Unintentionally Going Underground

Umm…hi!

I honestly did not mean to take such a long break (a full year!) from blogging – where did 2015 go??

For the first few months of the year, I was finishing up the second half of the season at The Dallas Opera and the long commute across town eats about 3 hours each day. So, needless to say, blogging at the end of a day didn’t hold much appeal.

When the opera season wrapped up at the end of April, I unexpectedly found the motivation to do a bunch of sewing for myself – I was whipping up a lot of things I had been wanting to make myself and didn’t want to risk losing enthusiasm by stopping to blog. (I did Instagram most of it though so I have a few crummy selfies & construction shots.)

(as usual, click to enlarge)

My husband and I were also slowly working our way through a home office makeover on the weekends from the middle of February to the end of May. So the computer wasn’t properly set up at times during the DIY mess.

We now have a large standing desk instead of two separate desks on opposite sides of the room.

And then the phone rang with a job offer and I was driving over to Louisiana on Memorial Day to work on a TV series filming in Baton Rouge.

I was promised a week of work. I packed for a month.

Television shooting schedules are a bit insane. I worked at least 12 hours a day and even worked one 18-hour day in the costume shop at the production office. (So glad I wasn’t working on set in the humid Louisiana summer heat!)

It was the middle of week 5 before I found myself driving home. I’ve worked in the film world long enough to know that once someone puts you to work and you don’t fail spectacularly, they will try to keep you as long as possible.

The day after I got home, a collarless pug showed up at my door. Luckily, I was able to track down the owner by the next afternoon thanks to DFW Pug Rescue. (If she had been chipped, it would have been easier – please have your pets micro-chipped!)

Wensley wasn’t pleased to have a visitor but he tolerated her.

I think I spent about a week just staring at the wall after everything got back to normal.

And a couple weeks later, I found myself going back to Baton Rouge. Good thing I hadn’t bothered to unpack my sewing machine from the first trip!

I only let them have me 2 weeks, and then I came home again.

I had about a month before the new opera season started, so I tried to finish up a bedroom makeover I had started between Louisiana trips.

I recently made myself a new wool coat during daily breaks at the opera. And I even managed to get photos! I’ve been working on a blog post about the coat, but I decided to briefly put it aside because I found a TV promo of the show I worked on in Louisiana.

So here’s the first tiny (and I mean tiny) peek at a ball gown I miraculously cranked out in only 6 days, at about the 0:27 mark. You mostly just see the petticoat someone else made.

UPDATE 6/4/16: The original teaser I linked to disappeared, but I found a full length trailer instead. The ball gown is now at about the 1:48 mark:

Underground premieres March 9, 2016 on WGN for those of you who are interested in watching it.

Aside from a couple other projects that I’ll be able to talk more about in the coming months, that pretty much sums up my 2015.

I promise my next blog post will not be a year away!

Happy New Year, everyone!