Mortem's Tricks or Treats: Fickle Nature.

So, tonight's post was intended to be about the progress I was making on a dress that was supposed to be nearly done by this point. The intended fabric was covered with little pentagrams, but isn't technically part of a wicthy themed series... no... it's actually from a western themed batik series that we carry in the shop-- it seemed witchy to me, for the stars and colors.

The intended pattern was ordered during the pattern buying binge I did during the hotel stay. It's cute, and I couldn't resist the collar.
'great, another peter pan collared piece'  you might be thinking in my entirely self destructive and self conscious-consciousness.

Alas, the cats seemed to have enough of my pan collar obsession too.

Luckily, I always copy the pattern pieces instead of using the original... otherwise, I would be much more unhappy about the incident than I am.

I turn away to play a bit of dota2... hum.
Remember, readers, cats can get annoyed about your passions if it doesn't include them 24/7. Or at least, mine don't like pauses from their petting flesh-thing.

Unfortunately, it put a kibosh on the desire to re-copy and continue the work. No matter how often I tried to tell myself how cute I would look in it, if I just got it done.

So, instead, my heart began settling again on another pattern I had purchased in the rather large bundle of patterns I had bought. View A of Simplicity 1697.

By now my fabric stash is impressive, I have tons of fabric to choose from. But no, my heart and my head agreed that I need to make this in a fabric that I obviously don't have... something that's also incredibly hard and expensive to acquire. Striped fabric, but not just black and white (that would be too easy!), it had to be black and purple and it couldn't have any sheen or shine to it.

As you might assume, I never found that fabric, so I decided to improvise with 2 yards of tone on tone purple quilting cotton.

Que masking tape, spray paint and sore knees from being on that blasted wood floor. Yes, I said spray paint-- the kind you would preferably use on indoor or outdoor furniture, but I didn't because I wanted to see if it would work just as well as fabric paint. I wouldn't recommend anyone doing so if you're concerned about the chemicals within a can of spray paint.

I took my yardage outside and went to work... in about 100 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 37 Celsius) at 60% humidity. 

No, I wasn't feeling well at all after this endeavor, but my head and heart agreed that I couldn't stop this train wreck yet.

After a day of curing, and a run through the washer... it turns out that a 12 oz can of spray paint does indeed work just as well as a 2.5 oz of fabric spray... only you would definitely need more than one can of that fabric paint to completely stripe 2 yards of fabric. The only downside? The initial stink. Spray paint isn't known for its delightful bouquet, after all. I noticed the stink fade away quite a bit after the first wash, and I imagine after more it will disappear completely.

It was during my scheming inside the creative laboratory that it dawned on me that I didn't have any material for the lining, nor the 9" silver industrial zipper for my version of this skirt,. It was at the precise moment of realization that I completely lost all the steam I was harboring for the construction of this skirt.

How irritatingly fickle.

So, sitting in my lab... I decided to end the day by painting a strip of bacon for a friend.

At least I can say I tried something new now; up until this point, I had never used watercolors in my life.