The Nightgown, finished

I put pictures and commentary from my excellent DragonCon experience last week up on my regular blog. I inexplicably didn't take many pictures of random people dressed up, but there are lots and lots of blogs/sites out there with lots of pictures.

As I say, I had a fantastic time. I wore my modest costume on Saturday and got some compliments, especially on my awesome hat, attended a bunch of panels, saw friends, met new people, and saw some of my absolute favorite musicians perform. But now I'm back and I'm still not recovered from an intense, sleep-deprived weekend.

So this week I haven't done anything except laundry and housework. Yardwork's next, when I can muster my enthusiasm. The blog will probably be quiet for the next few weeks, if not longer, while I work on other stuff. But one thing I did find time for was finishing the nightgown that started this whole steampunk garage project.

My camera has vanished, but here's a small picture I took with my phone. The nightgown is simple and not terribly attractive when worn--I used this tutorial. I learned a lot about sewing from making this thing, though, including how to sew ruffles. I am something of an expert ruffler now, but it all started here. I had fun doing the embroidery although it's not as elaborate as I'd intended.

So what's up for the steampunk garage in the near future? A lot of clutter has crept back into the garage and I need to tidy it, for one thing. I also want to finish turning my antique brass blowtorch into a steampunk "weapon." And I want to make another steampunk outfit so I've got something warm and non-feathery to wear to AnachroCon in February (and probably ChattaCon in January).

So keep checking back, and hopefully soon I'll be back to work in the garage. First, though, I need to finish this steampunk YA I've been writing.

Last sleep before DragonCon!

Tomorrow morning I plan to roll out of bed at whatever time I wake naturally (or whatever time the cat wakes me, actually) and head out to DragonCon. My goal is to get there and get my badge picked up by around lunchtime or a little later, depending on traffic. Then I can hit a few panels and look around, hopefully meet up with friends, before heading to my hotel in Kennesaw to check in, grab some food, and return to the con.

Saturday will be my exhausting day, because I want to watch the parade at 10am (for which it's best to get there at 9am or thereabouts) and see Professor Elemental and Abney Park perform at midnight. Sunday will be almost as exhausting, because there's a 10am panel I don't want to miss ("The Science of Airships") and I also want to see Voltaire perform at midnight--and of course, both days I've got tons of stuff I want to do in between.

I took today off work to get all the last-minute stuff done. My attempt at making my own bag was a failure, but I found a bag I really like at Goodwill for a few bucks and added some decoration. The owl thing is my $5 pocketwatch! I finally have a place to put it.

And I crocheted this adorable pouch for Owlet from this tutorial. I didn't have time to handspin yarn of the right weight, so I bought a nice silk/bamboo blend and used it instead. Ordinarily I don't sew random gears on things, but hell, it's a pouch for a toy owl, sewing gears on it isn't going to make it any sillier than it already is. The button is for Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys, a great band but also the button has tiny owls as part of the design. So, you know.

If you're going to be at DragonCon and you'd like to meet up, just email me at kcshaw123 [at] gmail [dotcom]. If you've got the DragonCon app, email me a friend code if you like! I'd love to have someone to hang out with, especially at the live performances.

I will, of course, take plenty of pictures.I'll post them when I get home on Monday!

Yes! Pictures of my DragonCon costume!

It's not complete--I still have the bag to finish, and a few little additions--but the bulk of it is done and I got real pictures taken today.

My aunt Janice took the pictures, and she said I definitely need to wear my boots instead of the heels I had planned. The boots are more comfortable anyway. Here's a closeup of them along with my lacy socks, with me pulling my skirt up a bit to show off my petticoat:

I also need to take both the petticoat and the skirt in a bit. They're just too big. When I suck my gut in (ahem) to fasten my corset, the skirt and petticoat sag. Once the corset's fastened it's hard to adjust my clothes. Also, for anyone who's never worn a corset before: it's the last thing you should put on, including shoes. Especially shoes.

That hat is so awesome.

And here's me trying not to laugh, because of course Janice kept cracking me up. She got some action shots of me goofing around pretending to catch owls, but they were A) blurry and B) made me look insane. You'll just have to find me at DragonCon to see me acting insane. I'm not used to seeing myself doing anything but standing in front of the mirror, of course, so maybe I always look insane.

Distressing a garment really fast

Sorry, no pictures of my complete DragonCon costume yet. I'm not done with the bag, plus my photographer has vanished from the face of the earth (or at least the part of the earth with cell coverage). So here's a quick tutorial on how to distress a garment--in this case, that jacket I dyed.

I actually dyed it three times total, none of them very well, and it ended up an uneven brownish-gray. There are splotches of darker color in the back that are very obvious, so I can't wear it as part of a polished costume. But I was thinking of only wearing my full costume on Saturday at DragonCon, and coming up with a simpler, toned-down costume for Sunday.

