2 more evenings...

So we have pretty satisfactory progress last night, all things considered. I'm down to the last four eyelets. They aren't the prettiest eyelets ever, but they were quick:


 

I have a partlet. It's directly "borrowed" from Jen Thompson's v-necked partlet, hooray for creative people sharing their work! Her pattern is here. Happily, we must be pretty close in size, as the pattern sized up exactly. Sadly, I suspect I'm a good bit shorter. Oh yes, and speaking of making fun of myself, did you know that if one sews the right side of the partlet outside to the wrong side of the partlet inside, one gets something that isn't right no matter how many times one turns it inside out? Yay seam-ripping. Yay hand-stitching. Yay fudge factor. Anyway, this is the world's worst picture of the partlet, taken this morning in the mirror, over my work t-shirt, but it gives you the idea at any rate. I haven't made up my mind about whether I want a ruff on it or not, so I'm stalling on that.


 

I had rather a lot of fun playing with the kerchief. Heather's outstanding directions for doing this are here, and she's completely accurate about the whole stabbing oneself int he head bit. The only thing I really had to do to get this to work was to make the whole thing a little bigger. I have a big head apparently. Boy, using the patterns of others certainly gives one a fine opportunity to compare unfavorably, no? I digress. I stuck some wire in the brim of this so I could tinker with shaping it. I didn't really tinker much in these pictures. I also think that I'm going to cheat and sew a comb into the back end of the brim to try to keep this parked on my head. I wore it around and was having some problems with slippage, probably because I don't have much of a pile of hair to anchor to.


 

Oh yes, and a quick word on the coolness of starch. I have had a jug of old-fashioned liquid starch in my laundry room for years. It's leftover from a science demo with my sister's 3rd grade class. (No, children, the slime is not going to blow up.) Never in a million years would it have occurred to me to starch anything, but boy does that stuff work. It's kind of fun ironing it dry and watching it get stiffer and stiffer. The only trouble was that it actually made the kerchief too stiff to drape nicely, so I ended up having to wash it out. Nonetheless, I think I'm in love. Don't tell my mum. She doesn't know I'm aware of where the iron is located.

Other than that, I've cut out the pieces for my overdress bodice and have stitched up the various vertical seams. I tried this on this morning (over my t-shirt again, so I'll spare you that lovely sight), and I don't see much problem. The jury is still out on whether I want to bone the edges, but I think I may just leave little openings at the bottom so that I can slip some in if I decide I want it. Yep. So that's tonight's project. Cheers.

8 down, 20 to go

The horrible lacing rings are history. Or almost, anyway. I'm busy replacing them with hand-bound eyelets. Although "bound" is probably not really accurate, since I'm not bothering with the whole button-hole stitch thing on these, just whipping the edges. This will give me something to further rue later, no doubt. I decided that given a choice between a horrible kirtle and a nice overdress and no overdress but a nicely fitted kirtle, I'd take the latter. Mostly because I know I'll get back to making an overgown, but there's no way I'll get back to adding eyelets. I may, however, pause with the eyelets after I get one side completely done to check function, then save the rest for the car ride to MD, as per Julie's suggestion.

Other than that, I'm busy hemming up a nice square of linen to make one of Heather Heroldt's clever headwraps. And may I say that it's super-mega-cool? I know there's no picture, just trust me. For a minimally shaped piece of linen, the effect is amazingly cool.

I've also drafted up the overdress bodice pattern, but I've decided I'm not allowed to cut that out until I have a functional headwrap and partlet. Considering that I have three evenings left, part of which are occupied already, I figure I'd better prioritize.

So alas, no pictures today, but hopefully I can get some pictures of one side of an eyeletted bodice and a funky headwrap for tomorrow.

and you want pictures too...

 

There was much sewing this weekend, but there wasn't a heck of a lot of picture taking. The dress engineer did take this lovely picture, though. Does it not admirably demonstrate how very helpful the help is in my house? The one with the orange fur would be Dexter; the one with orange hair would be me. The Dex's dedication to putting his head on my fabric is a force to be reckoned with. I was cutting away, all the way up to the point of bumping him with the scissor tips as I cut the straps on a direct line towards his nose and he still didn't move. It required main force to remove his head from my new bodice. That's dedication. Or perhaps it's that the ugly pink fabric is leftover from his dog bed. It could be that too.

