Steampunk poison doctor accessories

With the Poison doctor coat complete, it was time to add some accessories.  I figured as a poison doctor, he should wander around dispensing poisons to people.  To make the poisons portable, I got some used glass vials left over from my work and cleaned them thoroughly.  While  I loved the look of the glass vials, the caps were either grey plastic or white plastic and really really ugly.  I decided to hide the caps with polymer clay.  This is probably only my third project with polymer clay so I am pretty happy with how they came out.

Large bottles filled

The white caps were hard plastic and as long as I removed the soft inner lining could be place directly into the oven.  So I simply molded the clay directly onto the caps.  I tried to follow the plant theme, and used leaves, wood and vines as my inspiration for the polymer clay.

Largbe bottles from the top

Since the poisons referenced in the embroideries on the coat are both plants (hemlock, wolfbane, ect) and elixirs (Extract of wolfbane, Invisibility elixir, ect), I decided that some of the bottle should contain plant material and some should contain liquid.  Since the larger bottle are much easier to fill, we filled them with assorted plant material from our yard.  We then baked the plant material to dry it in the oven.  Once the plant material was dried, we glued the tops onto the bottles to prevent any accidents.
The small bottles were then filled with liquid.  In this case the liquid is distilled water with food coloring added.  These bottles were also glued shut to prevent spills.

Small bottles from the top

Small bottles filled

The brown bottles had soft plastic stoppers that would not survive baking, so I used a polymer clay cookie cutter to make some brown and green leaves.  Once the leaves were baked, I glued them to the top of the bottles.  As these bottles were dark, I did not put any contents inside.



Once the bottles were ready, I used craft foam and tape to create leather holsters for the bottles.  The idea was to make each holder unique to add some variety.  Once the pattern was made, the leather was cut out, edged and stained.  The staining was deliberately left streaky to go with the shady nature of a poison doctor.  We also stained a belt blank with the same green stain to match and used a random gear belt blank we had lying around.  Both holsters are entirely held together with rivets, entirely for aesthetic reasons. The holsters slip over the belt so the belt can be worn without them if needed.

 

Steampunk poison doctor coat

Almost a year ago my husband and I made leather steampunk plague doctor masks and then wore them to a local convention called Steampunk Spectacular. I was very happy with how the masks came out, but always felt that we really needed outfits specific to the masks.  I begun an outfit for myself based on the Dia de los Muertos skeletons to match the sugar skull mask, but had not begun an outfit for my husband.  His mask reminds me of those Mr Yuk stickers that used to get stuck on poisonous stuff when I was a kid, so we decided he should be a poison doctor and provide poisons to people.  To emphasize the poison tie, I decided to machine embroider the entire coat with poisons and evil elixir designs.  I purchased the Apothescary and the Pretty Poison design packs from Urban threads and set to work embroidering the base black linen.  The coat design was based off of Rasputin's black robe as the idea of a mad poison doctor also reminds me of Rasputin. To keep with the Mr. Yuk theme, all the embroideries were done in greens and golds.  To give people an idea of how these designs come out, here are images of each design.  Since each design was to be used multiple times, I altered the colors between runs, to give you an example. 'wolfbane' is shown twice, but once with an emphasis on yellow and once with an emphasis on green.  All designs were used at least 3 times on the coat and the designs are 6-7 inches in their widest dimension.

Even with the embroidery machine, the embroideries took about 20 hours to complete, but I really love the detail and dimension they add.  The embroideries were done on the cut out linen (edged with the serger to stabilize the fabric during embroidery) and were done with wash away stabilizer.  Once the embroideries were complete, I washed the coat to remove the stabilizer to keep the coat from being too stuff.  The coat is then lined with lime green cotton and edged with light green bias tape.  Once the embroideries were done, the coat went together fairly quickly and I am overall pretty pleased with how it came out. 

Coat Front

Coat back

Coat side

Historical Sew Monthly May: Holes or in my case fixing them

I know this entry is woefully late, but I did in fact finally finish it!   I am however too late I feel to post on the facebook page, so I am only posting it here!

When the May challenge came up, Holes, I immediately thought of Landsknecht fashion of the late 15th and early 16th century. This time period and fashion style is one of my all time favorites and I immediately wanted to make something completely new.  Then I remembered the dress sitting in the naughty pile.  I dont know if other costumers have a naughty pile, but this is where sewing projects or outfits go that did not go as planned and now require some work I really dont want to do. Examples of this are usually that the sleeves are wonky and I really dont want to redo them.






In the case of this dress, I put the whole dress together out of linen (black) and wool (blue).  The blue wool is woven, so I washed it with hot water and dried it in the dryer on hot.  This shrunk the wool, but also thickened it and strengthened it so it can handle the open cutwork.  The fabric looked good, so I designed the cutwork and carefully cut out the design in the blue wool.  I then hand stitched the white bands (left over linen from a previous project) to the bodice and pieced the white and black bands for the skirt. I then handstitched the blue bands over the white bands. 

