robinsnest | School of the Soldier 2012

Well the weather cooperated..barely. It drizzled a bit, then was overcast and windy. Because of the rain of the 100 re-enactors they were expecting less than 40 showed up, and they were steadily bailing as the day went on. I felt bad for the organizers, there's only so many big events at Peter Wentz and they can use all the fundraising/turn out they can get.

The highlight of the day was definitely seeing

mandie_rw and

hiraimi, good company can make up for a lot of event lackings. We did a bit of shopping, there were lovely black hats that I barely resisted buying, patterns, fabric, second to the company I do love a bit of window shopping. I almost bought Rob a stock buckle for the outfit I intend to make him someday, but it occurred to me I should find out if he'd even WEAR a stock before I spent money on it. So I was a good little monkey and spent nothing more than my $5.00 Wawa picnic lunch.

We all forgot to bring cameras to the event, consciously or otherwise (I decided I wasn't hauling it). But Rob took a few pictures of us in the backyard post event.

Don't we look pretty? ;-) well don't THEY look pretty and don't I look colorful?

(I apparently snagged my hem thread on something, which caused a very funny rippling)

LOOK Rob got

hiraimito actually smile!! He gets a cookie.

So for it's second incarnation the dress of evil is better...but still not..great. For this outing I drastically changed the front shape, scooped the armsyces farther, added a gusset under the arms, and put in completely new sleeves.

IF and it's a big IF I feel like trying to save this dress I have finally figured out what my major problem is. The straps. The angle on the straps is too wide, they are really pulled tightly to my body but they angle out in too deep of a Y. This makes them fall off my shoulders, the sleeves are fine when they're pulled up at the shoulders, but within 5min they're sliding down again. I think the solution is to cut off the strap and put a separate strap piece in. But that means undoing the sleeves AGAIN (actually I put my gusset too far BACK and really should undo that an d move it 2" forward as well). For now it's going back in the closet. I'm not 100% sure it's not better to just start over, but I REALLY love this color and this wool so I want to make it work somehow...At least it's taken a pretty large step in the right direction.

Oh and we made the paper

I felt a tad bad that we made it and not any of the re-enactors out there in the damp, it WAS their event after all that we kinda just showed up at as johnny-go-public. whoopsie. I can see why the photographer liked the pop of color we provided though.