Steampunk Dia de Muertos skeleton shirt

I am preparing costumes for Gaslight Gathering in San Diego in October, the theme is "All the Steamy Things That Go Bump In The Night" .  Given this theme, I felt that the Dia de Muertos Plague outfit would be perfect.  The picture to the left is the last time I wore the outfit and there were a few things I did not like.  The first is that I have Dia de Muertos style skeleton leggings on, but my arms, hands and chest are bare (or covered in mesh only).  So I decided to make a bodysuit/shirt that had integral gloves and a short turtle neck to reduce the amount of skin that shows.  I bought some soft knit material and used a tight T shirt to make a pattern.  I added a short standing collar to make the shirt a turtle neck and provide at least some neck coverage.  I then traced my hands onto the knit and stitched around them to make gloves. I left lots of extra fabric at the top when stitching the hands. Once I knew the hands fit, I added a basic sleeve pattern to the top of the gloves.  The sleeve and gloves were cut as one piece to minimize seams. 

leggings

Once the shirt was sewn, it was time to paint. I wanted to mimic the style of the purchased leggings shown to the left. So I purchased fabric paints and cheap brushes from the local craft store and set to work painting the shirt. To keep the paint from sticking the front and back together, or sealing the hands shut, the hands are stuffed with latex gloves, the sleeves have plastic bags in them and the shirt was placed over cardboard.  Painting on knits is really hard!  The fabric stretches in odd ways that makes keeping the lines even almost impossible.  However, overall I am pretty pleased with the way the shirt came out.  The paint does crack a bit if you stretch the shirt too much, but I think it will work for at least a few wearings.  Now to fix the shirt issue, since I was not happy with the previous shirt!

shirt front

sleeve and glove

shirt back

Steampunk Spectacular 4

Train!

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend Steampunk Spectacular, a local steampunk event.  I love this event for a couple of reasons.  The first is that it is really laid back and relaxing and the second is that the location is spectacular.  It is held at the Mine Shaft Tavern, which has a real train, old mining equipment and a cool theater for the shows. Oh and the food at the tavern is excellent as well.

Theater

The atmosphere at this event is always amazing and I have a good time every time I go.  The small town that the event is held in, Madrid New Mexico, is also really cool.  
There are lots of small shops, including an amazing little chocolate shop, to peruse.  A good friend of mine joined my husband and I this year for her first steampunk event, although you would not know it was her first from her very cool costume.

Anyway, here are a bunch of pictures!  None of these pictures were taken by me, they were uploaded to the event facebook page or to a local costuming group facebook page.  If the owner of the photos wants them removed, please send me a message and I will remove them (ditto if you are the subject of one of these photos).

First some images of myself, my husband and my friend. My husband and I wore our new leather masks and I wore my new light up flower crown.  I was really pleased with the mask, although they are really hard to see out of, and very please with the lights for the flowers.  The motion control really worked!  I wish I would have had more time to finish the rest of the costume, I really want a corset that matched and I did not like the shirt I made.  I would also like to make a skeleton turtleneck undershirt to go with the stockings I am wearing.  I suppose I will need to work on the details more for next time!

Now for photos of other people's cool stuff.  There were so many cool costumes and people.  The performers included the Clan Tynker, who are a family circus act and always a blast to see.

A light up flower crown

Worbla Flowers

To go with my sugar skull plague doctor mask, I wanted a flower crown and I was thinking it would be really fun if the flowers could light up.

To make the flowers able to light up clearly I made them out of  transparent Worbla thermoplastic.  This stuff is really fun to work with.  You simply heat it with a heat gun and shape it.  Basically, I cut shapes like you would out of felt to make roses and heated them to shape them together.  I made both large and small roses, 4 of each.

Circuitry

My husband has been learning to add more complex electronics to our costume props so he thought it would be cool if the light up flowers would change colors based off of the movement of my head.  He designed programming and circuitry to do this.  The head motion is sensed by a triple axis accelerometer, the programming is uploaded to an Arduino mini, the lighting is done by 8 Flora RGB Smart NeoPixels, a cheap switch and the power is a 9 volt battery.  In the picture to the right, the small square board is the accelerometer, the larger board is the arduino.  Both of these pieces are much smaller than the 9 volt battery.

He used this same set up to light up a crystal in the top of his steampunk cane.  The major differences are that the cane used a NeoPixel ring and that the calibration was different.  He can turn the cane upside down and my head cant turn that far.  Basically the motion of my head causes the lights to change color and the calibration makes even small movements change the color of the roses.

hat base side

hat upside down to show dart

hat front

I made a hat base out of 2 layers of felt and one layer of really stiff, heavy Pellon interfacing.  Basically this is a very elongated oval.  I darted the back to make it fit my head.  I then wired the edge and covered the wire with bias tape.

hat back

One the base was made I stitched all the circuitry to the hat and hid the circuitry with faux rose leaves.  I then stitched the clear flowers to the hat base and accented the base with small red and large white roses.  The three roses at the back hide the arduino, accelerometer and battery.

Hat front

hat side

hat top

 Here are some pictures is low lighting with the hat lit up.  The hat does all the colors of the rainbow and more....but the circuitry is very sensitive and it was hard to find the right angle to show all the colors.  This hat is so much fun to wear and the NeoPixels are so bright!

Leather steampunk masks

I am working on historical sewing and on embroidery.  Unfortunately, these projects must be secret till their reveals so I cant post about them yet!  I am dying to share them......but I will be good and wait till they have gone to their new homes...

In the mean time, I have always wanted a steampunk leather plague doctor's mask.  I also love celebrating Dia de los Muertos and sugar skulls. For some reason these things go very well together in my head so I decided to do a sugar skull themed mask.  My husband decided to do his literally as a plague mask and be sickly green.  His mask reminds me of the 'ick face' green poison stickers, although everyone I say this to does not remember these.  I swear I am not making up these stickers! 

To make the masks, I bought a pattern from this etsy site Steampunk Masks. The pattern is a digital download and there is a video to help with construction.  I will say that some previous leather working experience is a plus, this mask was harder than my previous leatherworking projects but not too bad.  You need to be really really exact on the holes since there is very little play in the pattern.  There are a lot of pieces so the construction took quite a while, but the effect is so worth it in the end! 

To create the masks, we cut out the pieces and then edged them to make the edges really smooth.  Then I painted mine with leather paint, Eco-Flo Cova Color paints.  These paints are water based and very easy to use.  The only downside I found is that it took many coats to get a strong color in the pale colors; white, yellow and orange.  Since this paint is water based, I had to seal the mask to make it water proof.  Together with multiple layers of paint and sealant, my mask was really really stiff!

 My husband stained his with green leather stain.  Rather than use a damp cloth, he used a dry cloth which resulted a streaked texture to go with the plague idea.  The masks were then stitch and riveted together.

I am really happy with how the masks came out.  The only issues I have is that I would like the mask to cover a bit more of my face and they can be hard to see out of.  It is a mask with very little fitting so the vision issue is not surprising and not something I will worry too much about.  I may rework the pattern for next time to get the mask to come closer to my ears, the next time I make one.