Oh. You didn't want a picture of my messy sewing room? Ok, here's the kirtle in all of its ugly brown drabness (ugly brown drabness was what I wanted my dear Niter, so you don't have to loyally comfort me this time!).


 

I am mostly pleased with it. I could pick it to bits for your benefit, but I won't bother because (1) it'll be covered anyway and (2) I still think it gives a decent effect.

Ok, I lied. Here are the major flaws:

1. The lacing rings suck. Suck suck suck. Some year, I'm going to learn that the quick fix doesn't work. Until that time, I'll blissfully sew in the lacing rings, humming to myself about all the time I'm saving. Then I'll lace it up and be cheesed off when I realize that I then have edges with nothing motivating them to lie flat. Nothing at all.

2. You can see my boning. This makes me a little cranky, since there are four layers in the bodice. I thought that would do it. Obviously not. This one I'm not going to fix though. It'll be mostly covered, and I'll just attempt to remember next time.

3. I should have gored the skirts. I didn't have much fabric, and I could have made better use of it. It's not like it's a narrow skirt by modern standards, but it's a little less flowy than I'm used to for not-modern stuff. I think this contributes to the side slits wanting to pull open a bit, even after I did some dress engineer-inspired alterations there.

4. You can't see it here, but the shoulders on the shift are off the shoulders by an inch or two. Obviously, I can't measure. That and I was a little paranoid about fitting into the shift, so I padded the measurements a bit. It's comfortable though. Oh yeah, which reminds me, I made the shift according to the Elizabethan Shift Pattern Generator, which is uber-handy.

On the plus side, I like the lack of separate corset, the poop-brown color, the feel of linen, the cute little v-neck in the back, that all visible stitching is by hand, and the fact that it only took me a day and a half to do this. I'm also pretty partial to the side lacing, since I can do it myself. Quickly. Without swearing.

not much of an update

So I didn't really get much done last night on the dress. Basically, I drafted a pattern by plunking my corded bodice down on some paper, tracing, and then drawing some random lines on it. I did remember to take a little out of the waist, since my corded bodice is loose down there. Down with poochiness!!

I've actually made up my mind, though, and I'm going to do the gathered skirt on a side-lacing bodice. For much the reasons that Julie cited, i.e. ease of making that work. Also, I was thinking that I could do a pretty narrow panel in the front and much more pleating in the back for posterior pouf. We like posterior pouf. It distracts from front poochiness.

I did find a straw hat at ye olde wallyworld last night though, while picking up dog chow. It's not exactly spectacular, but it was a dollar. If I don't get around to a good head-covering it'll work. Even if I do get around to a good headcovering, it might still be nice to shade my eyes.

the gauntlet

The illustrious Julie and I have jointly admitted to ourselves that our next costume deadline is...oops....October 1. We were allegedly going to do marvelous things in time for the MD Faire, but we were apparently kidding ourselves. So what will we do, you ask? What any reasonable person would do; we'll skip making our husbands new clothes and make ourselves a new dress instead. That's reasonable. Our objective is pretty simple: one Flemish kirtle apiece. And a shift for me. This way we can match our uppity handmaiden Niter and have all the comfort that our Venetian outfits do not for one day at least!

So last night, in accordance with this new plan, I pulled out the fabric intended for the Flemish outfit.

I then tried on the corded bodice that I'd made with the idea that it would be the foundation for this outfit. I agonized for a while over how to deal with the curves in it. Then I got the bright idea of trying on a couple of older dresses (with straight seams) over it just to see what would happen. What happens is that the dress bridges a bit the underbust curve and doesn't look that bad...BUT...I don't like the way anything looks over the corded bodice. There are a couple of factors. First, the straps are very wide for comfort, and the sides are cut up reasonably high under the arms to keep everything in place. This is a bit of a problem because the bodice tends to stick out from under other dresses. In other words, I made it with as much coverage as a dress bodice. Didn't think that through, obviously. In order to cover the corded bodice, my dress bodice will need to be ridiculously restrictive under the arms. Darn it. Then too, the cording in the bodice adds to my girth. It looks kinda poochy since the corded bodice doesn't really compress anything below the bust anyway. I just don't like it. This is pretty irksome.

