we went to Fantasy Basel in Switzerland, and it was just so much fun. 

Our Tatooine tourist shots...

 

Grogu the first....

So I joined the bandwagon and modified my Hasbro Grogu.  Loads of mistakes but as this is the first one I will get better at it. He has wire armature and plastic pipe skeleton for stability, floating magnets in his hands and I gave him legs and feet bit badly so he struggles to sit properly, need to fix that, also his pants are too small he has plumber's butt.

His head is sticky from the various attempts to glue hair to his head ( attempt number 4 is underway as I type)  But mostly I think he's cute and I'm happy with how he turned out. Also he speaks :)

 

So we went this Star Was thing in London...

 

 

So... we went to Star Wars Celebration in London and before we went I made some stuff....

I would write up about the event but not here maybe over on one of the other blogs ...then again maybe not.

Let's talk about costumes and stuff.
As some of you know I make officer hats, I've done this since around 2010 and it's a thing. For this particular troop and trip I made two new ones. One for my husband who has suffered shoemaker's kids syndrome when it comes to hats and one for a friend because the one she bought from me years ago was not as good as it should have been so I promised to remake it for her and I did. I brought that with me and *breath held while she tried it on" it fit so much better. ( yay)

The hats are the hats, I struggle ( still) with the brims and I learned a couple of years back from my amazingly talented mom how to do a bias binding for quilts which translates into the bias tape flaps for the hats so THANKS MOM!

One of the other things I do on occasion is bags. Making bags is therapy for me, when the brain weasels are off and running and time is folding so I have too much to do and no time to do it ( this is usually a lie) I make tote bags. They are easy and fun and use up some of the abundance of fabric I have. They make nice gifts. And they are great for carrying swag and starting conversations.
These are made from a combo of uniform twill and star wars bed sheets. I don't have a pattern I just kinda wing it. I will often use stencils, the ones I have are limited and older so now I need to find me a stencil cutting machine... because I actually really love doing stencils on the bags. Here is a small smattering of the bags from this year's go around.

I love Loth cats. I painted a few a few years ago and used one of the paintings as a kind of give away card thing.

And this year, for Celebrations I made new costumes. Jedi and random Tatooine peasant clothes. The Jedi outfits were a challenge as they needed to be slightly fitted otherwise they just look baggy and meh.My goal was comfy Jedi costumes to wear nothing more no approval no trial for club entry just something nice and easy to wear.  I will do this again with more muted colours and probably use linen. But these were the first and a trial and it worked so yay.

 Star Wars Celebrations was all the things good, bad and very ugly. I have mixed feelings about it as an actual convention but in the end it was a weekend full of people who love Star Wars and, you know, I'm okay with that part.

 

 

Learning to fly...

Once upon a time I was scared to sew anything stretchy. I have tried many times and failed equally but once in a while a project comes along and one is forced to get off one's scaredy-cat ass and just learn how to do it.

It's been on the back burner for a while but now I have more time and the roof is finished so I have my sewing area back it was tie to start on the all elusive BSG tank top project.  I began with old army shirts I some how ended up with a box full of, cutting and sewing to find the right shape and pattern.

Then I bought a bunch of not very expensive t-shirts that approximated the colour and hoped they would work.... I first tried sewing on my faithful tank Pfaff 360 but I could not get the tension and the stitching right so I bought a serger ( yeah but wait... it was on sale for more than half price and I've wanted one for aeons ...however...I could not wait sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo) I hauled out THE BEAST. This is my Bernine artista 180 which I only ever think of as the very intimidating embroidery machine which my amazeballs friend M sold to me for a song. However this machine can do so much more and it sews stretchy stuff like it is a dream so learning curve #2 how to use the Bernina. Took me a few hours of trial and error but finally I figured it out, mostly.  So then I made the leap and cut up t-shirt #1and it was ok but I miscalculated the pattern slightly and used too large a binding on the armhole.

try number 2 with the good t-shirts was much much better and looked good. I used a grey t-shirt to make the sleeveless undershirt and that was slightly less annoying. I posted the final shots on FB and my friend instantly knew what I was making so I guess it looks okay. 

This was a fun little costume project because in a short period of time I learned a lot about working with stretchy, t-shirt fabric. I also learned how to use the Beast and that makes me super happy because it is a lovely machine.

So thanks to some friends, some YouTube videos and a lot of determination I can now do this stuff too. so yay.

Next project... tuskens.... again....

the arm binding still not right and it sags

finally got it!

still too much binding fabric along the neckline but it's not quite so noticeable on.

bonus shot of the screen accurate Bookof Boba Fett tusken gloves.

 

Tusken stuff...