Steampunk Progress . . .

My sister came to visit this weekend! Yay! I went to the Mission at San Juan Capistrano with her and my brother-in-law, and a lovely time was had by all. But, when I wasn't visiting with them, I was working on my Halloween costume.

I've had to scale back my Halloween plans this year due to budgetary comstraints; most of what I have has either been purchased very cheaply or is repurposed from things I already have. But, it's still going to be fabulous. The bodice above is the new steampunk bodice for the ensemble, draped for the most part, though it is loosely based on a Truly Victorian pattern. It's underbust, but I'm not a big fan of how I look in underbust corsets (hi, Dolly Parton!) so I designed this to be worn over a regular corset. The bodice is boned, but is not designed to draw you in at all. You can't quite see the collar due to the fabulousness of the blouse (can you believe I bought that a few years ago at Forever 21?), but the collar is actually pretty cool: dark green silk velvet, fanning out and standing up with sass. The front will close with hidden hooks and eyes, and those brown leather straps and buckles. There's no real reason to have the detachable straps with buckles, they just look cool;)

I'm going with a brown bowler; I feel like the top hat or tri-corn is done to death in this genre, and I wanted to do something a little different. The motorcycle goggles need to be spiffed up, but I probably won't get to that before next week. My favorite pats of the costume you can't see yet: I'm going to be wearing leather bracers covered in wires and gears and little doo-hickies, and I made a leather holster for the giant bronze flare gun I just happen to have in my possession. It already looks totally steampunk, but I will eventually trick this out too.

Add to all this the skirts from the Money Dress, and I'm ready to take over the nearest airship. I just hope I can get it all done by next Monday;)

Steam-powered Costume . . .

After far too long saying I'll do it, I'm finally making a Steampunk costume. I have nowhere to go and nothing to do on Halloween, but not having something new to wear just seems inconceivable to me. And since I've become the master of pulling stuff out of my ass for very little money this year, I'm making a new bodice to go with my Money Dress skirts, and cribbing most of the stuff from materials I already have. The bodice is adapted from a TV pattern, but I've changed almost everything about it, so I can't even really claim the pattern I started with! I'll try, somehow, to get pictures of the full ensemble, and post them here. If I'm allowed to dress up at work, I'll see if one of my coworkers will take some pics. Otherwise, the good, old timer function will at least get some passable shots, if not stylish;)

No Lost Slippers Here . . .

Next Saturday I'll be heading to the Social Daunce Irregulars Spring Victorian Ball, and yesterday I nearly finished a ballgown bodice to go along with my Money Dress skirts. I'm terribly excited to take pictures and show you all; this weekend I'll finish the bodice and probably dress the hairpiece, and if I get ambitious I'll dress up in the whole ensemble and take pics to post. Otherwise, you can be sure I'll be taking pictures at the ball next weekend!

Things are finally starting to look up! I have a new (stable!) job, I'm starting to settle into California, and I'm finally starting to get out and explore! I know I haven't been able to update the blog as often as I'd like, but I hope that'll be changing now that I'm back at a computer five days a week;)

Money Dress Diary: part 4

This weekend brought several developments:
-A new kitten in the house
-A broken car (after they just fixed it! Boo mechanics!)
-A finished dress

That's right! After fighting and struggling with this dress, the Deadwood monster is done! Woo hoo! All in all, it really wasn't any more horrific than anything else I've made, and a great deal less than some (Giselle, I'm talking to you). The sleeves took the better part of a day to finish and they still have a few problems, but I was so tired of pleating and sewing things that I just accepted them for what they are, fabric caught in the armseye and all. Truthfully, I'm rather gleeful over the way it turned out; I put it on for the first time on Saturday, and was pleasantly surprised by the outcome. It's easy to get tunnel-vision when working on a project like this, so seeing it all together was fabulous.

Yes, I made the little hat too. I needed to make a hat for the Steampunk version, so since I already had the Fosshape for the base and a few extra hours, I whipped it up. I was so happy with my little green tricorn that I now want to wear it every day;)

The back turned out pretty well, I think. The van dykes on the bustle need a little work, but they photograph well, at least. I'm glad I decided to leave the longer tail on the bodice; cutting it short would have looked odd, I think.

I colored the buttons darker with my secret mystery tool: a green paint marker. I wish I had thought of that before I dyed them for the third time.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Now, onward to Tabitha's Dinner Dress!

Money Dress Diary: part 3

The end is in sight, ladies and gentlemen.

