Steampunk Wedding Dress - The Brown Apron Skirt

Gosh, I am so waaaaay behind on my blogging! It's been a little busy lately as the wedding was last Friday and the entire week was spent in England with limited access to internet and a lot of preperations to do!

When the wedding photos arrive, I'll be posting up some proper pics of the dress in it's full splendour here, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. ;)

First up! The making of the brown apron skirt, which went on to of the green skirt.

Yet again, I made a cotton mock-up first to have a pattern to go by. I based it off the mock-up for the green skirt, but with some quite considerable changes. The back of the skirt had no gathering and consisted of three smooth panels with a hint of a mermaid cut. the front part was made out of three panels as well with some extra width as it was to be gathered vertically where it met the back part of the skirt, and at the two seams of the middle panel, I made upward folds where I later stitched on buttons to hold them up.



I made the closing relatively similar to the green skirt, only without any buttons. Instead, I made it so that it attaches to the buttons of the green skirt, which also makes sure that it doesn't slide out of place. On the bottom of the back panel, which forms a bit of a train, I added more ruffles and a brown velvet ribbon for some texture contrast.

On the  sides, where the front panel meets the back panels, I added handmade flowers (made from the same green silk as the green skirt) with facet cut beads to hide the seam and add some colour contrast and bling!

Elf Cuffs & Fantasy Stuff - An Etsy Shop Re-Launched

I've recently just re-launched my Esty Shop, "Chameleon Candour - Elf Cuffs & Fantasy Stuff"! There's not that much there yet, but there is much more to come! Here's a little look at the stuff I've made available for purchase so far:

First up, a pair of what I call "Elf Cuffs", in a rusty orange coloured wool, with wool yarn felted into the base to make a pattern:

Second, another pair of Elf Cuffs in the same type of wool, but these are decorated with crochet flowers:

Thrirdly, and lastly for now (but not for long!), is a my signature leather belt (seriously, I wear this pretty much all the time)! It's not in stock, as this is made to order, and I tailor it to fit spesific measurements:

My sewing and crafting has mainly been a hobby, but it is as costly as it is time consuming, so I've decided to start selling certain products that I've received positive feedback on, in hopes that this hobby might actually start earning me a little money as well. I won't lie, it would be a dream come true if it turned out I could partially live off running an Etsy shop!

I would therefore be beyond thankful if you, my kind readers, would pop by it, have a look around, and, if you like what you see, favorite my shop and share it with your friends! And, of course, buy things from it, if you see something you want! ^_^

http://www.chameleoncandour.etsy.com

Steampunk Wedding Dress - The Green Skirt

With the essential undergarments sorted (I already have a pair of bloomers and a chemise I can use), I turned my focus to the skirt and apron skirt. I’d already bought tons of cheap cotton and made a mock-up  to see approximately how much material I would need. Then I set off to get the fabrics.

I found raw silk in the perfect colours; a mossy green and a nougat brown, and bought 4 meters of each in total (later I had to run back to the store to buy another meter of the green, however, as I was running short). Raw silk is amazing to work with, light and pliable, and yet textured and crisp.

Using the deconstructed mock-up as a pattern, I cut out the pieces and started putting it all together.

I hit a wall, however, when I was trying to decideon the best type of closure for the skirt. Should I make a side opening, like I did with the petticoat? That would mean it would be potentially visible should I choose to wear the skirt without the apron skirt over it, and it didn't really allow much room for adjustment should lose more weight. Instead I went for a different solution, (which also turned out to be very useful later) basically making a "flap" out of all the gathering in the back which can be attached to the waist band through buttoning. It's a bit difficult to explain, but on the picture below, you can see pins where I later placed the buttons (one on either end of the "flap" and one in the dead center):

Here's another picture showing the hand stiched split and the gathering before the band was sewn on:

The gathering had given me a lot of material in the back to work with and make a bit of a train, but instead of meeting the floor in a soft curve towards the floor, the excess material just rumpled up in a creased pile. I remembered how American Duchess solved this issue with the Green Acres gown, and followed suit, inserting a godet at the center as illustrated by the photos below:

Here's a shot of the the back of the skirt after I had finished off the waist (minus the buttons) and hemmed the bottom:

Having finished the base of the skirt, it was time to move on to the ruffles! Raw silk is dreamy to work with when it comes to folding and pleating, but for all it's crispness, I still needed to stiffen the ruffles with starch to make them stay, just ironing them didn't do the job. 

