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!