Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 3

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 1
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 2

Okay, so it was time to get busy. After my long fabric debacle the silver lining of this costume was knowing that there wouldn’t be too much in the way of custom pieces. Earlier in the week I perused TrulyVictorian.net and ordered the skirts, corset, and bustle that would be needed. ~ BTW, If you haven’t looked at their patterns before, I seriously recommend them. They’re absolutely amazing. ~ The only thing I couldn’t find was a jacket I really liked… but I’ll get into that later.

Doing things properly, I started with the foundation of the garment; the bustle. ~ At some point I will probably go on a rant about people not wearing the proper foundation garments for costumes, but for today I’ll stay on topic. ~

I’ll be honest, I really love this bustle. It was so easy to make and it even collapses down for easy travel. A few months earlier I had seen Artemisia's post about her experience with this pattern. ~ She’s the author of Diary of a Renaissance Seamstress and a wonderful read if you like Renaissance style clothing ~. She had the best idea of edging each of the petticoat frills with bias tape which I totally copied. It was really simple and added the cutest pop of color to an otherwise plain skirt. Sure no one would see it, but everyone walks a little taller when their underwear is cute right? She edged hers in black, but I decided to go with a light blue cause it seemed more airy.


The only problem I had with the bustle was of my own making. You see, I only had 5 and a quarter yards of white fabric… but the pattern called for almost 6. It was the middle of the night, and I had been so frustrated with the previous fabric woes I decided to go forth with what I had on hand. The petticoat flounces weren’t really ‘needed’ so it wasn’t as though the completed bustle is lacking. It’s just not as ‘floofy’ as it could be.

I whipped out the brown skirt pretty quickly using pattern TV201 because I wanted to be sure that it would fit over the bustle. ~ When working on a time schedule, premade patterns are your absolute best friend ~

In a fit of speed, it completely slipped my mind that I wanted to put a hidden pocket in this skirt. I suppose this eventually gave my friend an excuse to tote around a cute bag with her outfit, but costumes should have a place to stealthily hide your camera, phone, etc. while your hands stay free. /sigh. Live and learn.


Next I started working on the overskirt. Again a pattern saved my sanity as I was working into the wee hours of the morning. ~ Sometimes I feel like I should have sent Truly Victorian more money as a thank you present ~.

It was right about this point that I started to panic. Orange, teal, and brown… what in the world was I thinking?!?!?! This was going to be a disaster. Freaking out, I started obsessively pinning fabric up and staring at it to see if the colors were going to cause spontaneous eye spasms.

Luckily, my compulsion helped me stop and take stock of which way I wanted the back panels to face. I had cut and stitched them with the intention of there being a huge splash of orange down the back, but instead of being this great impact, I found myself leaning more towards the blue. It seemed to set off the pick-a-boo pleats more. After asking for a few outside opinions, I decided to stick with my gut and flip them over.

Now that I had the bottom half of the outfit done it was time to finish the top, starting with a bright orange corset!

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 4
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 5

Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 2

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 1

Okay, so I had my design with approximate fabric yardage needed all printed out and ready to go. Now all I needed was the fabrics.

This was a bit of a struggle. I’m very wary when it comes to ordering fabrics online without getting samples first. There’s no real way to know what the fabric feels like, or if my monitors colors are tuned exactly right. It’s just not a gamble I’m usually willing to make. Since, once again, I didn’t get the bright idea to make this costume until about a month before the event, waiting for fabric samples to be mailed and confirmed before purchase really wasn’t possible. I would be limited to brick and mortar stores. Being new to Oklahoma City, I knew of only about 4 or 5 stores that sold fabric. Choices were limited. On top of this I planned on using bright orange and blue in this design… this could very easily go horribly, terribly wrong.

As luck would have it, I found a gorgeous teal colored fabric in the clearance section of the very first store I went into. It was slightly more stiff that I wanted, but it was a beautiful color with nice grain lines. I was sold. However, I couldn't find any orange fabric in the entire store! ~ Aside from cotton of course ~  Is orange taboo now or something? I could find lots of burnt reds and marigold yellows… but no real oranges. Because I couldn’t very well buy one color fabric without knowing if I could find the others in the same tone, I reluctantly had to put the teal fabric back. ~ There were almost tears I tell ya ~

Over the next few days I went to every fabric store I could find in the area with no luck. There were blues… there were teals… there were browns, but no oranges. Maybe orange is only available from Sept-Nov like pumpkin pie? I was so frustrated. Was I was going to have to change my whole color scheme just because I couldn't find the right pop color?

Finally I decided I would drive the hour north to go to a second Hancock's. There is one about a stones throw from my house, but sometimes different stores in the same chain will have different fabric selections. I crossed my fingers and headed out.

