Moody and her Ghosts

Ahem. About the title...

 

 The song is actually called "Jenny of Oldstones."

It's Game of Thrones Season!

There are few things I love in this world more than Game of freakin' Thrones. At the time of this writing, there are three episodes left. Three glorious Sunday nights and then there will be no more Westeros, no dragons, no Kings Landing, and no more Jon Snow.
 Anyway, I was rifling through the bins at the Goodwill outlet last week when my eyes spotted this:

 

It's a pillow sham.

If you've watched any of season 8, you might see where I'm going here. That faux fur reminded me of something!

********Spoilers Ahead!*******

The show (and yes, also the books) is full of symbolism. Even the costumes help tell the stories. Here Daenarys Targaryen, who's spent the last seven seasons trying to reclaim the throne once held by her father, as she was believed to be the rightful heir.
This season, she rode her dragons to The North with Jon Snow. Since winter has come, she wears a luxurious fur coat. She looks cold as ice as she prepares to rule the Seven Kingdoms.
Only thing I rule over is a wrestling ring.

Well, sometimes... (Check posts tagged WAW Wrestling for the background.) My boyfriend Chris hasn't wrestled since our last stint four years back where we did a GoT gimmick with fur capes and whatnot. He agreed to do a short stint for a special event; but he needed a story.

Here's how our story played out!

This time we did it as our oldschool characters. Our angle started when Christian Sain, (my guy) stormed the ring after a long absence to flip out on Derek Conway, a commentator who brought up his name during the previous show. It was a paranoid meltdown where he raged against Conway for "saying his name!"
The next week, he came back and pulled the same stunt. But this time he swerved and instead of taking issue with Conway, he called out: "Stop saying my name... Henry!"

 It was like in this scene when Sansa turned the tables on Littlefinger

Henry is our very popular, good guy announcer. Now Chris has really hammered it home that he's the villain. Conway came in to save Henry and there was a brawl. This week, the company president intervened to put a stop to her man. (That's me.)
I apologized on behalf of Christian Sain and promised to keep him away. Conway wasn't convinced. I left the ring while he looked at me with shifty eyes.
This was meant to put suspicion about my true intentions into the viewers' minds. Of course, Conway called for a match with Sain, who refused saying he was a 4X WAW Champion and would only do a match if it was for the WAW title. And he knows that his girlfriend will make that happen.
Hmmm...will I be a fair and just queen? Or would I take the side of my partner and screw everyone over?
That's what they're doing with the Daenerys' storyline. Will she bend the knee for Jon Snow when she finds out he is actually the heir to the throne? Or will she just have her dragon shoot fire and burn everyone like her father, "The Mad King" would do?
There is a 0% chance that anyone who saw my costume for the Special Event Show, Legacy, understood that my costume was a reference to the small similarities to our stories. It's like an Easter egg, a symbolic thing that no one will notice.
So what will I do with that pillow sham?

 It's a no-sew!

I draped it over my shoulders and safety pinned it under the arms like that. It was like a "shrug" top like this:

The Dragon Queen always displays her house sigil and has a huge, sparkly dragon thing on her coat. My "house sigil" is a bee or a star (my name is Moody Starr so that checks out.) I pulled out some pendants and pinned them on with a medieval looking brooch.

Here's what it looked like!

That's "backstage" maybe I'll check Facebook for an in-ring shot later.

If you're still reading this, thanks!

And if you're wondering what happened at Legacy? You're probably not, but just in case...
I told Christian Sain that he would be fighting for the title and he would be in the main event...but not tonight.
I demanded he give Conway the match. They fought and Sain was defeated but then they shook hands to great applause and it was a happy ending.

Can You Dig it? Sucka?!

That title is referencing the theme music for the wrestler/now commentator Booker T.

Here is a link to the song. Enjoy.

In this case "sucka" refers to "seersucker." Seersucker is a puckered, lightweight cotton fabric usually with thin stripes. Most commonly, blue and white stripes.

Here's my seersucker dress!

Here is an article about the history of seersucker. 

You see, seersucker is historically worn in the south where it's hot. There's even a seersucker day in Congress where the senators all wear it! My dress would be perfect for sweaty school days!

I bought that dress last year at Savers then spent all summer of 2017 trying to make it work. As you see in the picture, it's mostly just long. I thought it would be an easy fix. Nothing's ever easy for me!

Here's the first step! Little off the bottom, little off the sleeves... (Moody likes mid length dresses and short sleeves!) It was not a bad start...just a little loose fitting in some areas.

Here's my testing out some fabric pinching with some safety pins. I put a few gathers in the back. Gathers? Darts? Don't know the proper term for this. Starting to look better...but something was off.

Does that look cute to you?! Nope. It does not. It's that damn collar. Well, I know what I've got to do.

Seam ripped the collar and made a v neck. Hello, sexy new neckline!

NO. That is not a sexy neckline. It's not right at all. 

Undeterred, I stood in front of the mirror with my pins, adding more "darts". Then I hacked more sleeve off. Here's what I got:

I love it. I wore it to school and received many compliments! Here's the big finish:

 Sorry, I took a lot of pictures.

 There's the little sash belt.

So school was a little different last year. I've spent the last 6 years in kindergarten and first grade. In September, 2017 they sent me upstairs. With the big kids. I spent my days shuffling between several fourth and fifth grade classes. I was reunited with my old friends! My first babies from kindergarten 2012-2013 "graduated" from fifth grade. I may have teared up a bit. 