After another few marathons all day Friday and all evening Saturday, the bodice is almost entirely done. I'll skip the mockup stage, as that's pretty boring. Truly Victorian's TV 422 pattern was the base for building the Money Dress bodice. It needed very few alterartions, but did require another assload of pleating (as per usual). I had an extra fun time doing the standing collar which had to be graded into the squared neck; figuring out the correct gentle grade for a pleated collar before it gets pleated was super fun (can you smell the sarcasm?). Still, it worked pretty well in the end. The velvet piece around the shoulders was draped and cut, then I sewed the piping I made sandwiched between the velvet and the pleated ruffle, and topstitched that onto the outer fabric for the bodice. The lace and pleated collar was stitched on next, and then I sewed the lining onto the outer fabric, leaving the neckline open around the collar. I hand-stitched that last.


I decided that the option with the fewest fit questions for closure was to close it up the front as with the original pattern, then lay the velvet panel over that and do a hook-and-eye closure down one side. The hooks-and-eyes down the CF do the work, and the ones on the panel are just for show. Don't judge me with no makeup; it was 10pm on Saturday night, and I was tired.

A quick few pics of the skirts, now completely done with ribbon trim. I cannot leave them on the mannequin, unfortunately; as you can see, Viola finds them fascinating, and I would come home one day to find holes chewed in the pleated flounces.

The buttons look super-light in these pics; they are lighter than I wanted them to be, but they are darker than they appear here. This is not the only issue in this picture, however. When I work on something as detailed as this, I tend to get tunnel-vision, focusing only on each element and unable to see the piece as a whole until it is more finished. Last night I stepped back and looked at this compared to the pics of the original, and discovered the front ruffles are way too wide. By an inch. Observe the tiny ruffle in the original below:



I had to cut the sides on the ruffles, and I'm experiementing now with Fray Check or possibly melted wax to stop the ends of the now-unfinished ruffles from fraying and ravelling.

Irritating.

I like the longer ruffle on the back however, so I have left that the original width:

Here's the final bodice, sans sleeves of course:


The ruffles are much better now, I just hope I can come up with a solution for the fraying edges!

Next up: sleeves! Stay tuned; this dress has to be finished for its debut on Saturday!

Money Dress Diary: part 2

Well, work finally commenced on the Money Dress on Saturday, and boy did it ever! I started work at 6pm (I had class and errands until then), worked until 1am, then rose on Sunday at 8:30 and worked until 1:30 pm. Luckily, I got everything done that needed to get done this weekend, so at this point I'm right on schedule. Heh. This will not last long.

I used the Truly Victorian patterns 225 and 324; they each got some alterations, though the underskirt stayed pretty true to the pattern.

Here's the sketch once again, showing the plans for the dress (in case anyone has forgotten;)

The skirt itself went together a dream, as with most Truly Victorian patterns. It was very simple to construct, and by 9pm on Saturday I had the skirt together and the flounces cut and sewn into two long 400" pieces. 800"x7" of silk to roll hem by hand; why oh why did I never get a roll hem foot for my machine? Curses! By 10 they were hemmed, and I started the laborious process of ironing all those pleats. With Dexter on in the background, I got started, and finished around 12am. Then, I sewed the pleats onto the skirt and called it a night. I was bushed!
Sunday morning saw the underskirt finished; I sewed the darts and the back seam, and attached and pleated it all into the waistband. Hey everybody! Guess who lost an inch off her waist measurement! Yay!


The apron/tourniere came next, and it took some futzing. I wanted the back tourniere to fall longer than the front, so I pinned and pleated each until I liked the way they fell. I also pinned the asymmetrical pick-ups in the apron, and sewed those down. I sewed the apron to the tourniere, making one more adjustment to the pattern: it called for a slit in the center back and a placket for closure, but I thought that looked clunky, so I changed it to a side-closure. easy-peasy.

I added the casing with drawstrings in the back to create the bustle, and voila! My apron/tourniere was done!

The bows came last, and I made long tubes of green silk which were tied into large, floppy bows to hang from each pick-up on the apron, and from the bustle in the back.

It's difficult to see them against the green, but they're there. I hand-tacked them last night, and added closures to both skirts. All that's missing now is the satin ribbon trim; the ribbon hasn't arrived yet! Hopefully, it will come soon. Next up: the bodice! I just might get this thing finished by my friend's Halloween party on the 24th! Woo hoo!

Ghosts of Halloweens past . . .

October is finally here!!!! Yay!!!! Okay; done with the crazy exclamation points.

October is probably one of my favorite months, not for the chilly weather or the beginning of sweater season, but for the one day a year when it becomes socially acceptable to dress up: Halloween. I don't know what I would do without this holiday; probably explode. I just wanted to post a little retrospective on some costumes of Halloweens past: come, walk down memory lane with me;)

Here's the year my friend K. decided her party theme would be Come As Your Favorite Literary Character . . . Dead. I wanted to do a Natural Form and a Sacque-Back Gown, so my sister and I went as Mina Harker and the Marquise de Merteuil.