My luck was in that day. In the upholstery section I found a gorgeous crinkled orange fabric. As a bonus I was about 95% sure that it was the perfect color to go with my previous clearance find. ~ that I of course didn't think to grab a sample of ~. I decided I would take the gamble and bought the entire bolt. ~ Apparently orange is a scarcity in this town… I wasn’t taking any chances. ~

I headed back to the clearance fabric and, thank my lucky stars, it was still there. I put my orange fabric sample up next to it and they went together beautifully. Yay! After that, it was pretty easy to find a brown fabric that went nicely with the other two.

But after the fabric debacle I was almost an entire week behind on constructing her costume! I had to get cracking if I was going to finish on time.

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 3
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 4
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 5

Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 1

I have a friend who has naturally dark curly brown hair and an elusive hourglass figure. Aside from causing me extreme envy, her appearance has always has always given me the slight impression that she would be better suited to a different era. Perhaps it’s just my love of Victorian and Steampunk style clothing, but I’d been dying to get that girl in a corset and bustle for ages. So, for her birthday last year, I decided I would make it happen.

Narrowing down a general concept for this costume was extremely hard; mostly because I have hundreds, if not thousands, of reference pictures of Victorian style photos saved on my hard drive. ~ I might be a slight bit obsessed ~. Should it be a historically accurate garment, or a full out Steampunk creation complete with gadgets galore. Ugh, it was so hard to decide.

I wavered on this quite a bit. I didn’t really want to do a historically accurate gown, because part of the reason I wanted to put her in a corset and bustle was to show off her amazing figure. On the other hand, without discussing it with her first ~ due to the birthday surprise ~ I didn’t want to go with some super gadgety outfit in case it wasn’t to her liking. Plus that would have required me to learn about engineering such gadgets in a limited time frame. I plan on learning how to do these in the future… but I didn’t want to spend a month making a costume only to have the accessories be subpar.

In the end I decided to go with a design a bit down the middle. It’s not even close to historically accurate, but it’s also not crazy out there. I decided to leave off any ‘Steampunk’ embellishments, that way she could play it up whichever way the occasion called for.

 

The one major design choice I did make was bright colors. I haaaaaate how drab most Victorian and Steampunk clothes are. And there’s no real reason for it. ~ They did use color in the Victorian Era people! ... Perhaps not these colors, but colors none the less! ~

Now that I had a design, I was off to find the fabrics…

Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 2
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 3
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 4
Click here for Orange and Teal 'Steampunk' - Part 5

Upcoming Projects–January

Oye vey, my list of upcoming projects has officially surpassed the one handed counting limit. It’s time I jot this all down so I can keep things prioritized.

• Microwave Heat Pack - Done 1/8/12
• Pooh Bear themed Pursebud backpack Done 1/18/12
• Bathrobe - Done 1/10/12
• White Mage Hoodie - Done 1/22/12
• Pirate Corset
• Pink Aurora Dress
• B-Day present for Amy: Awaiting direction from the birthday girl.

I know it doesn’t seem like much, but with classes restarting today, and my upcoming vacation to Breckenridge at the end of the month, I’m booked!
Time to get sewing.

You can’t microwave polyester!

One of my husbands coworkers bought one of those microwave heating packs awhile back, but she wasn’t completely happy with it; it wasn't large enough and she said it smelled bad. So he, being the wonderful man he is, pimped out my services and told her I could take care of it.

It took me longer to get around to it than I’d have liked ~ mostly because I’ve been so wrapped up in other projects and partly because it just slipped my mind ~. When he reminded me yesterday, I decided to take care of it this weekend before classes start on Monday.

I ran out to the store and grabbed some really cute pink and purple fleece and was all ready to get started with the cutting when I started wondering, ‘Can you even microwave fleece?’. A quick internet search turns up that you, in fact, CAN NOT microwave fleece. ~ Well at least not the fleece that's mass produced at Hancocks since it's all 100% polyester. ~ There were all kinds of horror stories ranging from melting to fires, but it all boils down to being a serious no-no. I’m really glad I thought to check.

So, it was back to the fabric store. It wasn’t a complete loss because I ended up with a really cute flannel filigree bird pattern ~ in 100% cotton I might add ~.

   
To combat the ‘bad smell’ she complained of I decided to go with flax seed with a few drops of Water Lily scent mixed in. I’m not a flower person myself, preferring citrus scents, so I hope it’s to her liking.

I spent about an hour, or so, putting it together, which wasn't so bad considering I've never made one of these before. And I think it turned out rather well. I put in three chambers to keep the flax seeds from chunking up on one side of the pack which keeps things nice and even. Hopefully she’s happy with the results.

Now to go scrub the evil water lily scent off my hands so I can stop sneezing.

Unruly Bobbin Tails

I have a problem with bobbin tails. They’re a tangled nightmare and there’s no telling how many times I’ve accidently caught the loose string of a bobbin and sent it flying halfway across a room. ~ This is generally followed by much cursing and mumbling ~

About a year back I thought I would outsmart my bobbins and get a cute little organizing caddie for them. Surely this would solve the problem.