Before I startched them:

After I starched them:

The difference was tremendous! With the starch the ruffles kept their sharp neatness and stayed in place. If you don't have any starch nearby, do not fret! You can do like I did and make it yourself! Just use water and corn starch, mix them together and put it all in a clean spray dispenser. :)

I'm considering a second row of ruffles (as indicated by the second chalk line, but I haven't quite decided yet.

Steampunk Wedding Dress - Undergarments

I first planned on making everything but the blouse (I had already spotted one I liked and blouses are a bore to make), but as I found the perfect corset in the same store as the blouse (and I knew I might risk getting pressed for time), I bought that as well, allowing me to spend my time on making the undergarments and the skirt.

The silhouette I wanted to go for was inspired by the late 1870’s and early 1880’s, meaning a less generous bustle, leaning a little towards the natural form style. But I would still need a bustle, so I made a so-called “Lobster Tail Bustle”. Again, the amazing American Duchess provided excellent guidance with her tutorial (which you can find here), even though I deviated a little from it, it was very helpful!

Here's the result:

To go over the bustle, I made a petticoat and attached a “bum bustle” to it on the inside for some extra bustle padding.

This is the "bum bustle" after I'd attached two out of four rows of frills:

Here's the petticoat before the bottom frills were attached:

 And here's the several meters of frills pinned to the bottom of the petticoat:

Steampunk Wedding Dress!

In July last year, my love popped the question, and in October this year we’re tying the knot, which means wedding dress! I’ve never been the type of person who’s had her wedding all planned out for years (I’ve actually not given it much thought at all), but I’ve always known that if I ever did get married, the dress would be anything but white. I considered going all black, or perhaps blood red, but as we decided on a steampunk theme for the wedding and set the date for the 31^st of October, Halloween, I knew it would have to be autumn colours. In the end, I went for green and brown.

With a steampunk theme, the style was an easy choice: Victorian Steampunk Extravaganza!

My research became an indulgence in Victorian fashion and more modern Steampunk variations on the style. Some pictures and dresses were more inspiring than others though, amongst them were the Green Acres dress by the marvelous American Duchess, who's also provided me with a lot of invaluable research material and tutorials (seriously, this woman is fantastic)!

Another was this Afternoon dress by House of Worth, ca 1875 Paris:

And this 1875-77 one from the Met Museum:

This dinner dress, 1877-83, sold by Lord & Taylor:

And numerous dresses from the late 19th century issues of Haarper's Bazar. In the end I finally made my own design with the elements that I liked, but I won't show it to you yet! ;)

Fire Elsa - Final result!

Desucon was an absolute hoot and on Sunday I debuted my "Fire Elsa"! It was a lot of fun, perhaps in particular because there were so many other Elsas there but I was the only one who had done a fire version. Here are some of the photos from the con:

Photo by Nils Katla

Photo by Branna Laurelin

Edit by me

Photo by Branna Laurelin
Edit by me

Photo by me

I participated in the cosplay competition, but I had no ambitions of winning. I had already seen some of the other participants and followed the progress photos on Instagram and such on a few of them, and they were truly epic! But the finalists were given the chance to do a performance, and I really wanted to sing, so I applied anyway. 

Come Sunday, however, my voice was utterly broken after two con days, and when I was told I was amongst the finalists, I got incredibly nervous, as I didn't know whether I would actually be able to sing at all, plus the fact that there were probably around two thousand people in the room, and I've never performed in front of such a big crowd! In the end, I got up on stage and did my best, which, in my critically inclined mind, wasn't very impressive for the first third of the song, but the crowd was very forgiving and incredibly supportive, and it calmed my nerves down and gave me enough confidence to plough through, in spite of my uncooperative larynx! 

A friend of mine was kind enough to record it all and share it, so if you want to see my performance, here you go:

As expected, I didn't win the competition (a friend of mine who'd been working on her Elsa cosplay since January (and i bloody showed!) won, and it was really well deserved), but I won an Honourable Mention for my performance, and to be honest, that's more than enough for me! ^_^

Elsa update: Skirt, glitter and shoes!

Even though I already had a skirt that might work, I ended up making a new skirt instead of using the one I already had. Mostly because I didn't particularly feel like cutting the old on up for the front split, but also because I kind of wanted a lighter more yellow colour. I lined it using the leftovers I still had of the old fabric, though, and with the split (which conveniently has "waves" created by the seam), it gives a delightful "fiery" look! Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the skirt, but here are some of the other extras: 

I ended up decorating the train with some extra glitter in red and gold!

I also found a pair of pumps that just screamed Fire Elsa!

  Facing the eternal problem of certain cosplays; "how do I carry all my stuff?" I solved it by making a cute, little bag from the left over materials. This was a life saver, and I like it so much I might actually use it for other occasions as well!