light, but better than mine. Today, I’ll add the heart and the sun in red ink (to hers, not mine).

My second came out better in some ways, worse in others. I wonder if I brush on a light, faded bit of red over the webby parts? Either way… Did I mention I needed undershirts anyway?

Costume Stuff

Here’s a bit more of what the “finished” black-blue, comic-highlighted stuff on the Ditko costume:

I go back and forth between loving and hating it. I feel like this quickly became a “slippery slope” situation in terms of the amount of muscleitude. I have another look to try, related but more understated. This…well, I like it better than all the “airbrush” type shading, but…I dunno…

Either way, I have time to keep working on and refining designs, and to decide which one–Ditko or traditional–to get printed first. I’m going to need to wait on sending either off for printing for “cash flow” reasons.

I seem to remember my mom often characterizing rocky family finance periods as “cash flow problems.” This usually happened at Christmas time, when she lost all sense of logic and proportion. Well, that hasn’t changed. Now she just spends the money on her grand-kids instead of her kids.

Up Next: Father-Daughter Screen Printing Part 2 and perhaps some Marvel Memorabilia 

Family Time & the Importance of Frenz

Family Time

It’s Saturday, and promising to be a bit gloomy and thunderstorm-y, so my daughter and I have some indoor type activities in mind.

I’ve prepared my 16×20 screen printing frame with a fresh screen and a nice coat of photo emulsion (I’m getting better at that with each attempt). I think if she and I each do a design on an 8.5×11 sheet of paper, I can fit both on the screen for exposure and get two separate T-shirts out of it. So that’ll be fun.

She also wants me to go see “Maleficent” with her. She saw it with her mom and wants to see it again with me. I have to say that seeing movies with my daughter is something I’ve been looking forward to since she was born, most especially being able to range beyond the super-young-kid types of movies (though I enjoy plenty of those too). 🙂

She is also suddenly wanting to watch more of the  “Legend of Korra” cartoon, which we haven’t watched in a while. For those who don’t know of it…it’s pretty awesome. It’s Nickelodeon’s follow up series to “Avatar: the Last Airbender,” which was just an amazing, awesome, great, wonderful, well-done, touching, engaging… Well, you get the idea. Good stuff. LofK is almost as good. Better in some ways–I feel the art is a tad more sharp and finished–but nothing matches the original AtheLA. Anyway, I highly recommend.

There are also hopes for some bike riding lessons and practice for my little girl. She has had a love-hate relationship with bike riding over the past few years, but she has an upcoming trip with her grandparents that will involve a scenic bike ride, so the pressure’s on. Just hope the weather allows for some practice this weekend.

The Importance of Frenz

Sure, “friends” are important, but I’m talking about Ron Frenz, a comic artist who I want to call underrated, just because I don’t feel like you hear much about him compared to others. But maybe he’s rated highly in the community and I just don’t know it. I, for one, had forgotten about him. But he drew, among other things, some of the Spider-Man comics I remember the most from the 80’s.

Here’s an excellent example, and what I think is a great cover:

I didn’t notice that this was in Russian (?) until after linking the image, but we’ll leave it. The art is what I’m focused on here.

This is issue number 258 of the Amazing Spider-Man from 1984. After enjoying the cool features of the black and white costume that he had acquired (on an alien world during the “Secret Wars” series of comics, one of the awesomest anythings ever), Peter discovers that the reason the suit can change it’s shape and appearance and generate its own webbing is not because its highly advanced alien technology, but because it is a sentient, symbiotic organism that has been trying to permanently bond with him. He is not okay with that.

Anyway, I think this cover is a great symbolic representation of what became an ongoing (and probably overdone) struggle between Peter and the suit in its various forms and incarnations (Venom, Carnage, ad nauseum). This was when the symbiote saga was still fresh. But I’ll speak of that no more at this time.

What I really wanted to get at here is Frenz’s take on Spidey. I have judged many an artist by their take on Spidey, and I always liked Frenz’s approach. But now, looking at him in the context of my recent Ditko craze, I see that Frenz is–intentionally or not–channeling Ditko.

