Steampunk vampire skirt
So I really want to finish the steampunk vampire outfit and as part of this I worked the skirt this weekend.
I am still not very comfortable with Victorian clothing, so I used a Truly Victorian pattern, the 1875 Parisian trained skirt, for the base of this skirt. The fabric is some black and white stripped cotton I had laying around the house. The trim is black eyelet lace with red ribbon woven throughout the trim.
This skirt pattern uses a ton of fabric, 9 yards for the basic skirt and I think I used just shy of 20 yards of the trim on the skirt. Here is the front, back and side images of the skirt.
I am still not sure I like the way the front hangs, I may add some tapes to the front to get the aprons to behave better. I think this cotton is just too flimsy to behave well. I also decided the back is a bit plain. I have always loved waterfall drapes so I thought this would be a nice addition and a good way to add some more red to the skirt. Originally I wanted to do really even drapes like those on the website Glittersweet and the lovely Michaela de Bruce has even done a tutorial on the drapes ( http://articles.glittersweet.com/howto/victorian/waterfall.htm ). However, when I played with the stripped fabric, the stripes would not behave and lay straight with the curved cuts. I ended up going supper simple and doing pretty close to a quarter circle for each side. I then lined the drapes with some red silk dupioni I am using for accents for this costume.
And this is the point where I officially lost to my costume. I was tacking the pleats at the top by hand and managed to stick myself really badly with the big fat needle. The top is 14 layers of fabric, so I was using a large sharp needle and I jammed it into the side of my thumb. As I looked down in shock I realized that my thumb is turning purple and swelling up super fast. Well, this is when I figure out that I cant get a good enough grip to get the needle back out. I had to rummage around to get pliers to remove the needle. Apparently I managed to nick a small vessel and the thumb bled and bled and bled. My thumb is still all black and blue. I do like the way the skirt turned out though. I still may decide to fix up the front of the skirt, but that will have to wait for another day.
I am still not very comfortable with Victorian clothing, so I used a Truly Victorian pattern, the 1875 Parisian trained skirt, for the base of this skirt. The fabric is some black and white stripped cotton I had laying around the house. The trim is black eyelet lace with red ribbon woven throughout the trim.
This skirt pattern uses a ton of fabric, 9 yards for the basic skirt and I think I used just shy of 20 yards of the trim on the skirt. Here is the front, back and side images of the skirt.
I am still not sure I like the way the front hangs, I may add some tapes to the front to get the aprons to behave better. I think this cotton is just too flimsy to behave well. I also decided the back is a bit plain. I have always loved waterfall drapes so I thought this would be a nice addition and a good way to add some more red to the skirt. Originally I wanted to do really even drapes like those on the website Glittersweet and the lovely Michaela de Bruce has even done a tutorial on the drapes ( http://articles.glittersweet.com/howto/victorian/waterfall.htm ). However, when I played with the stripped fabric, the stripes would not behave and lay straight with the curved cuts. I ended up going supper simple and doing pretty close to a quarter circle for each side. I then lined the drapes with some red silk dupioni I am using for accents for this costume.
And this is the point where I officially lost to my costume. I was tacking the pleats at the top by hand and managed to stick myself really badly with the big fat needle. The top is 14 layers of fabric, so I was using a large sharp needle and I jammed it into the side of my thumb. As I looked down in shock I realized that my thumb is turning purple and swelling up super fast. Well, this is when I figure out that I cant get a good enough grip to get the needle back out. I had to rummage around to get pliers to remove the needle. Apparently I managed to nick a small vessel and the thumb bled and bled and bled. My thumb is still all black and blue. I do like the way the skirt turned out though. I still may decide to fix up the front of the skirt, but that will have to wait for another day.