Steam and Serenity

About two years ago, I made an outfit that I could wear to a multitude of geek events. I settled on steampunk, as it's nice and versatile, and turned to early Victorian designs for inspiration. The inspiration dress I spotted via Idlewild Illustree, who introduced me to a dress housed by the Kyoto Costume Institute. I lifted the buttons, pleated front, and sleeve treatment from the dresses. My difference is using an opaque fabric and brown highlights, plus a slightly different skirt treatment.

The bodice is interlined in organdy and lined in an old sheet. The shirt has a flat front and is cartridge pleated in the back. It also has a wide facing of the same old sheet.

I like my steampunk to be subtle, so instead of the cliche of goggles and gears, I used metallic trim. I got bronze colored fabric that I used to make piping, bias strips and button covers. The bodice is edged in the piping, as is all the seams in the back. Bias strips became the focus of the sleeve decoration. As a final touch, I bought a bronze colored flower pin and fastened it to the center top of the dress.

In the name of being thorough, I made some early Victorian underwear to go with  the clothes. The short of it is that the corded petticoat and the corset were really labor intensive, and in the end I found out that I can lace the corset edge to edge and still slouch in it. Grr.

There's one thing that vexes me about this dress. The back fits me horribly. I quickly realized that this was because, despite many careful fitting sessions, it was fitted over a crappy corset. I know that this can be easily remedied by taking apart refitting the bodice. Since this would mean almost completely dismantling the dress and sewing it back together, I'm in no hurry to do this.

Fortunately, this is more of a science fiction/fantasy piece, so it doesn't have to be molded on like a proper Victorian gown.

The First Foray

This was made when I was in high school. I hadn't sewed since grade school, and my mom's machine loved to fight me. I seriously doubted my patience to hand sew an entire outfit, so I cast my mind about for what I could cosplay as.

Rei's plugsuit seemed to be the best idea. All I had to do was paint a unitard, and it wasn't so hard to find reference images. Finding all the appropriate fabric pens was tricky as I didn't know where to look, and the pens I found hated me. The either blobbed paint, or ran dry. After a while I ended up using highlighters as it seemed simpler than trying to finding more pens. To eliminate the possibility of undergarments being visible through the material, I painted the area opaque with white paint.

I did do a little bit of sewing for this costume. After purchasing the wig, I stitched and painted the little bobs you see on top, and sewed them on. I bought gloves and made fat cloth bracelets, but they were awkward so I left them off.

 I also gathered some white cloth and ribbons to simulate her head bandages, and at this outfit's debut, someone was kind enough to give me his spare ace bandages so I could wrap myself up even more. Hence I found that having only one eye open upon entering a dark room makes night vision tricky, and removing the patch after hours of wear is a mildly trippy experience. This outfit lasted for two conventions and one Halloween, but it did not store well. All folded up, the paint ran where it shouldn't, making the thing a bit of a mess. As I don't have the heart to throw it away, it lives in my closet on permanent retirement.

While not the best cosplay, it's still my first, and for that I have a soft spot for it.