Look at that web pattern, the eye size and shape, the heavy black shading of the blue areas. And pit webs! There’s a lot that’s different about the two artists, but I feel like Frenz was definitely drawing from (heh. “drawing” from…) Ditko’s original look for Spidey.

And he was also the one to draw the “bag-man” scene:

Awesome.

As for my costume efforts…

Still trucking along with the Ditko design, but the changes are incremental enough to not be worth showing yet.

But I do hope to send my “traditional” Spidey template off for printing soon. Gotta make sure all the stars are in alignment. Y’know, financially speaking and all.

Next: Hopefully will have some Family Time T-shirts to show!

The Gambler versus the Parent

The Gambler

Let me start with a story from when I was in grade school. I was probably in 1st grade, possibly 2nd, and I had just started learning to ride a bike without training wheels. My family lived in the housing of a private college campus, a relatively small and self-contained place, objectively, but to us “campus kids,” it was a pretty big place, full of adventure.

There are plenty of other stories to tell about that campus kid life, but this one is about the Time I was Hit by a Car Driven by Kenny Rogers.*

* Spoiler Alert: Not really Kenny Rogers

He didn’t look like this then, but this pic was too awesome not to post.

I was riding my bike among the buildings in an older part of campus, and took a corner around a particular building, headed the wrong way down a one way street. Turns out a car was headed the right way around the corner at the same time.

Again, I was just learning to ride–and have never been known for things like coordination and reflexes. I don’t know how much time there was to hit the brakes or swerve, but my inexperienced, 1st grade body did the best thing it could come up with and just slammed right into the front bumper of the car. I think I might have actually pitched forward onto the hood a bit, but memory does tend to dramatize these things.

Anyway, the driver did have reflexes, luckily, and had braked somewhat. He probably hadn’t been going that fast anyway. I was fine, just shaken up. Especially when I looked up at that driver as he got out of the car and it was Kenny Rogers.

Okay, okay. It wasn’t really Kenny Rogers. But my first grade self was at least half-convinced it was, even after my dad assured me it was just some older student of the college (there were a fair number of older married students there).

Strangely, everyone else seemed more focused on the fact that I had gotten sorta kinda hit by a car than that this was clearly Kenny Rogers. And since I was fine, a lot of the focus of this scenario was the fact that I had been going the wrong way down a one way street and that was dangerous and so on and so forth.

This experience would serve as a valuable lesson in safety and awareness that would one day lead to me wrecking three cars in the five years after I started driving.

In any case, my point is this: That guy who hit me on my bike looked just like Kenny Rogers (a small part of my brain still thinks maybe Kenny lived a secret part of his life there at that college campus with that family…). And Kenny Rogers sang the song The Gambler. And The Gambler has an important lesson:

You gotta know when to hold ’em,
Know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away,
Know when to run.

The Parent

The lesson from the Gambler doesn’t apply to parenting, generally speaking. I mean, I’m sure you could come up with a scenario, or a way of looking at it, in which it does apply. But that would ruin my cleanly dichotomous contrast here, so just work with me, okay?

I have a 9 year old girl. She’s not–whatever I might often say–perfect. She doesn’t always clean her room (as in, never unless I make her). She doesn’t always remember to turn in her homework. (Though she pretty much always remembers to do it and does a very good job of it because she’s a freakin’ genius. She’s not perfect, but she is a genius, all right?)

Anyway, our children are not perfect, but we don’t just one day up and “fold ’em” and “walk away” (though yes, there are days we want to “run”).

Again, we could take this whole comparison farther, and talk about how much of the parenting experience comes from “the hand that we are dealt” and how much of it is a result of our own example and decisions as a parent, which cards we choose to trade in for other cards and yada yada…

But really, it’s not some formula or set of rules or whatever. We stick to it because we are wonderfully irrational about our children. Love is like that. Especially parental love. When it comes to our children, we’ll keep putting all our money back in the pot based on a pair of two’s because, I mean, gosh, that’s my little girl, and I’d bet on her every time.

