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| The beginning of a steampunk costume. |
It's been months since I've made anything, and grad school kept me plenty busy, but ages ago I did manage to sew this bustle for Halloween in 2013. Here I am wearing it with my belly dance skirt (blogged about
here) and a store bought corset I added fake fur to.
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| Bustle doesn't really meet in the front |
The jacket is a thrift store find I've had for a few years (you can see it with my mad hatter costume
here). This was in my pre-machine days so I haphazardly hand stitched lace onto the collar and cuffs. And it was lace I cut from the edges of an old bed sheet! But my simple hand stitches have held up over the years since both the jacket and the lace are in great condition.
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| The back is adorable! |
I decided to make a bustle to match the jacket and tried to get as close a shade of teal corduroy as I could. The tint I found is spot on, but the shade is a bit too light. I think I could dye it to exactly match, but for now I don't mind. Plus, I'm so inexperienced in dyeing I don't know how good I'd be at color matching.
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| A somewhat better view of the back without a jacket |
The pattern I used was McCalls
M6770. It's a fairly simple pattern, 3 rectangle-ish shapes sewn onto a base with a waistband. It was just time consuming with all the gathering and distributing of stitches. I found some lace that thematically matched the lace on my jacket, but of course wasn't an exact match (unless I find that bed sheet manufaturer...).
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| Swimwear, or steampunk? |
For props I painted myself some goggles and a gun. The goggles are just some old swimming goggles (inspired by the tutorial
here). I replaced the rubber strap with an elastic ribbon. Then I painted the frames bronze and the rubber base black, but the black paint did not stick to the rubber sections very well, so I'll evenually have to use something else.
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| Before... |
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| ... and After!!! |
For the gun, I painted it black then covered it with gold, silver, and green metallic paints. Some of my paints were very old and clumpy, but I used that to get some good texture on the gun. Work with what you got! Now if I can only finish my corset, then my steampunk costume will be one more step closer to being complete!
