Timewaster's Guide Archive

I have a winner!!! Putting a couple rows of stitching very close to edge of a bias-cut strip seems to control fraying without affecting the drape.  I will be updating with pictures (and pictures of the new mockup with and without organza overlay) within the next couple days.  Man am I relieved.

Oh my god. 

Now I'm picturing a mist-ghillie-suit.

You just made my day.  Even if I can't quite picture, say, Kelsier wearing one.

Oh, interesting thought. I may experiment with that.

Yeah, natural fibers don't take very well to burning for the most part.   A friend of mine once had to cut out a bunch of things from ripstop nylon, and her serger was acting up,  If I recall correctly she cut out her fabric with a soldering iron. Classy.

I am considering serging it, but I'm still afraid that it'll weigh down the light layers too much - I'll have to experiment some more.  (And get my serger tuned up; right now it HATES ME).  I'd also have to figure out how to make it not look ugly - standard serger stitches don't really strike me as the sort of things that should show up on the outside of the garment.   I'm still planning on doing each strip separately in any case... serging up and down one piece of fabric makes sense, but pleating the "blank" areas is just going to make the neckline bulky, I think.

As for stretching on the bias - I don't think the individual strips will be heavy enough to distort their shape.  If I do bias-cut them, I'll let the cloak hang before doing final length adjustments.

I know Word Of God states that it should be solid charcoal gray, but I think I'm going to leave it somewhat variegated (although probably darker overall).  It makes it a lot more interesting, and I think it'd blur your outline better, which I'm assuming is the secondary purpose (the first being making you look totally awesome )

I am half tempted to try making obsidian daggers in my Copious Free Time, because it's theoretically possible (and that's all the motivation I need).  I took an archaeology class where we spent one lab hammering at pieces of obsidian to get a feel for what the chips looked like before going off to classify a bunch of them (yeah, it was a really cool class. the labs were basically archaeology field work practice.)  ...But I have to remember that it didn't work out so well.  It turns out that if you hold your rock wrong, you're likely to have the chips coming off slice RIGHT THROUGH your gloves (even if you're wearing heavy leather gardening gloves) and slice right into your hand.  Oops.  ("And that was the first time I ever coked my keyboard with blood.")

I still have my notes from that class somewhere, though...

Mm, ok, so he judged it an acceptable risk.  I'd believe that.  And the kandra and koloss really didn't turn out so badly despite being made from hemalurgy.

I still think it would have been smarter to consume the atium as soon as possible. If it takes a couple of hundred years to dribble back to the pits, Ruin can't access most of it anyway. Of course, that does not prevent some noble to stockpile it which may be the reason he did it (although it would be hard for the nobles to stockpile any significant amount as long as TLR control the Pits).

I absolutely agree.  Even if he knew that all the atium was in the Pits, think about how much effort goes in to getting it out.  There's no way Ruin could take possession of his body if it was distributed in little dribbles all through the Pits - unless being in the Pits counts as being "together" enough for him to get his body back.

And as for atium being immensely (monetarily) valuable - really, it was only as valuable as it was because TLR created an artificial shortage.  Think about diamonds in our universe.  True, it's much easier to control the supply of atium, but that doesn't rule out doing the same for other commodities.

Although I suppose having atium freely available would kind of disable the Mistborn - at least in one-on-one fights.  If everyone has atium, well...

Very, very nice! I may try taking out the heavy bottom layer and see if mine behaves anything like yours. Yours gets the tendril effect exactly right, IMO.

My lightest layer is only a hair heavier than chiffon... I was actually wondering if the extra stiffness of organza would help keep the streamers from stacking and sticking to each other in that direction. I think that's why mine didn't flow right - the outer layers just weren't getting any airflow.  I should set up a fan and see if it actually does any better in a cross-current of air to test that.  The organza really did seem to give yours a lot of body.

I ordered a yard of organza from dharma trading... (honestly, getting undyed silk from them isn't all that much more expensive than buying random fabric from a fabric store.)  We will see how this goes.  Possibly replacing the top layer (the 8mm flat crepe) with the organza will do the trick.

Progress reports will, as always, be forthcoming.