Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch: corset

Normally I prefer to make my own corsets, since they always fit better if they are made specifically to your measurements and bespoke corsets out of my price range.  However, for this outfit, I needed to get the corset done quickly and did not have a pattern than fit the bill. So I bought one cheaply from Corset Story.  Their waist taming corset line allows a 5 inch reduction and are reasonably comfortable.  The one I bought was a white satin one intended for weddings, but I really wanted pink.

The corset satin is polyester, but with the new Idye poly dyes I figured I could get at least a light pink from the white satin.  I did not have a pot big enough to keep the heat high (as per the dye instructions) so I boiled the dye and then poured it into a plastic tub and dropped the corset into the heated dye.  Since the corset would not be in hot dye for the required time,  I bought fuschia dye and hoped for the best. I then swished the corset in the dye until it cooled (about 10 minutes) and rinsed it out with cold water.  The inside of the corset was cotton and turned the same fuschia as advertised.  The outside of the corset turned a pale pink, basically the color of my pointe shoes as a girl. The corset lace did not dye at all evenly, so I bought gross grain ribbon and replaced the lacing. Interestingly, the corset is pretty color fast.  I have worn this corset and danced in it for several hours and it doesn't transfer on to me or onto my white corset liner. 

Once the corset was dyed, I stitched gears all over it and then attacked the corset with rhinestones for bling and little pink skull studs.  I decided to use hot fix stones, which do not recommend...... For one, any small slip with the heated tool melted the polyester satin and there are several burn marks from this. Second, not all of the stones adhered well, so I have to re-glue some of the stones periodically. Third, the tool would periodically get too hot and I would have to stop to cool it down or risk burning my fingers just holding the tool.  Use of E6000 like on the crown would have been better.

However, I am happy with the shiny results.

Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch: crown

I am basing this costume (loosely at least) on the original Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz movie, so I needed a crown.  Looking at images of Glinda the Good Witch showed me that her crown is basically as tall as her head!  So that meant I needed to create a really tall crown pattern.  I basically messed around with butcher paper until I had something I liked. 

I know it is hard to get a guess on size off a picture, but the crown pattern is very tall.  The crown in 6.25 inches tall for the base and 11.5 inches tall to the top of the points.

I am going to apologize now, this next part gave me quite a bit of trouble and I forgot to take pictures of the construction.  Since this is a steampunk rendition, I decided the crown should be made of  metal, and preferably copper or brass colored. I also wanted it to be lightweight so it wouldn't hurt to wear.  I decided to use decorative sheet metal from the hardware store, it has a cloverleaf pattern punched in the sheet metal and a bronze color (link to what I purchased). One thing to note, the bronze color is only on the surface, I found this out when I used a wire brush on my Dremel to clean up the flux from soldering.  Once cut, this sheeting is really easy to shape and bend into the crown shape.  We then soldered the crown closed in the back using a piece of brass to strengthen the crown (this stuff is really really pliable on its own). Since the metal was a bit sharp, I edged the bottom with leather both inside and out.

The leather looked kinda plain, and the original crown is really pretty decorated, so I grabbed some rhinestones and went to town.

Here is the finished crown. The weld in the back is pretty ugly (see the last picture), this stuff was not the easiest to solder. Other than the back seam, I am pretty pleased with the crown, as it is really lightweight and comfortable.   My only concern now is how I will manage to fly with it to the event so I can actually wear it!

Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch Hoop Skirt

My husband and I are planning to attend the Labyrinth Masquerade Ball this year and are in need of costumes.  Since time is short and there is not time to do a completely new costume, I am trying to finish up a costume I started a few years ago, a Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch. This costume was wearable, but very unfinished, so this is a good opportunity to finish it up.


The first issue is that the hoop skirt I originally made for it is 1 inch wide steel bands riveted to leather.  While this is really fun to wear, it wont fit in the suitcase as it doesn't fold or bend at all.

To get a hoop that can fly with me, I purchased a cheap bridal hoop.  This hoop can be folded up to fit in a suitcase, but is made out of something that feels like a cheap tent......