The idea I had was more dieselpunk than steampunk, with a grimy, oil-stained jacket over crop pants, corset, and a bright top, with my old beat-up leather boots and a pair of lace-trimmed socks. It might have worked, too, except that I'm not the right shape. For the most part I'm happy with the way I look, but I'm also very aware that women are judged by appearance, and the outfit is not flattering on me. This is an outfit for a younger, skinnier woman.

But I digress. Here's how to distress a badly-dyed garment.

1. Try to send it through the reel mower's workings. It won't go through, but it will get a bit rumpled and grimy if, like me, you never clean the mower's blades.
2. Use the tail of the shirt to rub the top of a rusty, gummy oilcan.
3. Hang it over a chair and snag it several times with the screw poking out of a block of wood that you just happen to have on hand.
4. Try to cut it with a really rusty old pair of loppers that aren't sharp anymore. They will put a few small holes in the cloth but mostly they chew at it.
5. Try to cut it with a really dull boxcutter.
6. Cut it unexpectedly quickly with an X-acto knife.
7. Poke holes along the edges of the big X-acto knife gash with an awl, and use the holes to sloppily lace up the hole with a leather cord or an old bootlace.

That's what I did. The lacing looks particularly good, I think.

I'm sure I can use this jacket for an outfit sometime in the future. Heck, I may wear it Sunday after all, but with jeans instead of the brown pants that aren't flattering. But so you can see what I mean about the outfit, here's a picture of me in it. Sorry, I didn't have my boots on.

A net to catch an imaginary owl

This took entirely too long to make considering how simple it is.

First, start with a dowel and the center piece of a wooden embroidery hoop. Screw them together and saw the dowel off at the desired length. (I wasn't able to screw the screw in all the way since the flimsy hoop started to crack, but it doesn't really show.)

Then spraypaint the whole thing. I painted it what was supposed to be brown but looked really gray, so I spritzed over it a bit with some copper spraypaint. Let it dry overnight.

Cut a thin strip of leather (or fake leather) of really any length. You can stop wrapping when you think it looks good or add more if you want. Lay a line of glue (Gem-Tac! My favorite! It smells just like Elmer's but it holds better) along the back side of the leather. Then press a few inches of the leather (glue side down, of course) along the dowel and over the end, then twist it around and wrap the strip around and around the dowel, covering the strip you laid down initially, until you run out of strip or decide it looks good and stop wrapping and cut off the rest. This took almost no time at all--seriously, I think it took longer for me to figure out how to explain what I did than it took to actually do it.

Then get a lot of string and...make a net.

The net took me hours. But look! I caught an owl.

(If you find the owl as adorable as I do, you can buy your very own on etsy at Green Owl Curiosities, and the proceeds go to an owl/raptor rehabilitation society. Yes, this little guy is going to DragonCon with me. I need to put my name and number on him somewhere in case he escapes.)

The Other Half of the Shirt

The shirt is finally finished. It took much longer than I expected. Here it is finished, first of all--and no, I'm not wearing my corset because I just ate a burger and fries and two cookies and I'm not sure I could fasten it at the moment. Also I'm wearing my glasses. On the plus side, I just got my hair cut today.

My first step was to hem the, the--what the hell is that called, anyway? I just searched Wikipedia with no luck. Let's call it the placket in the middle of the neckline, even though technically it's not a placket. Anyway, my first step was to hem the placket and add grommets. Now that I know how to add grommets, I can see I'll be adding them to everything. I laced the placket up with more of the cord cut from the extra laces from my corset (although if I keep eating like I did today, I'm going to have to loosen the cords again).

I tried it on to see what it looked like, and oops. No matter how tightly I pulled the laces, I was showing an awful lot of cleavage. I decided to make a modesty panel.

I was messing around with various fabrics to see what would look best when I noticed a yard of feather tape I'd bought off etsy on a whim, months ago, but never found a use for. The feathers are short and small compared to the feather tape I used to trim my petticoat. On impulse I held them up to the placket, and loved the effect.

So I sewed a piece of feather tape on either side of the placket, feathers pointing in. They hide what I need to hide and look good too. I worried they'd tickle, but they don't.

After that I had to do the sleeves. I did a terrible job. I ended up adding three layers of fabric to each sleeve and I still don't like the effect, but I'm tired of fooling with it so it'll have to do. I trimmed each layer in feather-like scallops.

Incidentally, I stabbed my thumb badly last night while working on the sleeves. Then I stepped on a sewing needle and drove it right up into my bare foot. If it had been the same needle both times, that might have been understandable. Instead, I got up to deal with my bleeding thumb, came back and sat down at the computer to tweet about it (tweeting about an event is the most important part of an event, right?), then stood up to go back to sewing, at which point I accidentally knocked a loose needle off the computer desk, it fell into the pile of the carpet point-up, and I stepped on it. This is why I didn't finish the shirt until tonight.

If all goes well, I should have photos up of me in my full DragonCon outfit, probably on Sunday. And these will be real pictures, not selfies taken in the dirty mirror in the garage. It will be epic.

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!