Since I have made several of these dresses, the pattern was already worked out, the banding went very quickly.  I decided to see if lacing was a functional option for the the fronts of these gowns, so I stitched eyes (the eye part of hook and eye sets) to the inside of the bodice opening.  The eyes were off set to allow spiral lacing and also went into the dress very quickly.  All in all, this dress took about a week of working in the evenings so I was very chuffed with myself!  I then wore the dress to the Maryland Rennaisance Faire.  When I returned, I noticed I had ripped some of the blue wool and thought "Wow, I must have really caught the skirt on something sharp!"  I repaired the rip and ignored the whole incident. Fast forward about 6 months (and a cross country move) and I wore the dress again to a local SCA event.

This time I felt the skirt catch and rip!  When I got home, I found multiple rips in the blue wool that occurred at a specific place in my design.  I realized that my choice of cutwork design plus the wool being thinner than the wool I usually use meant that there was a systematic weakness in my design.  Really, there should never be too open shapes that close together with the grain straight between them as you can see in the ripped image to the left.  I realized I would either need to replace the lower cutwork band with a totally different fabric (this is totally a correct for the style solution), deal with repairing the rips every time I wore the dress or hand stitching down around the cut outs to stabilize them.  I did not want to do any of these things and I was frustrated with myself for not seeing the design flaw that I threw the whole dress into the naughty pile!


The dress stayed in the naughty pile until this challenge.  You see, I love the color combination and I love the way this dress looks and moves when I am wearing it so I decided that fixing this dress should be my goal for the May challenge.  I decided I loved the color combination and the lower cutwork band so replacing it was not a good option.  I also decided repairing the rips as they happened was not a good option either, so I decided to hand stitch around each cutwork motif by hand.  First I repaired the rips and then each motif took me 40 minutes to stitch. There were 16 motifs, so the total time was about 11 hours of hand sewing.   Here are images of the newly handstitched motifs. There are 2 different motifs that alternate on the lower band.

While this took a really long time, I am so happy to be able to wear this dress again!  I am even thinking of making a special chemise with blackwork or smocking details on the sleeves to showcase the dress!  Here are some detail pictures of the final dress.

The Challenge: Holes!
Material: linen (black and white), woven wool (blue)
Pattern:self drafted from woodcut images
Year:1510-1530
Notions: metal eyes, thread (poly), cotton cording
How historically accurate is it? Maybe 70%, the pattern is accurate and the cutwork is based on woodcuts.  However the dress would have most likely been all wool, the thread would have been linen, the eyelets hand made and the cording silk, linen or wool so there were compromises on the materials.  Also, while sleeveless is document-able, it is rare and I dont have an image with both cutwork and sleeveless on the same dress. Finally, of the outfits for Landsknecht we have color descriptions of, this would be very tame and may not have been the best choice on my part.
Hours to complete: Initial construction was ~20 hours and this current batch was 11 to fix the holes
First worn: In the current incarnation, not yet
Total cost: none, all this was stash

A quick Darth Vader hat and time for tea!

I did run out of time and did not get to finish everything the way I wanted for the Star Wars tea.  I was struggling with the hat.  I had this idea in my head of Darth Vader on my hat enjoying tea, leaning against a decorative tea cup on a red hat with a black veil.  The first issue was I could not find a hat base I liked in red, but I did find a lovely one in black.  This is a vintage hat base from Hats by Leko that I just love.  I then tried to make a tiny lace teacup in red for Darth Vader to lean upon.  This was a complete failure, as was the red veiling, so I simply ended up making a tea cup for Darth Vader and stitching him to my hat.  I managed to not damage either Darth Vader or the hat so both can be reused.  While I wish I would have had more time for my hat, it was still lots of fun to wear the way it was. 

Hat back

Hat side

Hat front

Darth Vader with tea cup

Finally it was time for tea!  My two very talented friends each made really cute skirts.  The black skirt is made from black and gold Star Wars fabric with C3PO ruffle.  This friend also made super cute lego Star Wars lightsaber jewelry and matching fascinator.  My other friend made a BB-8 themed skirt and styled her outfit to match. All in all it was a wonderful evening with friends!

A Star Wars Purse

Since I finished my Star Wars dress, it was time to work on accessories. I think accessories are my favorite part of most outfits!  I really wanted to cover a range of bad guys in my outfit and my favorite Star Wars costume of all time has always been the Imperial Guard, so I decided to make an Imperial Guard themed purse. The main body of the purse would be decorated with an appliqued Red Guard helmet, the pattern I drew is here.






Off I went to the fabric store to get red vinyl and purse bits.  I picked up 1/2 a yard of the new vinyl from the Yaya Han collection at Joann Fabrics (more on this fabric later). I decided on a sew on frame for my purse. Once I got the frame home, I drafted up the rest of the purse to fit the frame.  Since at least one of my friends has asked how to use this style of purse frame, I will discuss it a bit here.  First I traced the frame onto paper, you can see in the photo how the frame fits the top edge of my paper pattern.  I then designed the rest of the purse shape.   I then cut out the fabric adding a seam allowance to each side, including the top edge.  I tend to use a narrow seam allowance but this is not necessary, use whatever you are comfortable with.

