Happy Geek Pride Day!

Also, happy towel day, all you hoopy froods!

Hello, my name is Cindy, and I'm a geek. And proud of it! And what better way to show it than a return to my "roots," that is, a dress made from a geeky bed sheet. Although it's not quite as mainstream as Batman, Superman, or the original Star Wars, the Clone Wars cartoon is still sufficiently geeky and at least tried to give kids a strong heroine to relate to in Ahsoka Tano. How successful they were is not something I'm qualified to write about, not having seen much of the show, but I appreciate that they tried. If I had Katara sheets, I would've made a dress from those instead, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, I'm in good company with this dress, as it seems that Ashley Eckstein, the voice of Ahsoka Tano, has also previously worn a dress made from these same sheets! I don't know if she made hers herself, but that is pretty awesome.

If it looks like I'm wearing a bluetooth thingummy on my ear, it's not...

I am in love with my newest piece of jewelry, the Dragon Ear Wrap from ThinkGeek. If only I had cartilage piercings so that my Smaug could have a hoard! As it is, my husband says it looks like the dragon is eating my ear.

The ear wrap came with this awesome pin. Can you recognize
all the fonts? I can't...I'm a bad geek.

So in case you didn't know, today, May 25, is designated as Towel Day/Geek Pride Day, and can I just say that I'm so glad that things like this are actually celebrated now? Back when I was in elementary and middle school, things were pretty miserably for me. At the school I went to,  if you weren't good at sports, you were a pariah; my inability to deal with round objects of any kind, along with my preference for reading over social interaction, ensured that I didn't really have any friends. In a school where the popular kids were the ones who could consistently make home runs in kickball games, my sole claim to fame was being Spelling Bee champion and the only girl in math club. When a couple of teachers took pity on me and let me hang out in their classrooms during lunch, I was ever so grateful. I mean, more time to read, less ridicule regarding my nonexistent catching skills? What's not to love?? Thank you, Mrs. Harris, Ms. Allen, and Ms. Lancelotti, for letting this girl intrude on your lunch hour. I tried to be as unobtrusive and helpful as possible.

Let's try jumping and throwing a towel at the same time.

So far so good...

With such a childhood, you'd think I would stay far, far, away from sports, but somehow I managed to find myself married to a sports geek; I am still amazed at how my husband manages to spout random stats associated with players a decade ago (then again, I guess I can recite lines from books I read years ago). Thankfully, he is quite patient with my lack of sports knowledge, and only makes fun of me a little bit when I can't catch anything round that gets thrown my way (I will walk over and pick up that lemon, thank you very much!). I've even managed to absorb a little bit about the mechanics of baseball and football through osmosis...although my fantasy football team two years ago was still chosen based on which players looked the most like thugs (reasoning being that the angrier they looked, the more likely they would be to tackle the crap out of the other team?). My first loves will always be dinosaurs and Star Wars Episodes IV-VI, but at least I know what "fourth down" means now. Thanks, husband, for bearing with my questions and helping me understand more mainstream topics.

Never mind. Even though towels aren't round, I still can't catch them.

So pretty! And it's got pocketses, of course (no ring inside, though)

Anyway, I was really excited to find this Clone Wars sheet while I was thrifting with Shayna earlier this year. It remained in the un-prewashed pile for much too long (I forgot to add in my previous post that I hate prewashing fabric!), but Geek Pride Day was the perfect time to get my act together and sew it up. I used Vogue 8319 for the bodice pattern, my first experience with raglan sleeves, that is, if you can even call these sleeves. I couldn't bring myself to mix prints for last week's Sew Weekly challenge, but here's my concession: using two different fabrics. I used black fabric for the raglan part, and then appliqued the symbols for the Galactic Republic and the Rebel Alliance (cut from the sheet) on the left and right shoulders, respectively. You know, kind of like those devil and angel cartoons that help you make decisions. Is that cheesy or what? The rest of the dress was pretty straightforward; princess seams and the skirt from my TNT New Look 6723. I did go the extra mile and seam bind all of the insides, as well as facing the neck and armholes with bias tape, so this dress better last forever!

It also says very courageous things like "Valor" and "Honor" and "First in, last standing."

Summary:
Fabric: 60/40 cotton-poly blend, flat twin sheet...pretty atrocious material, actually, but hey, at least it's got a lot of body?
Notions: 20" zipper, thrifted checked rayon bias tape, seam binding (both pink and blue, since I ran out halfway through)
Hours: Ergh. A lot, what with wrestling with the bias tape on the very curved armscye (don't look too closely!) and adjusting for fit since this was the first time I used the pattern. All the seam binding also took extra time. So I'm going to say...about ten.
Will you make this again? Yes. I really like the fit of this bodice, and the raglan shoulders (I'm going to stop calling them sleeves now) and princess seaming means I could try mixing up fabrics even more in the future.
Total cost: $7 ($3 for the sheet, and I still have enough for another bodice, $2.50 for the zipper, the rest for the tape and binding)
Final thoughts: Now that I look at the pictures, it seems that the bodice is a little long. I think next time I want the waist seam about a centimeter higher. But other than that, I'm very pleased with this dress. It's nice to go back to what I know suits me after some so-so experiments with chiffon (more on that later). So while yes, unfortunately, it is yet another a fitted-bodice-full-skirt dress, it makes me happy, and proclaims my geekiness for the world to see, unless they're far away, in which case it only looks like a bizarrely patterned bright blue dress combined with *gasp* a baseball (oh noes! it is round!) tee.


I only found out about the Trevor Project's It Gets Better campaign a couple years ago, but I think it's a message that needs to be heard by all teens who have ever been on the outside looking in. As a geeky kid being picked on for my glasses and poor hand-eye coordination*, I could've benefited from knowing that it gets better. Because it did get better, and I think my geekiness made me a better teacher, as well as allowing me to have all sorts of weird but awesome experiences (steampunk zombie walk! Ren Faire as Belle!). Granted, non-geeky people are probably just as enthused about say, going to a baseball game with front-row tickets (is that even a thing? does one even want to be in the front row at a baseball game? what if you get hit with a ball like in A Prayer for Owen Meany?) as I was about going to the HP7II midnight showing as Bellatrix, but hey, to each their own.

*This is not to say that my middle school experience was anywhere near as bad as causing me to consider suicide or self-harm, but I definitely had some miserable days. I don't want to make light of the seriousness of bullying (and worse) by comparing it to my own relatively mild experience; I understand that things are so much worse for LGBTQ youth, especially in certain parts of the country, and I think the It Gets Better campaign is a much-needed message for them. 

Just to lighten things up a bit, here's my own Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

I can't see you, therefore you can't see me, right?

Walnut is NOT amused to be likened to such an immensely stupid creature.