I think in light of this, I may be trying to bone the kirtle and use it for support. Julie managed to wear her side-back-lacing Venetian dress without the corset by putting in some boning, so I'm hoping it may work for me. I'm thinking that I want side-lacing on this kirtle, for no particular reason except that I kind of think it looks cool, although I might go with back-lacing for the much more logical reason that then I only need half as many eyelets. Opinion?

corded bodice 2.0

Here's my "curvy" bodice. It does, as the dress engineer pointed out, look more like a girl than the others. It's worn over my Italian camicia, which is way too full and is adding a bunch of fluff at the top that's not really there. So bear in mind that over a more modest chemise it'll be a little more discreet. As in, a little less like I should be serving beer to men singing in German.


 

The pattern for this is basically my Venetian bodice, minus the cut-out, minus the butt-point, minus some of the length, and plus a curved front. It provides zero compression in the midriff, which was kind of what I had in mind, although having a curvy belly wasn't so much what I had in mind. Oh well. Mostly, it provides under-bust compression. The curved front I got by first creating a mock-up that met in the middle all the way up and wasn't uncomfortably tight in the bosom (but didn't support beans), then cutting out the under-bust curve repeatedly until it actually provided some support. The curve is more pronounced than anything in the Alcega book for certain sure. I wasn't going for historical accuracy here, just a combination of comfort, ease of putting on, and the desired shape. I'm thinking this will work for the Flemish working woman, a German dress, and perhaps some of the earlier period stuff I'm thinking about. I don't know if any of these folks wore such a thing, but I'm just not going out the door without some sort of undergarment.


 

The materials: The side that's showing now is some sort of cheap cotton twill. The other side is cream-colored duck. It's reversible, depending on mood I suppose. That was an accident...I didn't have enough of either fabric. It's corded with two strands of hemp per approximately 1/4 inch channel. I ended the cording about 2 inches below each armscythe for comfort. Most of the cording angles to the front. There are a few vertical channels in the back, and there's a channel following the curve in the front so the eyelets don't rip out. That channel got added after the slanty bits were corded and sewn in place. Oh, and I only got about an inch of shrinkage for the whole circumferrence when I corded it.

the flemish dress begins

Having had a pretty much sewing-free week following our weekend of playing at being Venetian courtesans, I think I'm ready for the next thing. Julie and I have decided that sewing in tandem is entertaining, so we've agreed on a Flemish peasant-y kind of thing for next. She's documenting this in a new diary....I'm just continuing on in this one. The final page of each outfit will be listed in the links to the right. I'm just not remotely a web programmer, so this'll have to suffice.

So the next thing, then, is something relatively cool and comfortable, with not-so-excessive skirts and not-so-stiff bodices. Drea Leed and Jen Thompson have done beautiful write-ups on their research on the Flemish working-woman, and I'll be leaning heavily on their interpretations.

I've been tinkering around a bit with a corded bodice to get that "can't be wearing a stiff corset while I'm weeding these vegetables now can I?" curvy lower class sort of look. I couldn't tell you whether the class of woman I'm trying to be would have worn one, but I'm darn well going to have a support system of some sort. Being as I don't do anything original if not necessary (hey, I'm a scientist...I go look at the literature ...always ), I first tried the basic shape of Jen Thompson's bodice. Well, except for being back-lacing and from a different pattern. But basically, rather straight. Hers ended up being curvy and supportive-looking. Mine ended up being kind of awful. To get enough support, I was lacing it tightly enough to make "pancake boobies." And since the lines on it were pretty straight, as much flesh went down as up, resulting in "pancake boobies near my waist" which was not a pretty thing. Loosening it up a bit alleviated that problem, but left me feeling as though things might...um....plummet or something. It also left weird bulges here and there. I mean, I know I'm bulgy, but not in this way. These shots are the loosened up version, since the tight version was so very very bad. Whereas this version is merely "very bad."


 

I'm obviously not going to wear something that makes me feel so ugly (the horned hairdo of the Venetian outfit notwithstanding), so I've been looking around at other ideas. Melissa of Sempstress did a trial of a front-closing corset with a slight curve in front, here. It's mighty pretty. I don't know what she boned it with, but something reasonably stiff, given the resulting line. I was thinking that if I used cording instead to soften the curve a bit and also made the under-bosom cut in a little more pronounced, I could perhaps approach the buxom silhouettes of the portraits. Or that of the St. Pauli girl. Which would be no bad thing. But I digress. I don't have pictures of the new version yet as I'm working on binding and eyelets, but the dress engineer's response was "hey, you actually look like a girl in that one" so I'll take that as positive. I'll try to take some pictures of the bodice and pattern this weekend to post.