Once I had my fabric cut, I cut the helmet shape out of the vinyl and cut out the eye slit.  I then stitched the slit down to a black vinyl from my stash and cut away the excess black vinyl.  Once this was done, I   appliqued the helmet onto the my base black cotton.  I have appliqued vinyl before, but never 4-way stretch vinyl.  I usually do not pin the vinyl since it scars the vinyl and I also don't use a fusible interfacing since it is easy to scorch vinyl.  Usually just holding the vinyl shape in place is fine.  Not with this stuff, the vinyl caught on my presser foot and stretched out of shape!  I had to re-cut the helmet and try again.  This time I pined right on the very edge, basically where the seamline would go and turned my machine speed to the slowest possible stitch.   I then had to release the presser foot every couple of stitches to prevent the vinyl from stretching.  It probably would have been better to just go buy a different vinyl, but this stuff is more than $25 a yard so I did not want to spend anything more on this project!  I then stitched the detail lines by sewing slowly and releasing the drag on the presser foot every few stitches. If you look closely, you can see scars from where I had to resew the details, this vinyl was just horrible to applique with.  It might have helped to use one of the temporary bonding sprays to keep the vinyl in contact with the cotton, but I did not have any so I did not try this trick. 

Next I added some red rhinestones I had laying around and stitched up the purse.  I stitched up both the exterior fabric as well as the lining.  I then added the lining to the exterior and completely finished all seams.  The frame is then hand stitched to the finished purse edge.  I have worked with nicer versions of this frame before and was able to use fine thread.  This frame is a cheap one from Joann fabrics and the holes were a bit jagged, so I used button weight thread and doubled it to give it some strength and resist fraying.

The final thing was adding the purse strap.  I intended to make the strap out of the vinyl, but it stretched too much and did strange things when I tried no matter what I did to control it.  As an alternate, I bought a couple of Star Wars themed ribbons and layered them to make a strap. 

Star Wars Ribbons

 The "Star Wars" ribbon is grossgrain and the Captain Phasma ribbon is satin. I stitched down the Captain Phasma ribbon onto a length of the Star Wars ribbon and then zigzag stitched a second piece of the Star Wars ribbon to the back of the first to make a double sided strap.

Finished strap (back and front)

The only downside to using the ribbon is that I could not find metal strap pieces that were the right size, so I ended up using metal findings that were intended for creating adjustable straps.  These worked fine but are a bit odd for just stitching straps to.  I hand stitched strap holders to the back of the purse using some left over fabric.  I then hand stitched the straps onto the holders.  Here is the finished purse!

May the 4th be with you: a Star Wars Dress

A couple of friends are I are going to a tea celebrating May the 4th be with you.  The tea is actually being held on May the 7th since that is a Saturday but is going to be Star Wars Themed.  The tearoom requested costumes or Star Wars themed outfits.  I don't have a Star Wars costume, but I though a Star Wars themed outfit could be fun. 

I knew I wanted a vintage style dress, but I also knew I was going to have a problem, I had minor abdominal surgery scheduled about 1.5 weeks before the tea.  I was still going to have stitches and probably swelling and tenderness the day of the tea.  So the dress needed to be at least somewhat adjustable.  I settled on this pattern, Butterick's Retro 1952 dress.  I figured if I switched out the snaps and buttons for ties, this dress, since it is a wrap dress should be adjustable! 

Now all I needed was fabric and I was ready to go!  I knew I wanted to go with a bad guy theme and I wanted the dress to be Black and Red.  So I went fabric shopping, and this is where I ran into a problem.  There was basically nothing available in black or red in the Star Wars fabrics!  The closest I could find was a white fabric with black and red print of Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma.  After spending way to long wandering around a fabric store, I decided this print could work if I overlaid it with a black sheer.  I then spent even more time wandering around testing various black fabrics for the overlay.  Since the print is already pretty dark, most of the sheers were too much and obliterated the detail in the print.  I finally found a fine net fabric in the with the tulle that fit the bill. I decided to layer the skirt, and have the net fabric stop shorter than the print to add some dimension. 

I will say this pattern is amazingly easy to put together, the only tricky part is the darts (there are 3 darts per side on the front panel!  I then added ties to allow the dress to wrap and be adjustable.  I used simple grossgrain ribbon for tying the front panel around to the back and sewed fancy ribbons and decorative buttons to close the front.  Overall I am pretty pleased with the dress.  I do plan on wearing a petticoat with it, but the one I ordered has not arrived yet! Here are some pictures of the full dress without the petticoat.  I am really looking forward to wearing this dress on Saturday!  Now to work on the accessories!