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. 

HSM Challenge #7 Accessorize

Diadem flat, before comb addition so you can see the detail

Technically this is not sewing, so it only sort of counts for the HSM challenge but it is a project I have been dying to try.  I have always wanted a regency diadem, but was a bit intimidated of the detailed metalwork.  I have experience with metalwork and the details in the metal just take so long.  Then I saw the brilliant post by Mistress of Disguise! A full tutorial to make a regency diadem! She had the amazing idea to use lamp banding to create the very detailed part of the diadem.  Since this challenge was to Accessorize, I jumped at the chance to make one.  I am not going to post any kind of step by step pictures since the full tutorial provides very lovely and detailed photos and I only modified a few small things.  I did use my jeweler's saw instead of snips to cut out the brass frame.  This was because I used heavier brass and I did not want to have the break in the frame necessary for scissors.  Other than that, I used my dremmel to cut out the lamp banding flowers so I could save the neat edges for another project.  The rest of the project I just followed the tutorial.

Diadem ready to wear

I am so in love with the tutorial provided by Mistress of Disguise and so happy with my new jewelry!

I highly recommend trying her tutorial, this was far easier than I expected.  Also, if you want one and don't feel like making one, Mistress of Disguise sells them on her Etsy.

Eons of Fashion at the St. James Tearoom

About a month ago, a friend of mine, Tana, was asked to put on a fashion show for a local tea room, The St. James Tearoom.  The request was to cover fashion from Roman through the 1920s in about 1 hour.  Tana said yes she would be happy to host such a large fashion show and then promptly called me and other costume type friends for help.  Tana and I founded a group locally called Head-to-Toe Costume Society of New Mexico to encourage all kinds of costume making and wearing.  The lovely people in this group supplied outfits to supplement what Tana and I had made ourselves and also provided  most of the models.

Clothes waiting for round 2

This whole evening was a bit of a rush, but so much fun.  It was really cool to see how my outfits look on others and to see all the cool things others had made.  Some of the fittings were rather funny, for example, the 18th century Men's coat was actually made by me for me, and my shoulders are much narrower than the man wearing it in the fashion show.  He spent the whole time he was wearing it with his shoulders scrunched up since he was worried about ripping the coat.  He and all of the models were all wonderfully good sports about the whole thing.  Everyone was so much fun to work with! 
I have tried to be selective in the photos I share, but if anyone is interested the whole set of images can be seen here.

We were dressing in some of the small rooms in the back and almost all of the models had to change! Tana was asked to limit the number of models so only those of us with outfits that took way too long to change into were spared.  A few people even had to wear their Victorian corsets under other outfits just due to lack of time.  Here is the rack ready for people to grab their round 2 of clothing.
 

Steampunk at the Natural History Museum

One of the lovely ladies (the green fairy in the pictures) in the local steampunk group suggested an outing to the Albuquerque Natural History Museum.  We first met for tea in the park across the street and then all went over to the Natural History Museum for photos and fun.  I love the Natural History Museum and was so excited to attend. I decided to wear the new Victorian skirts that I worked on for HSM 2015 practicality challenge and the corset from the first month of HSM 2015 foundations challenge. Although not visible much in the photos I did floss the boning channels of the corset since I made it in January.  I bought pith helmets for myself and my husband, which we still need to personalize but they were fun to play with.  My husband wore his new Dr. Who vest.  The whole costume thing for this was a bit of rush job with both my husband and I cobbling things together from what we had on hand, but it has given us inspiration for costumes to work on latter.

This whole event was a blast, it was so much fun to wander around the museum and take photos with the dinosaur skeletons.  Anyway, on to the pictures.