Teacup Hat take 2

Remember my last attempt at the Teacup hat?  Lots of fun but way too big for most things.  I decided to make a smaller one as a fascinator rather than a full huge hat.  I used the same pattern as my last teacup hat but I am going to include a bit more how to in this post.  First I traced all of the pattern pieces onto heavy duty one side fusible interfacing.  I made 2 copies of everything but the handle piece in the fusible interfacing.  I cut out the interfacing and fused it to the fashion fabric and lining fabric.  Then I cut the fabric.

Next i stitched the straight edge of the saucer pieces and the darts and side seams on the cup pieces.  I then stitched the lining to the fashion fabric right sides together, clipped the seams and turned the pieces right side out.  I did this for the saucer along the inner edge, the saucer bottom (the larger circle) and the cup bottom (the smaller circle).  I whip stitched the opening shut on the saucer bottom and cup bottom.  I did not machine sew the cup fashion fabric and lining together as it would be too difficult.  So I hand turned the bottom and whip stitched to fashion and lining together. 

I then stitched the saucer bottom and the cup bottom to the cup and saucer pieces by hand.  The outer edge of the saucer and the upper edge of the cup were cut with no seam allowance, since I decided to edge the cup and saucer with bias tape.  Over the bias tape I added silver trim and also trimmed the handle piece.

For decoration, I added a keyhole piece and key intended for scrapbooking, a ton of hot fix crystals and a small spoon that I got from the jewelry department of a local craft store.  Here is a picture of the finished teacup fascinator and the monster teacup hat I made previously for size.

Giant Teacup Hat

This hat was not supposed to be giant.....but I thought the original pattern would be too small and I apparently enlarged the pattern a bit too much.  I may remake it smaller at some point. 

I love teacup hats and wanted to make one of my own.  I figured it would make a perfect small project and would give me a cute hat for steampunk tea parties.  The pattern I used was a free instructable Quilted Mad Tea Party Set for a quilted tea set.  I figured the teacup would work well as a hat and someday I may even make a teapot hat!  I did make the teacup bigger and probably too big, see the picture below as the hat is as tall as my head!  The only other change was I stiffened both the lining and the fashion fabric with fusible interfacing to help it hold up to being worn rather than just sitting on a table.  The hat is kept on my head by 3 hair clips and seems to stay pretty well, even though my hair is fairly slick.

Victorian Picnic

The Steampunk Vampire dress is made such that the steampunk bits are all added as accessories.  I did this so I would also be able to wear the dress as a regular Victorian dress.  I had the opportunity to wear the remade dress to a Victorian Tea hosted by a local tearoom.....I just needed to get the remade dress to a wearable state!  Thankfully, I had made this dress before so it went together pretty quickly.  For the most part I remade the dress exactly as it was before.  There were 2 big exceptions, one planned and one not so planned. 

The planned one was to make a Balayeuse.  Basically this is a removable dust ruffle for a skirt.  I got the idea from an article on Your Wardrobe Unlockd, which is a fun costume e-zine which I am a member of (Making a Balayeuse).  If you are not a member the e-zine allows the authors to put their articles on their own site after some period of time and the same article is available on the author's blog (Yesterdays Thimble).  I thought a dust ruffle would be a great idea for this skirt since half the stripes are white and that means they show dirt!  Anyway, I did not follow the article since this skirt is an odd shape, I used the skirt pattern as a guide and made a Balayeuse out of cotton muslin.  In the pictures, I have it just pinned to the inside while I figure out the correct height, you can see it poking out the skirts in some of the pictures.  I want it to be a bit longer to protect the skirt but not show too much since it is very plain.  Once I get it properly adjusted, then I will make button holes on the Balayeuse and button the Balayeuse to the skirt. 

The non-planned change was the addition of a pleated ruffle around the bottom of the skirt.  I finished cutting everything out and realized I had fabric left over.  I had a really hard time estimating fabric since the pattern calls for 45 or 60 inch wide and the original was 45 wide, but the new fabric was 110 inches wide.  I used all the remaining fabric to make a box pleated ruffle for the bottom of the skirt.  Ok, so enough talk time for some pictures! 

Some notes: I did not manage to finish my new hat, so the hat I am wearing will be replaced in the future!  The beautiful fan I am carrying was made by The Treasures Of Dawn and the stockings and shoes were from American Duchess.  I love how comfortable the Victorian Button Boots are!  The other very lovely dress was made by a good friend of mine, I love how her red and green dress came out and I especially love her hat!

  

Resin filled bezels for the steampunk nametags

I am pretty much a newbie when it comes to resin.  I have made a few resin steampunk jewels and buttons using molds but I have never used bezels before.  However, I have been reading a resin crafting blog Resin Crafts and decided to use what I have learned and try bezels.  I wanted them to be a bit complex, so I designed a quick graphic that would be the background. 