I had a lot of fun with this sacque-back; it was a lot easier to do than I was expecting, though the ruched trim was kind of a nightmare. Still, I wish this was a better picture, because she looked fabulous.

This was Faery year. I had just started doing the Fantastickals makeup, so I made myself into a Peacock Faery, and my sister was the spirit of Autumn. Yep; I made a peacock feather headpiece. Yep, I burned my fingers pretty badly doing it.

This was technically for a New Year's do, but I still love this Voldemort get-up. This was before he appeared in the films, so I based it entirely on the books.The sides and back of that coat have beaded, embroidered celtic snake designs, as does the belt. It was a very heavy, warm costume, and I looked so scary that no one at the party wanted to talk to me!

This was our first year doing the Halloween parade in Boy's Town; Tab is Vampire Willow, and I did a sage dupioni Polonaise. Not my best effort; this was several years ago!

This is definitely from the Way-Back Machine! This is the year I went as Sally from my favorite "Nightmare Before Christmas". I was still living at home here! I made the dress out of quilted felt, and I made the yarn wig as well;)

And, here's the Giselle-Monster from last year;) I loved this dress, but it was such a production! See my dress diary for it here.

Well, I'm definitely looking forward to getting started on this year's dress; I hope the fabric arrives soon, or there will be some panicked posts to come . . .

Money Dress: the Steampunk Edition

Yesterday, I posted the sketch for Alma Garrett's Money Dress, and promised there would be a variation on it. Well, a few months back, a friend announced she was having a birthday/New Year's party this year, and it would have a Steampunk theme. Steampunk is not something I come to naturally; I know of it, but that's the extent of my experience. Still, I knew I was already building this dress for my own birthday party in November, so I started to brainstorm ways to convert for the later event.

Following images courtesy: We Heart It

Steampunk is not terribly easy for me to grasp as an aesthetic; there seem to be a lot of different ways of doing it, from the very historical to the vaguely Victorian. It runs the gamut between bustle skirts and corsets to leather harnesses and brass goggles.

I had to do quite a bit of research before I felt I was beginning to understand the look, but as I did I started to get pretty excited, beginning to even build a character around the dress I was designing:Captain Wilhemina Harcourt.

Steampunk seems to center around airships, huge hulking Victorian flying machines full of pipes and gears and rusty brass fittings, and I decided if I'm taking on a project like this, then she gets to be a captain. No point otherwise, right? So, epaulettes and gold braid on the shoulders, and a vaguely 18th-century feel to the bodice, with a tall velvet collar and over-sized cuffs to go along with my mini tricorn. Interestingly enough, this is not historically inappropriate: around 1876, colonial-inspired fashion was big to honor the centennial, so there were a lot of tricorn hats and such around. The leather faux-vest and the neck-corset and gauntlet start to veer away from the norm, however, and they will be covered in gears and watch parts, of course. I also plan to use a little rigid colloidion on my face to create a scar over one eye, and will wear a white-out lens. Harcourt is pretty badass, after all. Either that, or she doesn't know how to duck.

The bodice pattern is another Truly Victorian one, this time the TV405 Vest Basque. With a few adjustments to the collar, it works pretty well. The jacket will be out of the clover silk that makes up the skirts, but it will have chevroned stripes of the satin ribbon.

So, here's my first foray into Steampunk; I have to sit down now and figure out a way to convert my sister's gown as well, though she already has a holster and gun to wear on her hips that should look pretty kickass. I'll post progress once I get started . . .

Money Dress Diary: part 1

So, it's just about that time: time to set my sanity aside in a little jar by the bed and start working on my next huge project. In this case, it's the reproduction of my favorite dress from Deadwood: the Money Dress. I'm lucky to have access to concept sketches, screencaps from the episode, and hi-res images that tell me a great deal about the original; thank the Deadwood site for that.

After study and analysis, here's my working sketch. The body of the original is dupioni silk with satin ribbon and silk velvet, luckily all materials I can find easily. Truly Victorian is providing the patterns:

TV 422

TV324

TV225

Silk Baron is providing the silk, with the body being made of Clover dupioni (around 17 yards of it!) and the accent velvet in Evergreen. The satin ribbon is coming from JKM Ribbon, in Emerald. I'll also need to get emerald green satin, but I'll probably just pick some up at my local Joann's, since I need so little of it.


That's the preliminaries for now: stay tuned for progress updates! Check back in tomorrow for the Steampunk variation as well;)