Wait, isn’t this blog something to do with a DIY Spider-Man Costume?

Oh yeah. This was supposed to be about my DIY Spider-Man costume.

I was originally intending to make some comparison and analogy and somethin’ somethin’ about two ways of going forward with my costume, and got carried away.

I am at a point of decision here, having started the official screen printing on the official costume shirt:

Eh…not perfect, but okay so far…

Ouch… Hope that dries to match…and can that be touched up…?

Oh. Uh. I…yikes.

Here’s where I think the analogy comes in, the competing perspectives. I go back and forth between looking at the costume as the Parent and looking at it as The Gambler.

As the Parent, I overlook the rough edges–and I mean that literally, not figuratively–and the glaring spots of mismatched color, the not quite matched up web pattern (though I came closer to matching that up than I thought possible!)…

As the Gambler, I do notice those flaws, and also think about how those will continue, and magnify, and how the odds are that I will invest x number of hours (in addition to what I have invested already) and x number of dollars (in addition to what I have invested already) only to fight a losing battle. The odds of getting not just a particular screen print pattern correctly applied are slim enough, but to get each applied correctly and matching the other ones…

Know when to fold ’em, right?

But…but it could still work. I mean, it’s not perfect, but it’s kind of cool, right?

Know when to walk away.

(Am I being too dramatic? I’m being too dramatic.)

So…now what?

I mentioned that I’m stubborn. But I’m not a perfectionist. That’s my saving grace here. If I were truly a perfectionist, I suppose I would keep doing this over and over until I get it right.

But considering I’m not even sure it[‘s possible to do this process perfectly (in the context of a reasonable amount of time and money, at least), then thank god for not being a perfectionist about this. Though taking it to that extreme would probably count as having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or something…

I’m not giving up on the overall goal of a costume. Again, the original goal here was to design a template to be professionally screen printed and then sew that fabric together myself. That remains the ultimate goal.

As for the test costume, the one meant to somewhat emulate the Peter Parker homemade type style… I’m not sure yet whether I’m going to be abandoning that entirely. But I definitely need to stop and reevaluate.

What I’m doing with the screen printing isn’t working. I’ve been suspecting that for a while now, but that became more certain after the recent work. The shirt alone would require four more distinct screens–representing days of prep–and fourteen more printings of four coats each (many hours of work spread over days) just to get that still-not-so-bright red that doesn’t quite apply evenly and ends up with splotchy edges…

Even doing a new shirt with two fabric colors–along with new mask, boots, and gloves–would take care of the red part, but wouldn’t change the total number and dimensions of the screens, the issues with matching the web patterns across multiple printings…

Aargh.

So…again…now what? This post is getting pretty long y’know…

I think that, for now, I will re-focus on designing the template for the professionally screen-printed costume that I will sew together.

I think that one will be a more traditional/recognizable Spider-Man costume, since it will likely be worn for some public library events where the general public would not really appreciate the subtle geekery of a Ditko style costume….

I will reevaluate the Peter Parker DIY style/Ditko style costume. I am still interested in doing one in the “separate mask, gloves, boots, shirt, pants” style. But I think I will need to have the fabric professionally screen printed. I think I could modify the “full bodysuit” style template to one that will meet the Peter Parker DIY style needs.

So, what have we gained here?

I have certainly learned that ol’ Petey would have had a really hard time putting that costume together back in the day.

I have also learned that screen printing–while very difficult for a full body costume–is wicked fun for making t-shirts. I am going to fit some new fabric on a screen and have my daughter design a T-shirt for herself that I will screen print. And I think I will, at some point, make a T-shirt using my Spider-Man mask design. Black or red lines on a blue shirt, I think…

No need for all these screen printing supplies to go to waste, right?

The Weekend: Head Cold, Flat Tire, Dad’s Day, etc.

“How was your weekend?”

The usual Monday question. Politely answered with something like “Good. How was yours?” Or if it’s someone you think actually cares, you might give a more specific and honest answer. “Eh. I’ve had better,” or “It was so awesome I can’t remember!” (I sometimes forget what I did over the weekend, but because it was so forgettable.)

