Ready to go

After I completely slept in this morning until 10:30 and I managed to get myself up and caffeinated, the dog walked, the paper read, and myself showered, I thought I should finish cutting up my last quilt that I want to take on the retreat.  I'm going to save SO much time by having those all cut out up there anyway.  

This is the one I'm going to turn into Jaybird's Dance Floor

Then, instead of basting the Keystone Lodge quilt and getting started on that, I decided to start in on a project I'm doing for a friend.  She is VERY into health and fitness and does figure competitions.  She made provincials which is the first weekend of June and she has trusted/requested/mandated (I can't even remember which) that I make her a new competition suit.  This is INTENSELY outside of my comfort zone but a friend is a friend, right?  Anyhoo, step one was pulling all the rhinestones off the old suit so we can re-purpose them and save some money.  Hence, my thumbs are on fire right now as I picked off about 250 stones.

This is one side of the top before.  Multiply these stone by about 5.

This is what it looked like after I pulled off the stones.

And here is the whole suit naked.  After which point I could slowly start pulling it apart...

The first step was to deconstruct the main parts so I could see which pieces go where...

And then I took about a billion pictures of the way it was constructed.  Seams, elastics, shapes, attachments.  I will spare you the horror and show you just one:

Now I know when I go to make the new one that the strap to the left is a totally different piece than the cup to the right.  I also know to zigzag stitch the new one to account for the stretch of the elastic rolled into that strap.  Although I already am of a mind to try something different.   I'll keep you posted on how this whole escapade goes.  I'll probably want to punch something before its done as I'm pretty sure I've bitten off more than I can chew.