Making a Steampunk Costume in a Day

I don’t usually set myself insane deadlines for projects. Mainly because I never make those deadlines. However, I work pretty much every day from 9-5, which kind of kills the day for anything else. Thus days off, as few and far between as they are must be devoted to projects, and then the projects have to be completed that same day or I won’t get to work on them for another month (or six).

That was not the case with this project. I just decided I would do it in a day just because (and I procrastinated starting it until the day before my event so I didn’t really have a choice).

My original intention was to look up a whole bunch of inspirations for costumes and then create a sketch design of what I wanted and then to make that.

I didn’t do that.

Instead, I cut out some skirt panels for a bustle skirt back.

Then, I decided I needed to reevaluate my picture taking skills, but this is the only picture I have of the skirt panels so it has to be here.

Anyhow, I for some reason put these two skirt panels on top of each other because…

Oh right I cut the bottom one into two pieces so that I could sew all three of them on top of each other to create a waterfall, 3-D, cascade, I don’t know what it’s called effect down the back.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough fabric for that vision, so I had to steal one of the pillow cases I made in an earlier post to have enough.

This fabric had a tendency to fray. When I say it had a tendency I mean that it basically frayed all over the place as soon as it was cut. To fix this, and because I didn’t want to hem anything this entire project, I used a lighter to melt all the edges of every single piece I cut out.

Now, this tip saved me so much time in college. Put the video on twice the speed and I get done with the edges in half the time.

I had to stop this video because my lighter ran out of juice. So I went to get my backup lighter. Only my backup lighter didn’t work at all. So I went back to my original lighter and somehow got it to work for the remainder of the edges.

There was a lot of them.

And that lighter was very dead.

Or burnt out as it were.

It took a long time.

Once I was finally done with all of the panels, I set my machine up to gather the top edges of the panels.

The idea is to have something that looks like this.

In the back at least.

In my research I determined that steampunk is a cross between Victorian fashion, goth, and machines (gears specifically - which for some reason makes me think of a train).

Anyhow, the idea is to get a lot of gathers to make the bustle skirt very full.

Like this

You may notice that you can actually see my gather threads. I do this on purpose, because I want to be able to see them when I need to pull them out. That’s right those puppies are temporary. Their only purpose to give the fabric that wavy shape.

After, gathering my top two panels, decided the bottom panel needed some more volume added to it.

Now that I think of it this may have been when I mutilated the pillow case.

This is just two strips of fabric the length of the bottom most layer of the skirt.

I also had to trim that panel down before attaching the extensions, because I cannot cut a straight line to save my life.

After all the trimming, I spliced everything back together so it made some sort of sense.

Now that there were more edges fraying all over the place I had to go buy a new lighter, because the other one was really, really dead this time.

That reminds me of this show my friend showed me about a guy who has the ability to touch something and bring it back from the dead. Only if he touches it again after it’s been brought back from the dead, it’ll die again forever. However, if he doesn’t remake it dead within a minute of it being brought back to life, something else will die in its place. He makes pies and now helps solve unsolvable murders with the help of his childhood sweetheart (whom he can’t touch because he brought her back from being dead) and his detective friend.

Back to the steampunk costume.

I went on a nearly unsuccessful mission to Walmart, and, after finally finding lighters in the candle aisle, I returned to my house and burned my thumb.

On the plus side, I will never start smoking because I can’t work those kind of lighters well at all.

Not really sure what I did with this piece, but I should have gathered the entire thing.

But there’s no time for mistakes so I just have to work with what I gave myself.

This is the bottom layer. The building block if you will.

I then gathered all of them so that they were the same size, pinned all the pieces together and…

Sewed right down the middle of the silk road.

That concluded the back bustle panel. I later decided I needed the full skirt so I had to go back to the store and buy some more fabric that didn’t quite match. While I was there I got some faux leather stuff for the corset (which I didn’t want to make. I have to confess I tried to buy a mass produced one a few days before I needed it, but it wouldn’t have made it in time so I was forced to make one) and some interesting gear buttons that I thought I could use.

Fun fact first though: if you act like you work at Walmart, even though you clearly don’t, no one will bat an eye. I went to the fabric counter and pushed the assistance needed button, waited 15 minutes, no one showed up, and I ended up cutting all my fabric myself.

This, by the way, is why I prefer thrift store fabric. Sure it may not be much or enough but it’s all pre-cut and way cheaper than stuff from the fabric store.

The Corset

Right, on to the speed round.

I don’t know how I made this corset and if I did it again I definitely wouldn’t do it the way I did it.

I naively thought I could just cut a nice wide strip about as wide as the height of my bible and then sew it together. That didn’t work so I took it apart and cut it into four pieces, sewed those together, and then sewed those two pieces together. Yes, I did use binder clips as pins because I some qualms about the pins leaving hole in the material.

I then got over my qualms, pinned the back seam flat and sewed on top of it.

This served the purpose of…

I’m not really sure what that accomplished, but it something I’m sure. Structural integrity.

I used zip ties for boning.

I measured, marked, and labeled the zip ties where I wanted them to go.

I mess that up a few times and I don’t know if this was a picture I took when everything was lined up right.

One side done and the about to be.

I cut some strips to seal of the ends of corset.

Since I wanted this to be a front lace corset, that provided extra structure for the eyelets to sit in (or it would have).

I then got bored of taking pictures or something else happened. Anyhow, I sewed those on, discovered I don’t have a hole punch, used the eyelets to stab holes through the five layers of fabric, and then tried hammering the two eyelet pieces together. Amazingly that didn’t work and it was 9pm and I didn’t care enough to care. So I went back to add the finishing touches to the skirt.

To bring the two slightly different fabric colors together and make it look like I did that on purpose, I put a ruffle from the lighter color fabric on the bustle skirt.

Then I put some gathered lace on the one above it.

I then attached the other three skirt panels to make a complete skirt.

Only after burning all the edges on those pieces as well. Towards the end I was pretty sure my thumb would never work again it was so burnt.

The hem line of my skirt was super wonky and uneven so spread it out on the floor and chopped off what I thought looked like a good hemline.

Of course, that meant I had to re-burn those edges.

Just know I spent a lot of time burning edges I’d already burned and had to trim.

I added a waist band in order to have something to keep the skirt on with

I glued some gears on to make it look like the skirt was fastened closed with buttons rather than hopes and dreams.

Yep, I was so tired I didn’t actually put any way for this skirt to stay on. But that’s where the corset comes in.

I hot glued some cool gears and stuff on the corset.

Unfortunately, hot glue and that fabric did not get along and all of that stuff fell off before the dance.

That’s what I wanted it to look like in any case.

The Grand Reveal

It’s not really grand. Since I made this in a day and had to wear it the next day for a dance, it did not hold up well. I also don’t really want to put it on again to take pictures although I may do that at some point and update this post. Without further ado, the grand(ish) reveal.

If anyone has a name for the one in the middle let me know. I want to write a story about that character and her pet lion, Tulip.