Update: Steampunk Costume

A quick update on the steampunk costume for Halloween: I've been sewing every night until the point of exhaustion trying to get ready for leaving next week. I have the overskirt of the petticoat hemmed (which was my one of my biggest fears), and the underskirt almost completely put together. I have another half of a seam to pin and then stitch and then put the two together.

All the accessories are in save one, which should be here any day now.

I'll have pictures and more details come the weekend...

Steampunk Costume: Petticoat

I spent most of the day today working with yards and yards of cream petticoat net. There were nine pieces in all, three for the upper tier and six for the lower. As the pieces were perfect rectangles, I cut them out with my rotary cutting tools. Great time saver!

Next, I sewed the pieces together using lapped seams so that there wouldn't be tons of scratchy netting poking me underneath my skirt.

Finally, I hemmed the bottom-most layer, all 9 1/2 yards, with ribbon.

I prepped the under-layer yoke earlier in the week, so all I have left to do is hem the upper layer, attach the lace trim, and stitch it all up!

I only have a little over a week to go and I am definitely feeling the pressure!

Costume Take Two: Steampunk

In my search for awesome fairy wings, I stumbled across this amazing steampunk fairy costume on Etsy.  I had heard of steampunk, but only in the literary sense.  Alla Wikipedia, I soon found myself in a rabbit hole of steampunk fashion fascination.  I had to have something steamy for Halloween!

I didn't have time to make a complete costume, so I started in my own closet and came up with a corset and interesting leather skirt.  For embellishment, I decided that a petticoat was in order, among other, smaller accouterments.

I had picked up Simplicity 5006 when I was thinking fairy costume, and figured I could make it work for a victorian-esque petticoat.  Since my leather skirt isn't terribly full, I decided to go with view B (rightmost).  The pattern called for taffeta for the top layer.  I figured it was as good a time as any to try working with such slippery fabric and dove right in with a gorgeous copper taffeta (polyester, unfortunately) and a cream colored net for the under layer.

The first challenge was shortening the pattern.  My skirt is only 33" long, and the pattern creates a 39" long petticoat.  After much careful measuring, I took 6" off of the bottom of each of the upper skirt's pattern pieces.  I attempted to match the curve by cutting a short piece off of the bottom, then lining that up to the 6" marks for the final cut.

My next struggle was laying out the fabric.  After one false start, I used a rotary-cutting ruler to ensure that my center fold was straight and got both pieces for the upper skirt layed out and cut.

My Vogue Sewing book recommended a straight stitch of 12-15 stitches per inch, and to hold the fabric taut while stitching.  I think this worked pretty well, with very little waffling that I see so often on homemade clothes with shiny fabrics like this.  Next, I used an overstitch foot that came with my machine and a zigzag stitch to enclose the raw edges.  The first seam went smashingly (except for breaking one needle thanks to the my sewing machine's manual's very confusing instructions).  However, the side seams ended up terribly scalloped no matter what I tired.  I think this may be due to the fabric being on a bias at this point.  I might try a straight stitch first next time.

Now, the skirt is hanging to let the bias drop (thanks to Sommerset that I knew that one before reading it in Vogue Sewing!), and I'm working on cutting out the pieces for the underskirt.  Two weeks and counting!

Purple PJ Fix

I wear sewing project #1, the purple pajamas, on an almost daily basis in the colder months.  They are by far the warmest pajamas I have found to date.  For the second time now, the pajamas have come up with a hole in the center seam.

Knowing how these particular pajama pants were constructed, I dug up the purple thread and threw them on the sewing machine to stitch them up.

What I don't know is why this keeps happening.  On a basic level I realize that these pants get a lot of wear, and being so loose, especially have a strain point at the center seam.  But it seems that there should be a way to reinforce the seam so that would make it stronger.  So this time, I sewed two seam lines in the area where the hole occurred.  I didn't get the straightest seam in the world, but the pants are way too loose for that to ever be noticeable.

We'll see how that holds up.

To Sew or Not To Sew...

I am back home after a two-week work trip.  In the intervening time, my husband and I have decided that we will be traveling to London for Halloween, in 22 days!  My brother-in-law, who lives in London, is getting married on Halloween and having a costume ball for the party.  Suddenly I need a kick-ass, awesomelicious costume finalized in three weeks.  Gah!

If I did sew my own costume, I'm learning towards some kind of autumn/woodsey fairy.  The other option would be to rent something, but in that case I would probably go for something more recognizable like a flapper girl or something princessy.

I wouldn't want to go with stereotypical fairy, but something less commercialized.  In looking through multitudes of costume patterns, I came across Simplicity 9966.  View B (bottom left) specifically, could be adjusted to a neat fairy costume.  I would likely make the dress without the sleeves and probably shorten the skirts.  I might also go with a different corset.

Which brings me to McCall 5732, with a very classical fairy corset which might help bring the fairy essence to the costume.  Of course the wings will help too.

At this point I'm feeling pretty in over my head with trying to sew something as complicated as a corset in such a short time frame.  I certainly wouldn't want to end up with something that looked home-made.  Plus, I can probably rent a costume for the cost of the materials that I would want to use, never mind the cost of wings that didn't look grade-school.

I might just have to go rental shopping and see if I fall in love with something...