Sunday, August 31, 200812:33 AM - "boning"steampunk, day 511Fabric acquired. Apparently I am going to wear purple pants. I'm game if you are. I've spent the whole afternoon and evening making the corset, so I can put grommets in tomorrow. I'm not as far along as I'd like to be. And I'm at the point of... I don't know if the boning is helping or not. I suspect that the boning is supposed to prevent the thing from wrinkling up vertically, but I feel like they are distorting the shape more than helping. Anyway, bedtime. I'll ask people who know what they are doing tomorrow. Thursday, August 28, 20082:10 PM - progress photossteampunk, day 51I'm still trying to get the hang of this steampunk thing. I really am. Last night, Aya and I had a mini sewing circle, and it was great fun. (I also got to play two Blondie songs on Rock Band, yay!) Here are a couple of progress photos from the camera phone.   All that's left to do now is make the thermal plastic all wilty, drape it over the foam, and then paint everything. Yay! ... and, the 4 other pieces. Still looking for advice on what constitutes a "steampunk fabric", I'm having real trouble with final fabric choices. But... I'm getting there, and there's a long weekend coming. Tuesday, August 26, 200811:31 PM - dangerous curvessteampunk, day 5I made a test corset tonight, using some fabric I had leftover from 2001. Crikey. I've learned something important-- the duct tape double is bigger than I am. I may need to unstuff it a little bit. The good news is that the corset pattern fits me instead of the double. In fact, I could probably even make it tighter. Next steps: picking final fabrics, make the real corset, and making the neck brace. 4:15 PM - buy buy buysteampunk, day 15Yesterday was busy, not much sewing accomplished. However, a few key pieces of shopping accomplished: acquired thermal plastic and corset boning. Tonight-- time to get crafty. In other news... I just found out my Puzzle Pirates iPod commercial spoof got removed from YouTube thanks to a copyright claim from the record company who owns the music. I guess that's what I get for trying to give the artist credit in the caption. Still, I use the term "artist" pretty loosely at this point, because I can't look at a picture of the guy without cracking up. Should I ruffle my feathers about this? Any musicians wanna create a 30 sec soundtrack for my video? Maybe I should make a contest. Monday, August 25, 20088:53 AM - simple arithmeticsteampunk, day 111This morning in the shower I realized that I had miscalculated on the waist reduction portion of the corset pattern, and done the measurements as if I only had one side instead of two. Meaning that if I had cut the pattern out last night, it would have been double the amount of cinch that I had planned for. Painlicious. Luckily, it's an easy fix, and most of the lines are already drawn. In other news, I just found out that the fancy-looking doohickeys I bought at ye olde junk shoppe would have cost $200.40 apiece if I had gotten them new. I bought a pair for $10, so I'm glad I took the trouble to degrease them myself. 1:00 AM - it's latesteampunk, day 11Grumble. Things never move as fast as I want them to. On Friday, we made my duct tape double, so I have a form for fitting the steampunk costume. It's really strange to see a replica of my body like this... From the back, I look like an athlete. From the front, I look like a potato. It's been an enormously busy weekend, with dinner guests on Saturday and a visit to the east bay on Sunday. Even so, I've made a bit more progress. I draped a pattern for the neckpiece, cut a mockup out of posterboard, put it all together, and.... it doesn't work at all. Frustration. Draping in fabric wasn't working because the posterboard can't bend in two directions like fabric can.... and unfortunately, it looks like the final armor pieces are going to behave more like posterboard than fabric. I dunno what to do, unless I find plastic that I can soften with a hair dryer and make the armor out of those... this is going to require some more brainpower, and I'm out of that for the weekend. I also draped the corset pattern, and then marked where it's going to be taken in for shaping effect. For as potatoey as I look, once I drew the new lines, the pattern looks very sexy. I'm sure that means wearing it will be pain. Monday's going to be more of the same, corset and collar. By the way, I'm also looking for a piece of hardware... I am starting with a screw, and I want to attach it to a metal ring that will go around my arm. But instead of screwing directly into the surface, I need the screw to be parallel to the surface, and also be able to swivel in that plane parallel to the surface. Yeah, I know. Friday, August 22, 200810:38 AM - sewing armor with a needle and threadsteampunk, day 1I've been looking for an opportunity to do a costume with AJ, Judy and friends, and so a few months ago when they told me about their upcoming group project for the PEERS steampunk ball, I lept at the chance. By lept, I mean that I sat in a chair playing Warcraft for a few months. Yesterday, AJ sent out an e-mail pointing out that the event is now two weeks away, so I figured I should probably get started. My plan is to blog about it every day, to motivate myself and also have a record of what it's like to do a project like this. Not too long ago, I made this sketch:  Hopefully it's going to look better when I make it for real. There are basically 5 pieces to make: the neckpiece, the armpiece, the corset, the jacket, and the pants. The corset and neckpiece need to come before the jacket, for fitting purposes. The corset is also going to require a trip to Laci's in Berkeley, and their hours are limited. So I need to get a move on. Last night I played with a bunch of materials I bought at Tap Plastics and decided a) on the best way to make the metally pieces and b) that I had spent some extraneous money on fiberglassing supplies. This is in part because of Judy's warnings about working with fiberglass, which Dude at Tap Plastics explicitly forgot to mention. I also did some good paint tests but I'll wait and just show photos of the finished product. Today, we are making a duct tape double so I can fit and drape and sing (yay!). I also need to drape corset and armor pieces. Also, I need to clean up (my house is a nuclear disaster) because I have friends visiting the city on Saturday and decided to cook for them. So... I should probably have food in the house. You know. I have to say... I don't really like Victoriana as a rule, so it's going to be fun/interesting/painful to figure out all the appropriate fabrics for this. I am currently aiming for "not a hot mess." |
