Wednesday's Child Is Full of Woe

Cobwebs of Shadow Manor celebrated her birthday last month, and I wanted to make her something cute and fun.   If you recall, she runs the Secret Pumpkin exchange every year, and a couple of years ago, I made an Edgar Allan Poe doll.  Inspired by this, I decided to make her a Wednesday Addams doll.

Her dress was modified from the Raggedy Ann dress pattern, though I made it longer and didn't do the gathering.  The dress, shoes, and scalp are made out of black polar fleece.  The doll itself and the collar of her dress are muslin.  Her eyes are blue buttons from my ex-husband's grandmother's vintage button collection; I had a bug up my ass that Wednesday should have grey eyes, and despite finding five or six different sorts of grey buttons in her stash, I only found ONE of each sort, so blue it was.  The buttons up the front of her dress are from the same collection.

Her hair is made of black yarn.  I'm not super happy with how it turned out; it ended up being as tangled and crazy as my own hair.

Happy belated birthday, Cobwebs!

Return of the Red Dress

So remember last Valentine's Day, when I completely lost my mind and decided I needed a strapless red satin evening gown?  Which was a total disaster and nearly ended up in the trash?  In another bout of completely losing my mind, I decided I was going to make the damn dress work for me, lumpy and flat-chested as I am.

First thing I did was kick up my exercise routine.  I was already running over 30 miles a week, but I kicked it up to 40+ and started lifting weights again.  On days I didn't run, I rode the stationary bike or did a combination of yoga and bellydance.  I didn't eat all that many sweets, but I cut them out entirely. Unrefined carbs are a rarity for me as well, but I cut those way down too.  I even stopped drinking orange juice in the morning, replacing it with V8.

Guess how much weight I lost.  Go on, guess.

NONE.

I LOST NO WEIGHT.

No, I didn't lost fat and put on muscle.  No, I didn't end up being more toned; I was as lumpy as ever.  Yes, I did feel better exercising every day, and I would keep doing it even though I didn't lost weight, but it wasn't conducive to the red dress looking good.

I was despairing over getting to wear the thing to my company's holiday party (which was last week), when I came down with a nasty GI bug that left me eating nothing but bananas and rice cakes for a week.  Not how I wanted to get trim, but I'll take it.

The gloves are from Target, purchased from the costume section many years ago (featured in the coffee dress outfit), the shawl is from Charming Charlie, and the bag came from Amazon.  The shoes, which you can't see here, are from Leg Avenue.  I wore sparkly white jewelry, right down to my nose ring.  Crappy lighting, but my hair is orange here, and I wore it up in a sock bun.  I wanted to do something more elaborate, but I didn't have enough time and/or skill.

It seems like the dress was a hit!  But I think I will probably stay away from sewing strapless dresses in the future.  Unless I lose my mind again.