Half a shirt

I've been having a lot of trouble figuring out what to wear as a shirt for my DragonCon costume. I've tried modding several shirts I bought, but for whatever reason they just haven't worked. Finally I decided I would have to make one.

I bought a pattern and found the cloth I wanted. But today when I opened the pattern and looked at it, I realized the shirt I planned to sew was almost identical in style to the one I tried to dye last week, the one that didn't take the dye but did take the brown Sharpie ink (which lasted through a wash, incidentally, so it is permanent). I did something I've never done before: took the shirt apart to use it as a pattern.

Look, here is a picture of me cutting out pieces from fabric that I neglected to iron! I was so positive that this wouldn't work that I just slopped the pieces together all anyhow.

And yet...somehow, it worked. A few months ago I could not have done it. It's safe to say that I've leveled up in sewing, which was one of my goals this year. Before today, I had never made anything with sleeves and had never made anything with gussets. Now I have, and I did a pretty good job (although not perfect, because let's face it, we're talking about me).

The shirt's not done, but it's close and I think it's going to work with my outfit. Here's a picture of me wearing it with my corset to see how it fits before I finish it. The bodice is very dark brown cotton and the sleeves (also not finished) are patterned floaty material that I probably can't wash.

I was using a cord to gather the neckline, but I decided it wasn't working enough and changed it out for a piece of elastic. The elastic works much better. I also extended that little thingy in the middle of the neckline several inches, and will probably add grommets and lace it up. Hopefully that will make the bodice appear more fitted and will reduce the baggy look over my breasts. (I'm also not wearing a very good bra in this picture; I actually bought a bra specifically to wear with this outfit. No one will ever see it, but I assure you it's brown and actually matches the damn outfit, because I am nothing if not obsessive when it comes to colors and patterns.)

Here's the shirt where I left it for tonight. I'll try to finish it within a day or two. I also want to add another layer, possibly two, of material to the sleeves to give it a more fluttery look, and I may add feathers somewhere if I can figure out where and how. I'm taking suggestions, incidentally.

Holy crap, I only have one more weekend before DragonCon--and next Saturday I have to get my car worked on and my hair cut. I'm running out of time!

Dying, sewing, and sticking feathers on things with glue

Today's post was going to be all about the transformation of a bright coral cotton blouse into an elegant black top that I may wear as part of my DragonCon costume. But I couldn't find the right size buttons and had to order some online today, so until I get them and sew them on I can't claim I'm done with the top. I also can't make the decision as to whether I'll wear it or not. I like it, but I'm not sure I like it enough.

I didn't just dye that shirt, though, I also dyed a light jacket thingie that I stopped wearing because the khaki-green color just doesn't look good on me, and a pair of long white socks that I got on sale but never wear.

The coral shirt is 100% cotton, the jacket is 60% cotton and 40% modal, and I don't know what the socks are made of. Cotton dyes beautifully, so I got a bottle of black RIT dye and used the stovetop method to dye the clothes.

I'd used RIT dye before, but only for undyed wool (one of my hobbies is handspinning). I didn't think about bleaching the clothes first, just dumped them in the dyebath. I also probably didn't keep the water hot enough. When I took the clothes out of the dyebath they looked fine, but after drying overnight they were really uneven. The decorative stitching around the blouse's neckline didn't dye at all, but I like the effect.

I redyed the blouse by itself the next night, with much better results. After I took it out of the dyebath I added the jacket; it didn't dye as evenly but I like the shade of gray a lot better than the green it was before. (The socks hardly dyed at all, so I guess they aren't made of natural fibers.) I washed the clothes in the washer, delicate setting, and they look quite nice.

Anyway, so that was one thing I did this week. On Friday morning, I woke up with a bad crick in my neck, so after work I spent the rest of the day lying on the bed with a heating pad on my neck, movies on the TV, and bleak misery in my heart. To occupy myself I picked up the sleeve pieces of the nightgown I'd started sewing way back in April, and finally did the embroidery I'd planned to do but never quite found time for.

Saturday my neck felt a bit better and I finished the embroidery. Today I intended to finish the nightgown, but, well, see this picture? If you can tear your attention away from my adorable cat, you can see what I accidentally did when I sewed on one of the sleeves. Yeah. I need to rip that seam out and fix that. Maybe next April.

Finally, I ordered a very nice fan for DragonCon--it's hot, I'll be wearing several layers of clothes including feathers, and I'll be doing a lot of walking. I need a fan. I like this one, but it was a bit drab. To dress it up a bit, I decorated the tassel on its end. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of gears stuck randomly to things (hey, gears! that makes it steampunk, right?), but I think this one looks kind of neat. I also added some turkey feathers and I like them well enough that I plan to glue them in place as soon as I can find where I put the glue.

