My Mom’s a Seamstress… and I’m not (or part 2 of a DIY homemade photography lightbox)

On Friday morning, I said that if you didn’t hear from me by the end of the day or on Saturday, then my light box experiment failed or the cat shredded it.  That’s not exactly what happened though.  I worked on the box most of the day Friday, but didn’t finish.  After that, I didn’t have the time to mess with it again until Monday.  The overly complicated light box is now finished and in working order!  It just took a lot longer than expected, and then took a while after that till I started getting pictures I liked enough that I didn’t feel like the experiment failed.

This is how the box was as of Thursday night/Friday morning:

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Stage 2 Plans

Thursday, I drafted my engineer to cut up my PVC pipe to make the frame, but that still left me with the time-consuming task of making the cover of the box. My mother is an amazing seamstress, but I don’t think it’s genetic.  😉  What I am good at though, is planning!  I had all sorts of nice diagrams and measurements.   This is the simplified version that I made so you can actually read it.  It shows the number and placements of the different panels of fabric I needed to make.  The second picture shows where the biggest piece attaches to the knobs.

Before I could actually butcher the helpless fabric, I had to draw a pattern on tissue paper.  I know some people can just cut fabric for simple things like this without doing so, but… I’m a planner.  And fabric tends to hate me.  So… patterns are required.

Making patterns took way longer than I was expecting since I didn’t think I should make a foldable pattern to use on slippery fabric.  I ended up taping together many, many pieces of tissue paper.   My OCD bemoaned the lack of a drafting table and that my yard stick is so warped.  None of my lines came out straight.   Even though these panels were not perfect rectangles by any stretch of the imagination, the patterns at least still covered the box.

I then spent an episode or two of “From the Earth to the Moon” starching and ironing my fabric.  It had lots of creases in it (which still don’t want to come out).

 

Pinning long patterns to slippery fabric took more time than expected.  It probably didn’t help that I pinned it to the carpet more than once and that Gadget kept trying to “help.”   But at least, I got through another episode or two on my DVD.  🙂

The next step was to cut out the fabric and label it, so I could keep my various panels straight.  That took another episode.  Granted, I may have been able to work a little faster, but Apollo missions are too interesting.  Also, I doubt this is normal, but I labeled all my fabric with masking tape.  At least it wasn’t duct tape.

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Something More or Less Resembling Sewing

 I am capable of sewing in a straight line.  You wouldn’t really know it to look at my finished fabric.. but I can do it!  Sometimes.  Just.. apparently not all the time.  It didn’t have to be pretty though.  Nobody was going to wear it.  It just needed to have enough stitches that the cheap polyester slippery stuff wouldn’t totally unravel.

If you recall, I decided against using velcro to attach my fabric panels.  If you’re wanting to do this, use velcro.  I tend to make things overly complicated.  I did have some nice stick-on velcro, but it was black.  Since this is designed to be full of bright white light, I didn’t want the dark velcro showing through.   And, since I just started this business, I’m trying not to spend too much money (so, no buying a different color than what I already had).

This meant, I needed to make either button holes or loops to fasten my fabric onto the frame.  I opted for loops, since making buttonholes was an entirely new learning experience.  Even though I have a nice degree in education, I don’t always feel like learning something new.  😉

Loops should be easy.  I had leftover fabric.  They’d match.  It’d all be happy.

Ha.

I tried making loops out of the white fabric, but anytime I went to turn them inside out, it would tear holes.  A headache or two later, I opted for some leftover light blue fabric from my last sewing endeavor in January.  It wasn’t white, but I didn’t think it would show up too bad.  With the loops all attached, my light box was finished!

I do have pictures using said new shiny light box, but this post is already a bit too long.  🙂  Pictures will make their grand entrance in part 3.