Let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me sum up.

There isn't a whole lot of point in my iterating our weekend point-by-point, as Julie has done so in a much better way than I ever could in her last two entries. I knew that there was an advantage to being lazy. Likewise, she's posted way more pictures than I ever took on her blog, so I'd suggest traipsing on over there instead.

What? You're still here? Oh ok then, here's my favorite picture of the bunch, taken by the dress engineer:


 

Why am I kneeling in an herb garden you ask? What has this to do with Venice, you ask? I dunno. But I think it's pretty. The herb garden that is. And my dress actually. And my head isn't exploding in this one for some reason.

I was going to send Julie this picture for her blog, but since she has approximately a trillion more pictures than I do, I'm posting it here. Isn't her hair beautiful?


 

Here we are sitting on the transformer (oh, um.....renaissancey box thing I mean) in my front yard. I think I should permanently park some dresses on top of it, as it looks much better that way. Most of these pictures were marred by one or the other of us making an awful face at either the sun, the gnats, or Julie's fantastically out-of-tune guitar, which is nonetheless really cute. In this picture, we actually managed to pretend that everything was lovely. Or else Julie wasn't actually playing. It could be that.


 

I don't actually have any pictures from the fair itself because I completely forgot to take the camera out. There are many on Julie's blog, so go look. Right then. My comments on the day:

1. The Virginia faire people are the nicest ever. Ever. I noticed this last year too. They are so darn welcoming and friendly. And they like to play. And they like you to play. And they don't mind if you crash their shade.

2. Alpacas are cute. Greyhounds are cuter. And they have way more fur than my dog....are you listening, Mr. We-can't-have-a-greyhound-'cause-it-might-get-cold?

3. Why is there a trash can growing out of my shoulder in every picture Julie took? Did I just migrate to the trash cans?

4. My dress grew a couple of inches. It's bizarre. In my living room three weeks ago, the length was perfect. Now it's too long. I think maybe my felted pleats settled some. Sounds like a good reason for some chopines, eh?

That's about it. I had a wonderful time with my good buddies, ate some delicious fudge, talked to lots of nice folks. Stood around being excessively warm in the dress and making squinty faces at cameras. Looking forward to doing it again in October!

Ok, I lied. One last shot, doing my best shoulders back, flag-fan erect, doofy-grin pose. And as much as I hate this hairdo, I think it was the right look for the day.


 

stupid partlet

Ok, so the partlet is officially done. It is also officially going in a storage bin, not to be seen again for a very long time. If ever. It's not that it didn't come out nicely, 'cause it did. Which it should have, given all the effort. I finished the trim this morning, snapped a few photos, pinned it in place, and voila.....it looks stupid with the dress. It's a combination of factors really....the clashing color, the clashing motif, the fact that the mesh size is too large given the narrower shoulders that I did (not enough repeats visible). It just generally looks bad. Kind of made me a bit sad this morning, but oh well. I'll keep it just in case in the future I ever make a dress that would work with it. Like maybe a solid-colored dress. Or one with period shoulder straps. Or Anita's red velvet even. If it happens to be the right size and shape for her dress, which we'll just have to see.

At any rate, since I'd taken the pictures this morning, here you go. This is a close-up of the edging. I've also put in a piece of the original stuff I was using for cording and a piece of the braided trim I made with it. I used the loopy braiding technique used for junior high friendship bracelets to do this while camping this weekend, which is just bizarre, since it appears that Julie was using the same technique to make attachment loops for her sleeves this weekend. Sometimes it's vaguely alarming how much we think alike.


 

And here we have the poor pathetic partlet spread out on my not-at-all-vacuumed carpet. I took any number of shots, all without getting at least the cat's head in the picture. He was pretty fascinated by it.


 

Actually, he either was trying to tell me how awful it was, or he really wanted his head scratched. Here's the sequence of photos as he rolls his tubby little self all over my nice new partlet. And manages to immobilize me in the process.


 

Either way, the cat won. The partlet lost. And good riddance.

