What does a petticoat have to do with the Dark Side? There's more there than (doesn't) meet the eye....
This is Dummy-Wan. Or Dummy for short. She hardly deserves the "wan" designation, since she's evil. I tend to think of it as a "she" since she's my evil twin. Evil because she can lose six dress sizes in 5 minutes. Evil because she can grow taller, but refuses to stay at whatever height I set her at. Evil because no matter how big or how old she gets, she never has to wear a brassiere.... But that's beside the point....
Dummy has delusions of grandeur. She's dressed as a Jedi Knight, a Jedi Master, Mara Jade Skywalker and Princess Leia. She's even been seen in Jedi underwear. And, most scandalously of all, in a cloak with nothing on underneath. Shameful!
But, you're here to find out how a petticoat can be steeped in the dark side of the Force...
It seems like a simple project, a black petticoat with an elastic waist. Easy. I even found directions online and didn't have to buy a pattern. I did the math, even the geometry... heck, I got A's in geometry, I can do a trapezoid with no problem. I measured and snipped and tore the fabric in perfectly straight edges...
I hemmed and gathered the hundreds of inches of ruffles. I stitched the sides with neatly finished off seams. Then I tried it on Dummy-Wan. I fought to get it on past her bosoms, yanking it down around her hips, twisting and turning the fabric... all of which ended up with the petticoat stuck on the dummy, me fighting it, desperately trying to reach through the fabric to adjust the dials to a smaller size to get the fabric unstuck, forgetting there's two sets of dials....
I fought Dummy-Wan to the finish, her torso separated from her stand, lying on the floor with her waist extended enough to fit the costume of Kaminoan... where she stayed until Grampy-Wan came home and put her back together... I'm not mechanically challenged by any means, but my plan involved a sledgehammer and thought it wiser to wait for someone with more patience...
So what went wrong? Did the inches of my tape measure shrink? Was there a shift in the space-time continuum that caused my fabric to get narrower for no apparent reason? Or were the directions written for someone with a derriere the shape of a ten year-old....
No, I think dark forces were at work here... because to finally finish the garment I had to cut more fabric, cut and make more ruffles, and pick black stitches out of black fabric... over and over.... and the first ruffle I made got stuck under the throat plate of the sewing machine, I ran out of thread, I hemmed the wrong ruffle.... And I picked a helluva lot of black stitches out of black fabric... I'll be blind for days... did I mention I picked black stitches out of black fabric????
On a side note... while researching this project I googled "petticoat" and got lists of bridal shops... when I googled "black petticoat" I got cheesy costume shops and sleazy lingerie sites... interesting...
The moral of this story is, of course.... Be mindful of the Dark Side, even if it's your underwear...
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