Nope! Now I just had organized chaos. No matter what I did the tails would come loose and tangle into a jumbled heap. So yesterday I went on an internet scavenger hunt to try and come up with a solution. That's when I came across this little gem.

Tame Your Bobbin Tails with Plastic Tubing. It was such an ingenious solution I ran to the hardware store right away.

In the plumbing section you can find a roll of different sized clear plastic tubing. Even though the website said they used 7/8ths inch tubing, I had brought a few bobbins with me and deemed it to large, so I went with 5/8ths of an inch instead. It seemed to work out really well.

First things first, measure your bobbin height.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. But you want it to fit snug. My bobbins were just shy of 1/4th of an inch.

Next you’ll want to mark your tubes with a sharpie. I tried cutting a few of these without marks, but it’s not very easy to eyeball such a small increment. I’d recommend just taking the time to measure it all out. You can do a ton at once.

Now you’ll need to get some sharp scissors (But not your fabric sheers!) and cut along your indicated mark. As time went on and my hand started to get tired I found that it was a lot easier to cut out a chunk of tubing and slice it long ways first. Then I could flatten out the tube and only have to cut one ‘layer’ at a time. Plus it’ll save you the time of snipping the rings later.

If you decided not to cut the tube long ways first, you’ll  just need to snip each of the rings so that they can be easily adjusted over your bobbins.

And viola! You’re done!

You may need to trim some of the rings a bit depending on how straight you made your cuts. ~ I was doing this at 2 a.m. so I had a lot of extra trimming to do . ~

Now you can keep your bobbins wherever you like without fear that the tails will end up horribly tangled and unmanageable. After finding three bobbins with the same color thread I’ve decided I’m going to start keeping mine with the spools.

Do you have any good tips for organizing your sewing room?

Pirate Wench - Part 2

Click here for Pirate Wench - Part 1

I am by no means stickler for historical accuracy, but having seen one too many badly elasticized chemise’s in my day I decided to try to make this costume with absolutely no elastic. Silly, I know. I just kept getting horrible flashes of Party City style costumes with their cheap flimsy materials **shudders**. I didn’t want my friends costume to look like that. So I got to work…

I started with the corset. Now, I had never made a corset before. I’d made the renaissance style bodices that were the beginnings of corsets, but never an actual body altering garment. Instead of being intelligent and using a pattern for my first time, I decided to grab the bull by the horns and make a self drafted corset… with only measurements… and no fittings because it was going to be a surprise. Sometimes my brilliance astonishes even me.

Luckily I had a dress mannequin in her size so I wasn’t completely flying blind.

In retrospect the drafting of the corset really wasn’t all that bad. It wasn’t the body altering wonder that I hoped it would be, but it was fairly respectable. Plus, by drafting the pattern myself, I was able to leave enough room for the best part. Pockets!

My friend is obsessed with pockets. While they weren’t terribly practical, I can tell you that they did make her giddy with glee. I think she kept chap stick and cash in them.

Next I moved onto the skirts. There wasn't anything particularly earth shattering about the skirts. I broke out a pattern, (M4090), I’d used before and made a couple of tweaks to it; like adding a few grommet lace ups along the sides.

As for the shirt, I can’t for the life of me remember what pattern I used. I know that there was one, it was just a simple wrap shirt, but I can’t find it anywhere. Alas.

Any who, I added some bias binding to the sleeves to make a drawstring casing. Simple yet effective.

Next came the jacket, which I’ll state up front, I’m still not happy with. I hadn't started this early enough and ran up too close to her birthday so I didn't have time to search out a better fabric. It’s nice, and it worked. It’s just a bit too heavy for my liking. It’ll definitely keep her warm in the fall though. I was aiming for a tighter fit so I used (V1266) in a few sizes down from her measurements without the sleeves.

Finally it was time for the crowning glory. The article of clothing that pulls the entire ensemble together…

Bloomers!

Okay so I cheated a bit here on my no elastic rule. I made drawstring cases for the leg ties, but went ahead and added elastic to the waistband since her waist is so much smaller than her hips. I thought no one would ever see it, so it’d be okay. I was wrong! These turned out to be my friends favorite part of the entire outfit, so they got flashed around quite a bit

I technically used pattern (M6236), but with as much as I altered the simple pattern to fit my friends waist and hips I basically just drafted my own.



So I’d finally finished my first costume for someone else, I’d managed to keep it a secret for an entire month, and surprise her on her birthday weekend. She was thrilled and ran around showing the bloomers to anyone and everyone who would pay attention. And we even went to the KC Ren Fest that weekend so she got to wear her costume right away.



Patterns Used:
     Shirt - Unknown
     Corset - Self Drafted
     Skirts - (M4090)
     Jacket - (V1266) 
     Bloomers -  (M6236)

Lesson Learned:
     - Don't self draft your first corset. Use a pattern to see how they are supposed to work/fit first. Oh and always put boning down the center panel of a corset if you don't use a busk.... that's very important.