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).

Preparing for paint

I had to proctor the ACT this morning, so I didn't get to work on the garage until late afternoon after that and errands. When I'm away from home, I think about the garage and remember it as being mostly empty. Then I come home and open the garage door.

Today I wasn't really sure what to work on. I only had a few hours between getting home and going back out (in, like, five minutes; type faster!) so I knew I couldn't start painting. After poking around for a while I decided I'd clear off the brick-and-board shelves so I could stain the boards.

But somehow, after moving everything off the boards, sorting through it and pitching a few things, and propping the boards outside to sweep clean later, I started moving everything into the middle of the garage. I didn't do much sorting, just hauled stuff away from the walls.

I kept finding things I'd forgotten I owned, including a plastic bin full of stuff I thought had been lost in the move. Some phrases don't get uttered often on this planet, but I added one to the tally of, "Hey, there's my niddy-noddy!"

After moving everything, I got the broom and started sweeping cobwebs off the walls. I wish I'd swept the kitchen floor first--it really needs it, but no way am I putting that broom back in the house now. I'll buy a new house broom and keep this one in the garage from now on. Because spiderwebs, of course. Lots and lots of them.

As I swept, I noticed that whoever built the garage did a bit of a slipshod job. There are a lot of too-long nails poking through, a lot of mismatched bits of wood. In short, it looks like I built it myself. In one corner etched into the concrete floor is "Carly Rae '07." I'm pretty sure that "Call Me Maybe" singer never lived in this house, though.

And if anyone asks, that was 1907, okay? Pretty soon, I hope, it will start to look like it. I keep noticing things I want to steampunk up after I finish the heavy lifting of painting, cleaning, and sorting. That'll be the fun part.

Step One: The Unboxinating

This morning I rolled out of bed all fired up to start the garage project. I hadn't been able to do anything the previous evening because we'd had storms roll through, and I'd spent most of the evening watching the Weather Channel with one hand on my go bag in case of tornadoes.

But by morning the rain was gone, leaving cool but sunny April weather behind. Time to get to work!

I'd put the car in the garage in case of hail, so I worked around it. The garage will remain a car-shelter even after it's converted into my steampunk workshop and laboratory; I might as well get used to having the central area out of bounds.

My first impression was of a lot of mess and clutter--a lot more than I remembered. I grabbed a garbage bag and got to work, pitching empty topsoil bags (why did I leave them on the floor last spring? Why?), cracked plastic flowerpots, crumpled empty seed packets (was I planning on using them for origami or something? Last year me, you were so crazy), and an inexplicable broken coat hanger.

As I worked my way slowly across the back of the garage, filling garbage bags, I came across a mountain of cardboard boxes. My first thought? "Oh, I need those."

NO I DON'T. I don't need those! I closed my etsy shop three years ago; I don't have to obsessively save boxes to ship things out in. Time to break those boxes down.

So I did. And I did. And I did some more. And then I found another stack of older boxes in the corner from when I moved in.

It took me the better part of an hour to break down all the boxes, strip off as much plastic tape as possible, and knock off all the spiders. Apparently I'd been using the boxes to store my collection of live spiders.

When I was done, I put the boxes in the car and drove them to the recycle center. And that is step one finished.

I've got a long way to go.

Welcome to My Garage

The steampunk-my-garage project started with me wanting to make myself a nightgown. I have a very small house and a cat (named Jekyll), so of course here's what happened.

I thought, "I need a cutting table, preferably in a room where I can shut the door." But as I say, my house is tiny. Where would I put a cutting table?

The next day I found myself turning that thought over in my mind. Then I realized that I had lots of room in the garage!

Of course, I can't afford a cutting table. But I could make one! Maybe! And if I made my own table, I could make it a really cool table.

At this point I started browsing etsy for bits of steampunky hardware for my imaginary table.

It wasn't until the next day--apparently my brain ticks over pretty slowly--that I had a sudden epiphany. Steampunk table? You're dreaming too small, self. The whole garage could be steampunked up.

I grabbed a notebook and started sketching ideas and making lists of things I needed to do. I've only lived in this house a year and a half. There's not all that much clutter in the garage. I wrote, "1. Take stuff to Goodwill and dump. 2. Sort through paint cans and decide what to keep and what to throw. 3. Paint garage interior. 4. Decorate!" Because I thought it would be simple, a weekend project.

That was yesterday. And it's already clear that I'm facing many, many weekends of work before I'm done. But when I do finish, my garage is going to be the most awesome laboratory that any eccentric inventor has ever seen.

I hope.

Also, maybe eventually I'll find the time to finish sewing that nightgown.