I tri so hard

I actually didn't "tri" that hard. I'm singing that song by Linkin' Park (RIP singer) but my post is about triangles so...word play?

I'm following through on something, even if it does take me a decade or two. Months ago, I previewed three dresses that I said would be "coming soon." I was only wrong about the "soon" part. I did the first one, (spring green with the circles) and here's the second one. It's got triangles.

Bleh, I am repulsed by that picture. It's a very '80s style by that Leslie Fay label I see so often. Here is an extreme close up of the print I'm going on about.

I'm honestly not sure when geometric patterns in fashion were a thing, but I'll just go with the '80s as that's when these frocks were born. There's something I like about the shapes, and the points, and straight lines. No flowers here, folks, just geometry.

Here are some other examples!

I had the black and green diamond pattern (known as harlequin) with this piece from last Winter.

Here's an unusual, asymmetric dress from the past that I sold in my Etsy shop.

Another find that I had to sell. I didn't think I altering it would have been wise.

 

This '60s maxi skirt sold fast and I regret that I didn't wear it first.

Let's bring it back to the main subject with the very simple alterations I made to the dress I showed you back up there. 

It looks like I took it in ever so slightly on the sides, then chopped some of the already short sleeve off. In a previous post I mentioned my new thing which is removing collars. 

See what I did? The top part of the collar that goes around the neck was hacked off. The front part (the lapels?) were spared. 

I took a few inches off the bottom. Of course, only a few inches. I like my dresses long and my tops tight. After reviewing the after pics, I considered that I may have wandered into too unsexy territory.

I actually do like it, I just don't want to come off as so conservative or modest. That ain't me, man! I just like mid length dresses and '40s style! 

I wore a black sash to try and tie it in with the shoes and necklace. It's a triangle necklace, by the way. I have been seeking out necklaces with shapes other than just circle.

Here's a little close-up...

 Here's a little closer.

I'm pleased with how the top of the dress came out. It seems like it fits so much better without the collar. 

What I did on my summer vacation...last summer

Talk about running late! Not only have I not blogged in months, I'm showing off a dress from a whole year ago. Let's get started!

 A typical '80s made disaster...and the dress looks funny too. Ha ha, self deprecation...

Look at that weird, triangle shaped belt. Nice! A vintage dress with its original belt! It's by this label called "Lisa Petites."

I seriously can't tell the size because it's smudged. Size 18? Dang. Anyway, the label is mildly interesting to me as I have two other dresses by this maker.

 Like this one! It's a '40s style dress in an extremely '80s print. Like, that's the most '80s print I've ever seen. I'm all about the novelty prints. Here's a closeup of the green one:

There, I made it huge. What a cute retro print! White half circles with a black edge. That sold it, I was keeping/altering/wearing that dress.

I guess I didn't take any pictures of the process, so you'll have to use your imagination. I did my usual removal of the sleeves and lowering of the neckline. Then I hemmed it up a couple inches. I can show you what I did with the belt.

I changed the buttons to some cuter black buttons. I was going to wear the belt backwards. I had some other accessories I decided to add. By the way, I took pictures of the finished dress on the day that I wore it to summer school, last year. I just never got around to posting them because that's just how I am!

So, there's the bodice...in hindsight, I see that wearing that thick black chain necklace may have seemed like a good idea at the time but it was not.
However, the other little baubles; those are clip on earrings. I used them on each strap(?) to gather up the material for cuteness purposes. Here's the full after shot:

I had dark hair for a short time last summer because I really thought this particular color would look...not like that.

I must have really wanted to wear this thing if I got all fancy for summer school. My summer gig is 8:00 - 12:00 in a different school with two teachers and two paraprofessionals as the only staff. I do remember that I was complimented for my dress by one of the kids in my class. Whenever a first grade boy takes time to notice your outfit, you know you've got it goin' on.

Little Dress on the Prairie

More like big dress on the prairie, am I right?
The content of my blog posts typically consist of three things:
1. Apologizing for the length of time between my infrequent posts, despite how few are actually reading.
2. Complaining about how the weather never cooperates with my outfit choices.
3. The frustration I experience with the oversized, tent-like '80s dresses.
This one hits all those marks. Le dress:

Many of these dresses are by Liz Claiborne and this is one of them. They're always so big. It's only a size 4, and in the Savers dressing room I thought I could easily make this wearable. Nothing is ever easy, really.

It's always the bodice and its extraneous folds of ballooning material. As usual, I'm drawn to the print. It has a romantic boho kinda style. To start:

This will be the start of my de-collaring series. You see, taking in the sides of these things never does the job. I figured that I could try to take it in from the middle. Also, I ditched the long sleeves. This is all part of my effort to take a big dress and make less of it. This also included taking about 4" off the bottom.
It was still kind of big, but of course I had to wear it before it was too hot for rayon. That's why the wide belt is here.

 Creative pose + filter = nice picture. They're so heavily edited because they were taken at night using flash and on an older camera.

Look, it has pockets. I wish you could see the little circular floral things that make up the print.

Bodice closeup. I actually decided to take it in from the back after these pics. Size 4, my ass.

Coming soon!
Other dresses with unflattering styles but great '80s prints!

And this hit from the 1990s!