So that about wraps it up for this outfit, and a whole three days early to boot. Yes, I know that I could try to put together another partlet. But I'm partlet-ed out, thanks. I'll wear it with a bare bosom and lie to myself that I'm going to make a replacement for October. Probably no more posts until this weekend, when the lovely Julie, Anita, and I will be testing these out for the first time. Cheers!

that didn't work so well

"I'll just whip out a partlet this weekend and be done, done DONE!" - famous last words.

Aside from getting side-tracked by redoing the veil (which I like a lot better now, thank you very much), the partlet is turning out to be a pain in the patoot. I thought that one of those gold net kind of partlets would be very nice indeed. And really, how hard could it be? So I made a little mock-up out of a hideous jungle print, got the dress engineer to trace the neckline of the dress on it, and cut it out. I laid this down on some backing fabric - leftover cotton veil stuff to be exact - cut an inch around, pinned it to a box, and started adding cord. The box idea came from Alyxx, and it's quite ingenious, at least when executed properly. Which I didn't do. There were at least two ways in which I didn't execute this correctly. It looked pretty nice on the box:


 

Then came time to shift the piece around, which was when I discovered that (1) I had drawn the fabric and cords to different tensions, so when released it became a puckered mess and (2) I hadn't finished the edges before I tacked it on there, so ravelling had eaten up my extra (which wasn't enough to begin with anyway), as well as eating into the section that was supposed to show. Lots of hours tacking all those little points down the drain. Bah.

I'm trying again, with several changes. I switched to a more tightly woven (although synthetic) fabric that I hope won't shift as much on the bias. I got a much bigger box. I didn't cut the partlet out. At the moment, I'm tacking down the diamond pattern with it on the box, then I'll trace and all. The fabric will have to unravel about 8 inches from each side at present, so let's hope that doesn't happen. Oh, and I'm also tying the knots from the front, not the back. This was the view from the back.....owie, ow, ow every few minutes when I'd forget about the pins.


 

saga of the veil

So I've been pretty so-so on the veil thing all along. A couple of posts ago, I showed an edging that I'd put on the veil. I decided that I didn't like it, so I ripped that off and did a kind of rolled hem on it with a whole lot of machine stitching to hold it in place. I also re-attached the combs more neatly at the top, bound the top edge with a satin ribbon, and tacked a bit of leftover lace on top just to kind of clean up the edge a bit:


 

This was kind of pretty actually, but I kept wanting to hum the bridal theme. And I really hate weddings, so it was no good. I woke up this morning thinking to myself, "Self, why don't you dye it if you hate the white veil so much?" "But Self," I replied, "I haven't got any dyes." "Silly Self," I said, "why not use something from around the house?"

Ok, enough of the weird conversation wtih myself. Suffice it to say, I cut a scrap of leftover fabric and got cracking. I tried jasmine tea first. It looks yellow in my cup so I figured it might work. It didn't. Maybe it would have at a stronger concentration, but I decided I didn't really like the color in the pot either. Then I remembered that people like to use onion peels. I'd like to pretend that I did a lot of research and all, but really, I just rummaged in the fridge and trash can (ew...I know) for some onion skins, popped them in a pot, and tried it out, like so:


 

It seemed to work on my swatch, so I strained out the peels and dumped in my poor veil, fabric, edging, satin, combs, lace, and all.


 

I threw in some vinegar for good measure, which in retrospect might have been exactly the wrong pH for a plant-based fabric, but whatever. I mixed it a bit and went back to sewing. Some random time later (more than 20 minutes, less than an hour), I remembered it and rinsed it out. And surprisingly, it worked out to more or less exactly the color I wanted. It's kind of a muted yellow-orange-gold (the dress engineer called it "onion-colored"....sigh). It's a whole lot less bridal white at any rate. Here's my attempt to reproduce the color on the computer....take it with a grain of salt, as it didn't photograph very well.


 

What surpised me was that everything took the color. I figured that the polyester thread, cotton fabric, mystery ribbon, and cotton lace would all absorb differently, making a big mess and a good excuse to get rid of the veil, but they're pretty uniform. What surprised me even more was the couple of spots I'd used a bit of anti-fray stuff. I figured the glue bits wouldn't absorb color. Instead, they turned orange. Bizarre chemistry stuff no doubt. I'll have to do something about that.