I simply printed these out from my printer.  After that, I cut them out and sealed them in Modge Podge 3 times and let them dry overnight.  The sealing 3 times is something I learned from the Resin Crafts blog.  Once dry, I sealed them into the back of the bezels using Modge Podge and let them dry.  I then glued in rhinestones in some of the bezels and let them dry. 
After the rhinestones, I mixed up a batch of the Jewelry Resin and then freaked out about bubbles!  This resin bubbled so much and I was so worried that the bubbles would ruin my project.  However, this resin apparently has very good bubble release and after standing 1 minute there were no bubbles left.   Must remember to wait a little bit before the hysterics.  After the bubbles were gone, I poured resin into each bezel.  Once the resin was in, I added watch parts to each bezel to make them unique.  The watch parts were so light the floated on the resin and I had to use a straight pin to sink the parts.  This caused a few small bubbles, but I managed to get rid of most of them with the same straight pin.  The resin then cured for 24 hours and here they are! 



One observation, look at the colored dots in the bezels, these are the rhinestones.  The rhinestones look more like little mirrors or sequins if you put them under the resin, this surprised me, but I am still happy with the result. 

These were so much fun!  I still have a lot to learn, but I am loving resin!  These bezels were also perfect as they have loops top and bottom so each person can add a personal touch to their badge. 

Steampunk nametags

The major distraction to working on the Black and White Victorian dress has been making steampunk name tags.  In a week, our local steampunk crew is helping out at a local convention called Bubonicon.  We are hosting a panel on steampunk focusing on the influence of non-English culture.  A meet and greet with Cherie Priest, a guest of honor, which I am so excited about.  A kids craft workshop to make goggles and a 2 hour block in the Consuite.  I felt we should have name tags that identify our members as part of the Albuquerque Steampunk Society (ABQSS), so myself a friend are making badges.  We are all using character names rather than our real names for the badges.

The badges are leather.  We first stamped ABQSS and the character names into the leather.  We also used a few steampunk leather stamps for decoration.  Most of the stamps worked pretty well with the leather just moist.  However, the propeller stamp was more detailed that the gear stamps and we found we need to wrap the leather in a wet cloth sealed in a plastic bag for 30 minutes to get a good impression.  To make life easy, we just wrapped all the badges for 30 minutes since we did not completely plan out what we wanted stamped on each badge ahead of time.  Here are the badges just stamped.

We let leather dry overnight.  We then stained the leather with a brown stain to make the details show up a bit more.  We let the stained leather dry overnight.  Once the leather stain was dry, we buffed the badges with a soft cloth. 

Once the badges were dry it was finally decoration time!   We added grommets to the top of each badge for handing cords and to the bottom of each badge for hanging resin filled bezels I made and individual touches.  We also added gears, crystals and other bits to make each badge unique.  Here are a few of them so far! 

Black and White Victorian Remake waterfall drapes

I am continuing to work on the Black and White Victorian.  Mostly I am still sewing all the panels for the skirt together.  I have also washed the corset and the rear skirt drape red silk in synthropol to attempt to remove any remaining excess dye.  After removing the excess dye I remade the rear skirt drape.  I am still very unsure that I have removed all the excess dye, so I am going to attach the drapes to the finished skirt with hook and eyes so they are removable in case I ever need to wash the skirt again.

Black and White Bustled Victorian Remake

A friend has invited me to a Victorian picnic!  I am so excited, however, the only Victorian I have finished is made of heavy velvet and will be way too hot for a outdoor, summer picnic in New Mexico.  So I decided this is a perfect opportunity to redo my favorite Victorian dress ever.  I made a Victorian dress and steampunk accents for a Steampunk Vampire outfit.  I loved this dress!  Unfortunately, after only a few pictures and one wearing of a couple of hours, the dress was ruined.  I was so very angry that I have refused to remake this dress as I get angry whenever I think about it.   However, I am going to remake this dress for the picnic and a new hat as well!  

Here is the surviving bodice and the ruined skirt.  The new fabric has wider stripes and is a slightly different black, so I am going to have to redo the whole dress.  However, I am probably going to save the bodice, remove the trim and maybe alter it so I can wear it with a different skirt.

If anyone is interested in pictures/blog of the original dress it can be found at my old blog
http://dalbeth.livejournal.com/     The tag is steampunk vampire for those who might be interested. 

The first big step is remaking the skirt, as I did the first time, I will be using the Truly Victorian pattern for the 1875 Parisian trained skirt.  I learned from experience the last time that this lovely printed cotton behaves epically badly in the front aprons.  Last time, I figured this out after the skirt was constructed and spent hours trying to stitch stay tapes to the undersides of the aprons with it hung from my curtain rod.  This was most uncomfortable, so I am adding tapes before I put the skirt together this time. 

Here is the top apron.  This is a pretty narrow apron, so I did only one tape.   I used cotton twill tape for this.  I have no idea of tapes likes this were ever used on the front aprons in period but I figured it is at least a plausible solution.  I hand stitched the tapes.  

On the bottom apron I stitched 2 tapes rather than 1.  This apron is narrow enough for 1 tape, but with the tape in the top apron and the vertical strips having both aprons with center tapes gives a very strong and structured vertical line.  I wanted this to look more organic than so structured.