Corset and feathers

With only three months and a few days until Dragon*Con, yesterday I got worried and decided to start making my corset. I printed out the pattern and carefully adjusted it to my measurements, which took a few hours. Here's a picture of the pieces (on paper) ready to cut.

Then I took half an hour to read through the entire tutorial so I wouldn't have any nasty surprises, neatly gathered up the paper pattern pieces and put them with the $25 a yard coutil fabric, and got online and ordered a custom-made corset through etsy.

So that's sorted. Now I can focus on the parts of my costume that won't make me cry. Maybe once I have more experience I can try making my own corset.

I hadn't really thought about the specific details of my costume, but this weekend I sat down and trawled through Pinterest and started making sketches. When I found this site, I knew I wanted to do something similar. If you scroll down the page, you'll see a quick tutorial on how to make the cloth feathers that look so good in that costume. I decided to start with them, but I didn't have any appropriate cloth.

So I went to buy fabric. I should have taken someone with me to hold my purse and say, "Are you sure you need that?", because I cannot be trusted in craft stores. Suffice to say, I have lots of cloth now.

Unfortunately, I hadn't read the tutorial very closely. I thought the feathers were made of stiffer fabric, like upholstery fabrics, because they looked stiff. Turns out the crafter used plastic to stiffen them but made the feathers mostly from cut-up blouses. But by the time I realized that, I'd already bought a lot of upholstery fabric remnants (fortunately for only $1 or $2 a pop).

I like the way the crafter layered her fabric to make the feathers. I decided to use only two layers, and cut my fabric in rough feather shape.Since I don't have a sewing machine, I used two plies of embroidery thread and did a rough cross-stitch pattern to join the fabric. I didn't try to make this look neat; I wanted it to feel organic. I also didn't sew down the middle because that's not how feathers grow for most birds.

Fraying the edges was more difficult than I expected. I couldn't make my feathers look like ones in the tutorial, I'm not sure why.

The red feather looks like a piece of bacon. You can also see my rough costume sketch if you're interested.

I thought the lack of fraying might be due to the cloth I was using, so tonight I tried the plain cotton. I made three more feathers and they turned out better, although I think that's due more to knowing a bit more about what I'm doing. The feather shapes are better, mostly. It's still hard to make them fray. But I like the way they're starting to look. Here's a pic of all six feathers I've made so far, along with a crow feather and two I-think-they-are-owl feathers (I hike, and whenever I find an interesting feather on the trail I pick it up). Looking at real feathers next to my fake feathers makes my fake feathers look, well, fake, but I still think they'll look good as part of my costume.

We'll see how that goes. We'll see.

Oh, and I bought an antique ironing board. It cost less than one yard of coutil.

First steps of two projects

I forgot to post yesterday, so this post will go over two very different steampunk projects that I've started. In both cases I've got a long way to go.

First, I finally bought an antique brass blowtorch. I love it so much I can hardly stand it. I mean, look at it!

I bought this particular blowtorch because it looks so much like a weapon to start with. I have plans to mod it a bit--nothing drastic, and certainly nothing permanent; I want to be able to remove all the modding if I like so I can appreciate the blowtorch's elegant simplicity all on its own.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of supplies yet. I do have this heavy copper wire that I found at work (really, I did actually find it--it was on the floor and I was about to pitch it in the trash, thinking, "Why don't those construction guys ever clean up after themselves?" when I realized I was holding copper wire and ooh shiny want). I tried wrapping it around the "barrel" of the blowtorch, but it's such thick copper that it's not very bendy and I don't know if I love it. I'll probably remove it once I find something else to replace it with. But I also had some jewelry wire that's thin and very flexible. It looks much better. (I especially like the little coil stuck into a perfectly sized hole in the cap where you pour the paraffin inside; I made it by wrapping the wire around a pencil.) It looks much better, although it's so very bendy that it's not going to keep its shape. I need to find a wire that's the same diameter but a bit stronger.

One of the things I'm hoping to do with the blowtorch, if I can manage it, is install a bright blue LED and a reflector down into the barrel, with a switch I can toggle with my thumb. But I have never tried wiring anything ever in my life, so it's going to be a steep learning curve.

So that's one project. The other is a pair of bloomers that I bought the cloth for several weeks ago. Today I finally decided it was time to start on them. I'm still about halfway through making the nightgown that inspired this stupid garage makeover in the first place, but I've stalled out because the embroidery is taking so long. The bloomers should go much faster.

