Wonderland Week: Finished Steampunk Alice Outfit!

Steampunk Alice Costume by moi

Shew, holy crap. I finally finished everything I was going to finish for my Steampunk Alice costume. I made the skirt, the apron, the bow on the apron, and the buttons on the socks (you can see those further down).

Sock Detail!

This is a weird angle, but you can see the spade buttons I made using shrinky dinks (yes! Shrinky Dinks!). Also, it includes the skirt and apron I made, so despite it's strangeness, it's a pretty useful picture.


Bow Detail
The bow was pretty easy, even though I've never made a bow before - mostly I just held it in the correct shape and sewed it together. Then I sewed on the gear, and added an eyelet to thread the concho through. Then I glued a pinback to the back so I can attach it to the apron, or elsewhere, if I want!


Other accoutrement detail

I made some spade tiles out of Scrabble tiles (did I mention I have a whole mini-drawer full of Scrabble tiles? Well, I do). Also, I had this bottle with the label from the Mad Hatter Tea Party at Camelot Treasures forever ago. I think everything turned out pretty well, and I guess I should make proper detail pictures of just the skirt and just the apron, but right now I'm a bit pictured out. I'll eventually add more to my flickr stream, so watch there!


The Ground is Lava

The Wonderland party itself was super-fun! There was a scavenger hunt at the beginning that split us into teams and required us to take themed pictures. I was on Team Spades (of course!) My favorite picture is featured to the left, of Team Diamond and their "The Ground is Lava" picture. For more pictures of the party and the scavenger hunt click here!


Also, technically, we're at the beginning of Cupcake Week! Go Cupcake Week!

Wonderland Week: Skirt Done!

Hooray! Skirt Finished!
The skirt is done! Of course, the apron is still in pieces, and the accessories are in the "if I have enough time" category now. But! The skirt! It's done!

I've learned that when you're working with patterned material, especially stripes, you have to be super detail-oriented when you're cutting out the pieces and sewing them together. And by that, I mean that I wasn't, so the lines don't necessarily match up all over the skirt (oops).

The other thing I learned was how to put in a zipper using this tutorial! This is the best zipper tutorial I've found, so thanks to Kim for putting it on the internet. I did use the glue stick, but I skipped some of the other steps and just pinned instead. The zipper looks really great, if I do say so myself.

I did attempt my first "freehand buttonhole" sewing using the sewing machine, which is a bit messy.

I'll get Will to take nice pretty pictures of the skirt soon, I just wanted to have something to show. Now back to the studio to put together an apron! And maybe an armband and ribbon and headdress. Heck, if I had another week, I'd finish my parasol.

Wonderland Week: Components for Steampunk Alice

Skirt Pieces for Another Paneled Lolita Skirt (or, as I like to call it "Here I Go Again on My Own! Going Down the Only Road I've Ever Known!")

I don't have anything finished to show yet, but I do have a lot of things sitting around just waiting to become awesome stuff. There's potential in these things, so hopefully I won't screw it up!


Card Suit Conchos!

These I'm particularly fond of - I ordered them last week. They are conchos. Before last week, I didn't know what a concho was. (Those decorative metal things on leather cowboy stuff)

I was looking on etsy for things with spades on them, since that's the motif I'm going for here, when I found some leather money clips with these on them. Since I wasn't looking for a money clip, but I loved the design of the "metal thingy", I checked out the listed materials (yay for that on etsy!)

So, I ended up combing through leather supply websites looking for these, and about half an hour later, I found them. Turns out they don't refer to them as "Alice in Wonderland" related, but more poker related. I got them here in case you're curious.


Newly Drawn & Photocopied Spade Designs

The spades represent the least practiced part of the costume - I'm going to attempt to transfer these photocopies onto fabric using some printmaking techniques. Then I have to find out if the transfer will hold up to a washing. If all goes well, I'll have a really cool tutorial for you guys soon!


Ok, I need to get into the studio so I'll have something to show!

Cute Month, Wonderland Week!

Steampunk Alice Design, Front

All this week I'll be making a Steampunk Alice costume - which means all the posts are going to be Alice in Wonderland related. Of course, it could have been a normal Alice costume, but what fun is it if I can't mix some of my favorite genres, like steampunk, Alice in Wonderland, and lolita, all into one convenient costume?

I've always preferred the idea of a gothic Alice, more with a spade theme than the hearts or diamonds, so I've also folded that into the idea. I used to call this gothic spade-sprinkled Alice "Black Alyss" (a sort of reference to Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars) but I thought that might be a bit confusing (or silly?)

This shouldn't be too hard, since I only need to work on the apron, skirt, and various accessories, as I plan to wear a blouse and vest I already have for the top. Here you can see how I break down costumes when I need to put them together - by color. This is especially helpful when I'm making pieces, as I can see at a glance how much material I'll need.

The steampunk lolita skirt I made a few weeks ago was the prototype for working on this, so I have at least one under my belt before I started here.

On the other hand, I've never made an apron from scratch, and I'm planning to use some unorthodox transfer methods to get the spade designs on the apron, so we'll see how that turns out. I'm crossing my fingers that I avoid a debacle.