Happy (Steampunk) Halloween!

Yep; the Steampunk ensemble is finally done;)

And, yes: I really did go to the office dressed this way!

The Money Dress skirts have certainly gotten a workout, and they saved me quite a bit of work this time around too!

I intend to gussy up the goggles some more, but this was all there was time for . . .

Ta-dah! And next weekend I get to wear this again, for Comikaze;)

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;)

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 . . .