Here's the cutting table--formerly a dining table that no one in the family wants, and which was holding a TV before I moved it out to the garage--being used for its new purpose. It works quite well. The groove between the table and the leaf isn't as deep as a real cutting table's, but it does the trick. In this picture, I'm cutting the muslin.

And here are the pieces (and the muslin) after I cut them. I had to move the lamp, but it's easy enough to move back when I'm done.

To get the full impact of the pictures, you should imagine me carefully cutting the cloth while wearing Animal PJ bottoms and a Clan Shaw t-shirt. And orange flip-flops. And keep in mind that the garage door was wide open, like this (bonus Jekyll picture).

A Lampshade!

I have an awesome lamp with mermaids on it, but no lampshade to go with it. I used to have a brown paper lampshade, but I have no idea what happened to it.

I've been looking for a lampshade that's the right size and type, and finally found one a few days ago. But it was white. Like, shiny clean brilliant white. It looked very funny on the old lamp, although it was otherwise quite nice.

So yesterday I thought, hmm, maybe I could dye the lampshade. It's linen. And I realized that I could stain it with tea.

I had just returned from lunch out, where I'd had an enormously sloppy, wonderful hamburger at a little diner near my town, and more to the point I'd just drunk approximately ten glasses of iced tea (I may be exaggerating slightly). But I brewed a fresh cup of hot tea, for science.

After I'd drunk about half the tea, I figured it had cooled enough that I could use the rest on the lampshade. First I dunked the tea bag in the tea and used it to paint the shade. It worked great, but for some reason tea bags are not meant to withstand such treatment and it started to tear immediately, leaving behind wet tea leaves. So I got a paper towel and dunked it in tea instead--but it didn't work at all.

Fortunately I'd been drinking tea all day, so I dug around in the trash and found two bags from earlier. I soaked them in tea, then used them to finish the lampshade.

It looked messy when I was done, but a much better color. I set it aside to dry overnight.

Today I spent some time carefully cleaning dried tea leaves from the linen. I could easily have made the shade darker by doing a second application, but I like it the way it is. It gives a good light.

Oh, and I also found a photo of my granddad as a kid, taken probably in the mid-1920s. Isn't it adorable?

Antiquing haul

After yardwork, garage cleaning, and lunch, I went antiquing. I went to four different shops and spent--gulp--fifty bucks all told. But I got some fun stuff.

For some reason I was suddenly drawn to bottles. I'll have to figure out some way to display them, maybe on a shelf.

From left to right: an empty Sloan's Liniment bottle, a full bottle of clock oil YES CLOCK OIL OMG NOW I NEED A CLOCK, an empty bottle that might have been hand lotion or something--it says something about rose water and glycerin, two full bottles of litmus paper (red and blue), and a full bottle of "parchment black" ink.

I also got this rusty and gummy oil can, because I liked it and it wasn't very expensive.

I love old photos, and I got three very interesting ones. Two are of children. The first picture is of a little girl, who looks exactly like she was just told to sit there and "don't move," and she's tired and wants to change out of her good clothes so she can go play. The second picture is of a fat little baby who looks adorably squashy, sitting in a chair with...rocks in the background. And apparently those things in the foreground are rugs that are probably sitting out to dry. Because nothing says "I love my baby" like having its picture taken in front of rocks.

Lastly is this guy's picture. I spent considerable time digging through boxes of old photos, looking for a debonair gentleman to swoon over. As you do. Obviously I couldn't quite find one, but the more I looked at this guy's picture the more I liked him. He's reasonably good-looking, but even better, he clearly has a sense of humor. It was as though he knew, when the photographer was taking his picture, that a hundred years later some woman was going to find it in an antique shop and decide to make him her imaginary boyfriend. I wish it had his name on it.

Now, things I didn't get because they were too expensive. I wish I'd taken pictures, but I suspect that as soon as I can scrape up the money for them I'll go back and buy them if they're still available. The one thing I practically drooled over and must own eventually is an old brass blowtorch. YES. It was $90. It will one day be mine, at least as soon as I sell another story and can justify spending that much. I also really wanted the Underwood typewriter even though it needs refurbishing before it works. It was $95, which really isn't bad considering what good shape it's in. And I wanted the Singer foot treadle sewing machine for $125, but I'm actually not sure if the sewing machine was part of it; in those models (which are not uncommon) the machine folds down into the cabinet so it can be used as a table, and it was folded down. I didn't open it up since I couldn't have afforded it anyway.

When I got home, I spraypainted three hideous fakey-gold picture stands bronze, which will hopefully make them look less hideous. Once they're dry I can display my new photos.