Anyway, as I was going to sleep last night, I thought, “how was this weekend?”

My first instinct was “It was bad.” I’ve had a stupid head cold since Thursday/Friday, it was hot and humid, I had to change a flat tire, we spent the first half of Sunday cleaning the apartment…

But then I realized that it didn’t feel like it was a bad weekend, in spite of that list of facts.

I was home with my daughter on Friday, and we saw a great movie, and swam (because I was still minimizing my sinus issues at the time) and had fun. We had an adventurous meal out that night, witnessing the drunken revelry of a neighboring table, which is pretty funny in retrospect.

Saturday–other than the “quick” trip for lunch and a necessary grocery trip that started off with the aforementioned flat tire–we hung around the house, did this and that.

I told my daughter I just didn’t feel well enough to go to the pool or do much else, and she said she was fine with hanging around the house. She might have meant it, or she might have just been telling me that to make me feel better. Either way, I was very grateful.

Sunday, I was feeling a bit better–which is good, since we really needed to clean the apartment. And as much as I didn’t really want to clean, it always feels good to get it done. My daughter even made good efforts at cleaning her room. It still needs work, but considering that asking her to clean usually results in her near-collapse with a sudden case of “I don’t feel good,” I was quite pleased with her efforts.

After cleaning and lunch, we went to the mall for coffee/snacks and wandering, then to the library for a book for her to read, and then to the art store for a larger screen printing frame and some fabric paint. Home for a bit, then out to eat so I could be treated to my dad’s day meal.

Then back home for K to paint an old shirt with her new fabric paint. While she did that, my GF read, and I worked on radically reorganizing my office closet to serve as a space for drying and storing my screen printing frames (no small task)….

Anyway, my point is… It was a good weekend. It would be easy to list those bad aspects of it and say it was bad. But the little, mundane, run-of-the-mill stuff that comprised it…it all just added up to something very unexpectedly pleasing.

So, how was my weekend? Good, thank you. How was yours?

 

More Mini-Sewing Prototypes, Stressful Dance, & the Taj Mahal

Ugly Stripey Pants

So, a quiet start to our Saturday yesterday. I always start my days quietly, when all goes well, by getting up way too early and doing my thing before anyone else is awake. My daughter has been sleeping in until a decent hour for a while now, which is nice.

But even as the household stirred, we all took it pretty slow, sitting around, reading, jumping on the bed (just my daughter did that part), watching TV, etc.

And I put together a mini-version of the planned pants pattern.

Again, the scaling does not translate perfectly, but these are actually high-waisted by design. The idea for this second version as compared to the first iteration incorporates two key changes: more room at the–er–junction of the legs and a higher rise at the waist. The reasons for the first are obvious, and the higher waist is so that the shirt–which will go over the waist of the leggings–will more easily connect to the leggings’ waist in whatever manner I end up choosing. The higher rise will also better accommodate bending over and squatting and such.

In this picture, you can just barely see the double seam on the front, and I hope it is not too obvious on the final product with the black spandex.

 Hip Hop

That was the morning sewing, and then it was time to get an early lunch before my daughter got changed for her Hip Hop dance competition. Her mom has been taking her to dance classes for a couple of years, and they have one or two competitions a year.

I had taken her to one of the competitions before, but am somewhat out of the loop as to the preparations and registration and such for the things. In this case, my ex just told me to show up at such and such high school with our daughter in her dance outfit, much like the last one I had taken her to. That first one had been pretty simple. We showed up to meet my ex, who fussed with our daughter’s hair a bit before sending her to wait with her dance group, and then we watched and clapped.

This competition seemed to be–well, organized chaos but without the organized part. It was actually a cheerleading competition, with some dance routines as a sort of “opening act.”

But once we navigated the chaos and figure out where to go (and once my ex figured out her GPS was taking her to the wrong school and got herself to the right place), and that I needed to go wait in a line to get her a yellow wrist-band thing to show she was registered, the dancing commenced.