The overskirt to this dress is actually sheer so the hoop will show at least a little bit and I also wanted to be able to wear the hoop without the overskirt.  So I went to the local fabric store and bought some bright pink sheer stripe and iridescent PVC to remake the hoop skirt into something Glinda appropriate.

I made a bunch of strips of the sheer stripe to make ruffles and strips of the PVC to cover the hoops.  The hoops were then suspended from ribbons hung from the waist band. This hoop was pretty simple to make but very very time consuming.  The PVC is absolutely nasty to sew on, it sticks to the foot of my machine.  I have heard there are special feet that can handle this stuff, but none of the ones I have did a good job, so I resorted to the old tried and true method.  I covered the PVC with thin tissue paper, stitched through the tissue paper and then tore it off the seams when finished.

Women's dress 13th century: saya encordada and pellote creation

The first piece I needed to create was the underdress with red and blue embroidered sleeves.  I decided to do a wider saya encordada and pellote through the chest area based on the saya encordada and pellote of Leonor of Castilla, rather than the lady from the Book of Games. Since the chest area is covered with the wider saya, I did not continue the embroidery onto the bodice.  This also helped with the amount of time needed to create the underdress as I only had 2 weeks to complete the whole outfit!  I wanted the embroidery to be geometric, as the embroidery in the manuscript image also appeared geometric.  I searched the web for simple embroideries that might have come from the rough time frame from Spain and did not come up with anything I could do quickly or simply.  I broadened my search and found a lovely set of embroidery charts made from extant items by the talented Miriam bat Shimeon.  These are middle eastern and many of them are Egyptian, but the look was right for 2 color geometric.  Here is a link to her website with her amazing charts. I used two of her charts

Cuff, based on Egyptian 10-15th CE embroidery, charted by Miriam Staples

Sleeve embroidery, based on 10-15th CE embroidery fragment, charted by Miriam Staples

 The embroidery actually went really fast and I am pleased with the overall look.  Samples from Egypt may be a stretch for Spanish dress, but I felt they were good enough for my needs and fit the look I was going for.

The underdress is rectangular construction made linen.  The internal seams were machine sewn due to time constraints but I had sewed the hems of the neck and sleeves since they show.

The next part was the saya encordada, thankfully this dress has lots of information readily available online.  The seam lines have been drawn by Marc Carlson (here), making pattern drafting really easy.  The gown is made of faux silk, as I had it on hand. The lacing was done as described in the previous post, I hand stitched ribbon to the inside of the gown with channels to allow lacing.  The original was laced with cord, but I used ribbon, as I had it on hand.  The bodice of my saya encordada is hand sewn and self lined to the hips.

 

The final piece was the pellote.  For this, I used some blue wool I had laying around.  The pattern for the pellote was based on the cutting diagram from Marc Carlson (here). Unfortunately, this wool will stretch, so I bound the arm holes with cloth tape and added some trim to make it a bit more decorative since the tape make the edge very plain.  As with the other dresses, I had sewed the neckline.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with this outfit.  Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of me wearing it.  I did not get much of a chance to wear it, as my cat was in the ICU the day of the event (he has since fully recovered).

Women's dress 13th century: Saya encordada and pellote planning

I planned on attending a Midwinter feast in December, the theme of which was in the 13th Century and Spanish.  The actual theme was Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212.  In searching for a dress I wanted to create, I was loose with the date, as I fell in love with Leonor de Castilla's underdress and over dress, which are dated 1244. 

Here underdress, the saya encordada, was very fitted, laced up one side and made of beautiful brocade.

Saya encordada of Leonor of Castilla

A lovely link from Jessamyn's Closet shows the lacing detail from the Saya Encordada demonstrating that the side lacing cord is run through a tape stitched to the inside of the opening. 

Her pellote was also of a beautiful brocade and is sideless.  The brocade on this gown is amazing.

Pellote of Leonor of Castilla

Brocade detail

Unfortunately, I had no luck finding anything similar that I could get in time for the event (or in my price range).  So I had to come up a plan B.

