Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 5: Done!

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

I know it’s been a few days, but I was so excited about current projects that I put this post on the backburner for a bit. Finally it's time for the completion of the Steampunk costume!

When it came to the bolero for this costume it was a bit of a struggle to find a pattern that would suit what I needed. I really wanted something that clasped near the throat, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Since I was running short on time and I knew I would have to draft the sleeves as well, I decided to forgo it in favor of speed.


I started with B6533. Using the pattern exactly as is for the lining, I self drafted the top of the sleeve to poof out in a late 1800s fashion. Sadly I didn’t take any pictures of the drafting process since I was in such a rush, so all I have are images of the finished garment. I’m sure at some point I’ll make something similar again so I’ll be sure to take tons of photos then.


Thanks to all my rushing, I actually finished with about a week to spare. With all that extra time, I decided I would complete the costume with a couple of neat accessories. Because the bolero didn't clasp at the neck like I wanted, I made a neck ruffle with a pretty orange crystal in the center.


It was basically just some pleated fabric with a couple of hook and eyes to clasp it in front. I stitched a strip of the same brown ribbon I’d used on the corset down the center and added the crystal. I can’t remember exactly but I’m wanting to say I just used FabriTac to attach it. It may have had holes to secure it with thread, but I don't think so. To make the crystal a bit more frilly I lined some brown ruffled ribbon around the outside.

I will admit it. I hate the neck ruffle! It was a good idea in theory, but I didn’t like the way it turned out. She really liked it though and didn’t want me to make her something different despite my many protestations. Further proof that my opinion is not the only one that matters ^_^.

Next I made probably the cutest accessory of my entire life. A tiny top hat! *** I'm a firm believer that everything is cuter in miniature! ***


I started with a doll top hat I got from Hobby Lobby and added some of the same blue fabric as the bolero and overskirt. I didn’t have a pattern for this and was pretty much just winging it. Usually I don’t like to use glue in any of my costume construction, but I broke that rule here. On the outside it looks exquisite, but it’s basically glued straight onto the base hat. I did make sure to line it though, so you can’t see any of the mess within. I added some ‘decorative’ stitching around the top rim and added a ring of the same frilly ribbon from the neck ruffle.

One of my favorite parts of this hat is the giant copper flower. It looks like I specially made or bought the hat pin from a fancy hobby store or haberdashery, right? It’s totally not! Here in Oklahoma City there have been lots of ‘One Dollar Jewelry and More’ stores that have been popping up. I found this flower attached to one of those cheap adjustable rings for a buck! I just ripped off the cheap ring and glued the flower right on the hat. Perfect.

I finished it off by stitching on a couple of hair combs and some brown netting so that it would stay nicely in her hair.

With all the accessories finished I gave her the present on her birthday in lots of individually wrapped boxes. It was really fun to watch her unbox her costume one piece at a time.

Here is a couple pictures of the costume all completed!


And the back!

Oh! I did sew a modesty panel for the back so her skin didn’t show through the lacing. I just never got a photo of it. Rest assured she was not hanging out of the back.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this costume is my lack of photos with my friend actually in it! It seems like all of the photos that are taken of her are indoors with horrendous florescent lighting. ***shudders*** I’ve been bugging her to take some photos out in natural light in it for my blog, but sadly she’s been sick for the past week or two. I guess I’ll just have to settle for what’s already available. Alas!

This was taken the night I gave her the costume. I don’t think it was her actual birthday but it was on time!

And here was a picture of her we found online from Dragon Con 2011. It’s one of those evil shots where the photographer didn’t give any indication that he was about to take a photo of her, so she wasn’t even remotely ready. But since it’s literally the only one I have of her in natural light I’m gonna post it! Hopefully she’ll get some new shots to me soon so I can update these.








So that about wraps things up. I absolutely loved making this costume and I’m really glad it worked out well. I can’t wait to make more Victorian and Steampunk themed garments!

Patterns Used:
    Mini Top Hat: Self Drafted (sort of)
    Neck Ruffle: Self Drafted
    Bolero: B6533 + some self drafting
    Corset: TV110 + some self drafting
    Over Skirt: TV303
    Base Skirt: TV201
    Bustle: TV101

Orange and Teal ‘Steampunk’–Part 4

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

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

Do you want to know the preciously guarded secret to corset making? You have to promise not to tell anyone….

Okay, are you ready? Keep everything organized! It sounds really simple, but this is no joke. This particular corset has 6 panels on each side and an extra self drafted piece in the front, that’s 13 all together. With three different layers of fabric, that’s 39 pieces! If any of those stitched together upside down, backwards, or in the wrong order it completely changes the shape of the garment. A fabric marker, or chalk, is your best friend here. Mark everything! And double check before you stitch. As long as you keep everything in order, making a corset is really super simple. It’s just sewing a lot of seams together ~ And then pressing those seams with a tailors ham ~ before sewing a ton of straight lines for boning channels.

Sure there are a few extra steps I’m leaving out, but it’s not the scary intimidating garment most people assume it is. Any who, now that I’ve shared that super secret tip I’ll move on with the costume.


For this corset I used TV110. I really wanted there to be an extra flap of fabric over the busk that would button up along the corset. This would add two important things. First a bit of style to the corset so it didn’t look quite so much like underwear. More importantly though, it would add a slight bit of extra coverage for my friend. I could have added a modesty panel to the front, but it still would have seemed like you could see her skin between the busk. Since I know that would make her uncomfortable I wanted to do my best to alleviate it.  To add the front flap I just took the front panel pattern and, subtracting the middle seam allowance, placed it on the fold of the fabric to cut out a solid front. This is the same thing you’d do if you wanted to make the corset without the busk in front. Then I just sewed it alongside the front busk panel when I added the front side.

Perhaps the most nerve wracking part of this whole corset was adding the buttonholes. Anyone who has sewn buttonholes would likely feel my pain here. Even though most machines today make it really simple to put them in, any number of things can go wrong. The fabric could slip, or the thread could jam. And it’s not easy to recover if you have to pick out buttonhole stitches. The number of times the needle pierces the fabric pretty much leaves it shredded. It was scary to trust my machine to do it’s job without error after I’d spent hours carefully sewing the corset panels together. To make matters worse, I had to do it 12 times. Eep!

Thankfully everything turned out beautifully. I finished the corset up by adding some awesome orange and brown buttons and by binding it with a pretty satin ribbon I'd found that was in the same tone as the skirts.

I’d hoped to include more information about the jacket in this post, but I’m off to take photos of my latest costumes today so I’ll have to cut this one short. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able finish up with some jacket and accessories!

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

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