It was terribly cute, of course. My daughter did very well. She’s got the moves (which she did not get from me). I will say she does much better as a solo dancer. Coordinating the movements of that many young ‘uns at once must be a crazy challenge for the instructor.

There were trophies for all, as usual. But this year my daughter–let’s call her “K” from here on–is old enough to notice that everyone getting a trophy isn’t the same as “winning.” But she doesn’t seem to mind. Like me, she is not the competitive type. Well–more accurately, we get stressed when we feel competitive, so avoid getting competitive.

The Taj Mahal

Later on, at K’s request, we all went out for Indian food at a place called the Taj Mahal. My girlfriend’s dad is from India, and though she wasn’t raised on as much Indian food as one might think, she’s no stranger to it, and I left the choice of dishes up to her and K. Butter Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, and Naan. Pistacho Kulfi for dessert. I’m not a real foodie myself, but this was a good meal.

Updated update of the updated shirt

Back at home, as we all wiled away the evening, I put together a mini-version of an updated update of the shirt pattern. (I forgot to add seam allowances, hence the pinpoint-thin sleeve ends, but this was proof-of-concept so not a huge deal.)

The collar is smaller, more to my liking. But with the sleeve hems angling from armpit to collar as they are, I think I will need to add complementary curves to sleeve and torso/collar pieces where they meet to avoid excess wrinkling at the shoulders when raising my arms and such.

I am eager to put together the hopefully final full-size version of the semi-practice suit, but I really do want to be as sure as possible that my patterns will work!

Up Next: finalizing patterns, some laundry, cleaning, and our first visit to the pool for the summer

Family Friday Night – chatting, reading, working out and sewing

The Art of Conversation

It is so fun and cool to see one’s child grow and change over the years. My daughter is nine (ten late this year), and I feel like one of her biggest burgeoning signs of maturity is that she has started to really enjoy talking. I don’t just mean talking to make noise, which she certainly enjoys (she gets that from me), but talking as in conversation.

More often now, she will ask me or my girlfriend about ourselves, seeming to especially like hearing what it was like for us when we were younger, what we were like when we were younger. She likes to hear “stories” about our childhood and teenage years. A month or two ago, my girlfriend’s mom was visiting, and we all sat around talking, my little girl delightedly listening to my girlfriend and her mom tell stories about Texas and Minnesota and what life was like there when they were younger. It was pretty fascinating to see her so entertained by that. Full disclosure: she had been banned from TV, tablet, and toys as part of a consequence for a behavior issue at school, so it might have been at least part desperation. :]

Anyway, she really does seem to show more and more interest in “the art of conversation,” and will even comment on how nice it is to have those evenings–like last night–where we are all in the living room, doing our own things, but chatting, together. I was working out for a while, my daughter was playing on her tablet, my girlfriend was reading, and we all just chatted about this and that (thus my GF did not really get much reading done for a while).

Finding Some Sewing Time

Once I had finished my workout, both the GF and the daughter had settled into reading, and I decided to finally put together the mini-prototype of my new shirt design.

Looking at the way it goes together now, it seems so simple. Funny how hard it can be for me to conceive of these things “virtually” before getting the reality of it straight in my head. So, here’s what I threw together last night:

 

 

 

 

 

The proportions were very poorly scaled down, so ignore that part, including the wide collar that is more blouse than Spidey tunic. But the basic seam layout is there.

My daughter hoped my mini-version might be Barbie compatible, but it is actually a bit oversized for that. (She decided we should just make our own Barbie out of wood, with joints and all. I pointed out we don’t have a wood shop to speak of, and she is planning to do something with cardboard instead. I respect that she does not accept reality when it does not suit her.)

Anyway, I feel pretty good about drafting the full size pattern, with the right measurements, to see how that looks, and that should get me a bit closer to making the actual updated shirt. My spandex supply did arrive, so hopefully I will be digging into that soon.

I want to also do a mini-prototype for the new pants pattern, make sure that’ll work the way I expect.

And today is my daughter’s dance competition, plus whatever other weekend fun we can get into. Should be a full Saturday!

Up Next: Prototyping Pants and Patterning Shirts and Such