A friend of mine told me about Libro de los Juegos, ("Book of games"), commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile and dated 1283.  The pages of the Book of Games are available online and browsing through them I saw a number of women in the same style of dress.  One of them really caught my eye.

The lady appears to be wearing a white underdress with red and blue embroidery on the sleeves and probably on the bodice.  Over this, she is wearing a red saya encordada and a blue sideless gown.  She appears to have a pink cloak on as well.  These more simple solid color fabrics were possible in the 2 weeks I had to sew an outfit! 

Steampunk Tiki at Gaslight Gathering 2018

Here are a couple of pictures of the full outfit as worn at the con with my husband and a good friend. It was so much fun to attend this con again with a couple of friends, this con is so friendly and always a lot of fun. 

 

I love my friend's tentacle hat! 

 

The con provided this great back drop for pictures.

 In this photo you can see where my eyes sit in the mask.

Steampunk Tiki Part 4: A large knife

In the Diablo game, the fetishes run at you with giant knives.  The effect in the game is actually kind of terrifying and exactly the inspiration for the Steampunk Tiki, therefore I needed a giant knife.  I wanted the knife to look handmade and made in a jungle type area, so specifically not modern steel.  I decided that the knife blade should look like flint knapped obsidian.  While I have flint knapped previously, I am not great at it and it does create really shape knives.  Since this is for cosplay, I wanted the knife to look flint knapped but be dull so as to not harm people around me.  I decided on resin casting for the blade.  To create the mold, I first made paper clay blades halves.  I then poured 2 part silicon rubber mold material over the top. 

Paper clay blade halves

 Pouring over the top was a bad idea, while this is what the instructions recommended, the paper clay is too light and floated within the silicon rubber.  I should have pressed the knife halves into the top of the molding material so they didn't float.  Due to this mistake, the molds were very deep, and far deeper than the blade needed to be.

 

Knife mold

Once the mold was complete, I made a big batch of resin and cast the two halves.  Once they were set, I then used a small batch of resin to stick the two halves together.  You can see how the edges dont quite match on the two molds in the image below.  You can also see how dull the surface turned out due to the roughness of the paper clay.

raw knife cast

 To clean up the surface, I first used a Dremel and a belt sander to grind the edges even and clean up any odd cuts or bumps.  Then to give the blade a shiny finish, I added a fresh coat of clear resin to the entire blade.  To do so without having to lay the blade down, I hung the blade to allow both sides to be covered at once. I did not have anything fancy to hand the blade with, so I used a cheap clamp, some string and stick from my yard.  The stick was then stuck on the shelves in my front sun-room.  It actually took several layers of resin, with 24hr dry time in between to the finish I wanted.

Shiny finished blade

Hanging blade with resin and LED

I also added an LED into the blade at the top.  To set in the LED, I drilled into the blade where it would meet the handle.  The hole was drilled slightly larger than the blade and then I used resin to bond the LED to the blade (the wires are sticking out of the top of the blade in the hanging picture). Unfortunately, I accidentally used blue pigment instead of dye so the blade is not clear enough for the LED to have much effect.

The remainder of the parts were a gear from a bike, a couple of pipe fittings and a big copper pipe.

Knife parts

The copper pipe had two square cuts made a dremel to allow the blade to sit into the pipe and allow me to add cross lacing with leather to make the blade look tied in with leather.  The pipe fittings were chosen to allow the electronics (switch, battery and wires) for the LED to be kept in the pipe but still allow easy access.  The larger fitting was epoxied onto the end of the pipe and the smaller fitting can be screwed into the larger fitting allowing access to the stuff inside the pipe.  To use the gear as a pommel, we needed to cut it.  The dremel was actually able to cut the bike gear, although there were lots of sparks and great need for eye and skin protection.  The broken gear was then glued and wired into the smaller pipe fitting.

knife pommel

Finally, the I covered the pipe with some scrap leather to make holding the knife more pleasant and added the decorative lacing that 'holds' the blade in place. In actuality the blade is epoxied in place.

 

Leather handle cover and lacing

Other than using pigment instead of dye, which caused the LED to be less functional than I would like, I am pleased with the knife overall and certainly learned a lot!

Completed knife