I was doing the 1911 Corset Sew Along, which started in January, and then realized I wasn't going to be able to wear a corset come April, so I shelved the project. I've had some free time the last couple of weeks so I decided to sit down and finish it. I have no idea when I'll get to use it but hey, it's done!

I used the pattern provided on the Bridges on the Body blog, and mostly followed the sew along steps. She's way more precise than me in her pattern drafting. I'm way lazy and skipped a lot of the detailed steps she took. ^^; I did do a muslin mockup though for my first fitting.

The bones on this corset are only 9-10" long (except along the grommets), and obviously the channels are way longer, so you want to do something to keep the bones in place. The blog had a diagram and demonstration on how to do flossing which I thought sounded neat... until I tried it. Ohmigod, I suck at embroidery! It took me all day and it looks terrible!

I'm never doing that again.  Next time, I'm just machine stitching a line across to hold the bones in place!

Just so you can see... the flossing is the really awful, crooked looking triangles in the photo below. =D

And just for fun, I took a photo of my corset liner. I've used this adorable cow flannel in all of my corsets to date. I have a ton left too, so it will probably be in every new corset I make for the next 30 years.

The dinner was held at the Bellevue club which is the beautiful location where GBACG held the Marie Antoinette Petite Trianon event, except that we used the bigger blue room next door.

 There were so many amazing beautiful dresses!

I posted photos of me, Judy and Mi's dresses in the last post, so I skipped them in this one.

 Ohmigod, her dress was sooo clean. I don't think I could make a dress that neatly if my life depends on it.

We picked up people from some other groups... and you can tell because there were more men at this event than I have ever seen at a GBACG event. LOL

 Another one of my favorite dresses at the event!

 It being green has nothing to do with my love of it... really.

I was so happy to finally get to meet bauhausfrau! Her dress is so neato!

 There were quite a few dresses made from saris. It was cool to see all the variations of what you can do with a sari in a teens dress!

 Look at the beading on this one! @_@

 Cool feather hat.

 A couple people at our table had gone to Titanic exhibitions recently where they had replicas of the actual menu, tickets, brochures, etc from the Titanic.

 The food was delicious! It was a 7 course meal that matched what they served on the Titanic.

 I forgot to take photos after this course... ^^;

 There was a live band and lots of dancing.

And relaxing after dinner.

I hope GBACG does more events like this. It was so much fun!

So praedestinatio does this cool thing where she makes and donates fleece hats to the cancer radiation ward at the hospital. The hats are made available to patients going through chemo.

A couple weeks ago she organized a sewing party to make a big batch of hats. People who couldn't sew cut hat pieces and bagged hats, and people who could sew, sewed!

It was a lot of fun and Mi's mom fed us which is one of my favorite parts about hanging out with her family. =D Her mom's home-made pizza is soooo good.

I think final count was around 50 hats which is awesome!

Two weekends ago was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. The GBACG has this amazing "Last Dinner Aboard the Titanic" event that Judy and I attended.

We bought saris to make our dresses. The theory is sound... saris make amazing dresses. I would say if I had to do it over again though, I'd pick something with no beading on it. =P I can't even begin to count how many needles I broke making this dress.

Miriam, Judy and I took some photos at a pretty building nearby before the event.

I'll post my photos from the event in my next post. I'm still in middle of processing them.

Here's a couple at the venue that didjiman took of us.

And yesterday, I made a moomoo from fabric aimeekitty designed on Spoonflower! I only had 2 yards of it so I was a bit limited in my options of what I could make.

I've decided I can't make any more bags. I'm drowning in bags... it's so ridiculous. So uh... yeah... moomoo!

It actually came out cuter than I expected... which is due entirely to the cute print and not the dress design. (Ignore the black socks... I forgot to take them off.)

I have a whole pile of cute cotton prints but only 1-2 yards of each. I am on a mission to use them up so there may be a lot more moomoos in my future if I can't find something else to make. LOL

And not sewing related, but I got a video of Yoyo being a needy needy kitty. This was him not letting me nap last weekend. Every time I tried to stop petting him he'd shove his wet nose in my face and then roll over next to me for tummy rubs. ^^;

Cute advertisement for the subway.

We went for dinner at Din Tai Fung which is a really famous dumpling restaurant. It's a chain and there's one in Arcadia, CA so if you're ever down there, check it out.

Next to the restaurant was this bakery with the CUTEST CAKES.

Next day we went to PF 14 which is kind of like a giant artist alley at an anime convention.

Llamas were really really popular. o_O I didn't really get it but I'm really out of touch with anime these days...

Cute puppy chilling out by the side of the road. (His owners were selling food at a cart nearby.)

Our hosts, Victor and Lily, took us to a night market for dinner that night. It was crowded!

The food was sooo good.

And on our last day, we decided to visit the National Palace Museum. Some of the random sights on the way there...

You're not allowed to take photos inside the museum so I don't have any. These are from the gardens next to the museum.

Marcus feeding the fish again.

An internet cafe we passed on the way home. Much fancier than the ones I used in Japan...

And this is me trying to pack up the ridiculous amounts of food my grandma gave us to take back to the U.S. -_- Trying to explain to her that we can get all this stuff in the U.S. is an exercise in futility.... We had to buy an extra box to get all this stuff back home.

 We stopped by a Buddhist temple which was appropriately named, The Dragon Temple.

Offerings. The white flowers are from the Yu Lan tree. They smell amazing and are sold in bunches on the streets for people to wear. I managed to find a Chinese nursery that sold me one of these trees and so now I have one in my backyard. I can't wait for it to bloom!

 We arrived in middle of a service.

The next day we took the new high speed rail (uber nice) down south to Kaohsiung to visit Marcus' uncle.

He took us out to this beautiful park down there. The temple reminds me of Lei Feng Ta  from Legend of the White Snake. =D

We vegged out for a bit in another park in the middle of the city.

These dogs were having a field day romping through the creek.

I love the dog that's out for a ride with the whole family... all on one scooter!

So they have these wedding studios all over where you go do get your wedding album done. They provide the outfits and backdrops. I hear it can be kinda fun. I wasn't really sold on this dress they had in the window though... LOL

Then we took a ferry to an island off the coast.

The whole lower floor of the ferry is for mopeds and motorcycles.

The island was very quaint, very sea-side town.

They had black sands!

And Kaohsiung at night.

Ok I've never seen one of these so I was super excited! It's one of those garages that had one entrance and they lift the cars away as they park.

The next day we were back in Taipei and off to lunch with a different set of aunties and uncles. This time they were on my side of the family. I loved this decor outside the restaurant.

Cool looking soup.

My youngest brother just happened to be in Taiwan at the same time so we had lunch together and then Marcus, Albert and I went to the Chang Kai Shek memorial.

This is the national theater.

We arrived in time to see the very involved changing of the guard.

Honestly? The whole thing was kinda silly. ^^; I've never actually watched a changing of the guard anywhere though so I have no comparison data.

Afterwards, we went to check out the small lake on the grounds.

Marcus' grandparents used to being him and Aki here to feed the fish when they were kids.

Marcus got very excited to see that the fish food vending machines were still there.  They're probably the exact same machines...

Marcus feeding the fishies.