Anyway, a comprehensive guide to dyeing with onion skins this is not, but if I can do it so randomly and have it work, it's obviously pretty darn easy.

inch inch inch

Shockingly, I actually got something done on my Venetian dress, or rather, the accessories for it. Anita can attest that I actually finished the stupid pouch thing. It's quite ordinary, but it'll serve.


 

Happily, Anita was there to assure me that, no, I shouldn't add more embellishment. She was possibly hoping that I'd actually pull out some knitting and join her if I quit messing with the purse. That's pretty funny, huh? Anyway, I then proceeded to go home and kick the flag fan's butt. Oh yes. I've been putting off this little project because (1) I hate to paint and (2) I knew I'd have to dig out the drill. Actually though, this was a really fun little evening thing. Lots of glue, lots of mess, both still all over the kitchen table. The body of the flag itself is just matte photo paper, since I never found a fabric I liked. Sandwiched between the outer paper layers are two pieces of stiffer paper (unused Christmas cards actually), and glued between these two layers are the wire supports, which splay out into curlicues in the hopes that they'll stay put. I set a 10-pound weight on top of the paper layers for a bit to flatten and dry (and the dress engineer said I'd never use those weights....silly man!). I then basted some lace around the edge and stitched a ribbon over the edges on both sides. It ended up being quite sturdy, although I actually bent my poor needle trying to go through the layers. Kinda pretty, isn't it?


 

Oh and Julie, I learned something obvious about drilling. Putting biggish holes in smallish beads is kind of exciting. I had them clamped in a vise and periodically one would just crack in half. I found that if you used a series of drill bits gradually increasing in size it resulted in a lot less casualties. Just a thought, since your wood bits don't look like they came in a pack of 100 like mine. That or get your dad to do it, eh? He undoubtedly already knows this....I discovered it by dint of much swearing.

hairspray

Okay, so I didn't actually work on the flag fan last night as I sort of implied I would. However, I did finish off my veil and play with my hair. I don't have a whole lot of hair, so I bought myself some. Now, I know this isn't the most elaborate or authentic hairdo in the world, but I thought a tack-on bun would be a handy start, so I got one here. It's in a color that more or less matches my hair when relatively recently dyed, which it's currently not. I'll rectify that before the deadline. Anyway, this was cheap and easy, and I'd planned to cover it with a veil anyway.

One of the Venetian oddities was a horned hairdo. Bella has a really wonderful description of this phenomena at her website, located here (towards the bottom of the page). For whatever reason, the Venetian women thought it would be really attractive to roll and twist the front of their hair into sort of a v-shape that got worse and worse until it was horns. Oh my. Anyway, my personal opinion of the look aside, this is a unique look for Venice, so I thought I'd try to recreate it. I'm sure they didn't have hairspray to work with, but I'm equally sure I can't do this without hairspray. I don't even dry my hair on the way to work normally, so hair isn't really my area of expertise. Anyway, to do this style, I divided my hair across the top ear-to-ear, then pulled the back into a ponytail to anchor the fake bun. The front I then doused with hairspray and teased to within an inch of its life. Once it was 5 times the normal volume, I just kind of made a roll of it while encouraging more of the hair to go outward towards where I wanted the "horns." Then I tried to smooth over the front a little. It's got a couple of bobby pins in there for good measure. This stayed up all evening, which kind of surprised me. I think for wearing it outside, it'll get a whole lot more bobby pins and a lacquer-like coating of hairspray on the surface.


 

Here's the show from the side to kind of show you how the bun works out. The veil's just attached with a comb. It may get attached with a couple more combs actually.


 

There are exceedingly cool pictures of Venetian women wearing huge enveloping black veils that practically hit the ground and wrap around the front. I like those a lot, but realistically, there's no way I'll tolerate that in the heat, so my veil is white, made of really loosely woven cotton, and only comes down to my derriere. Actually, it was supposed to be a bit longer than that. We won't really discuss what happened. Tip: when you even something up, it's better to cut off of the long side, not the short side. Duh. The edging on it is by machine. I know it's against my "no machine stitching showing" rule, but it's a really long edge, right? I zig-zagged over some leftover metallic embroidery floss. It's subtle-ish, but kind of gleams now and again in the light.


 

And for the entertainment of those who know me, here's what my hair looked like when I tried to take it down. Helloooooo 80's. Why couldn't I figure out how to do this in the 80's, I ask you? Maybe I'd have been in with the cool kids. Just needs some mall bangs.