Sunday, April 18, 2010

Victorian Steel

Summer will soon be here and I'm making my plans. This year I'm going to attend RWA(Romance Writers of America) Nationals in Nashville. Part of the festivities is a steampunk party aboard a steamboat.
I've got a steel bra that I made as sculpture back when I was an art student. I'm planning to remake it as part of a corset. But now the ideas are snowballing and I'm planning an entire steampunk costume.
Last weekend, I began drafting the pattern for the corset. I made a rought preliminary out of paper then made a muslin and redid the pattern. I'm going to do another muslin next.



I purchased fabric, a burgundy colored linen/cotton blend for the outside and a cotton twill for the inside layer. I'm going to do the lacing on the sides and a split busk on the front. I looked into purchasing a split busk and decided it would be better to make my own out of steel mesh and wire. I'm going to put the busk on the outside
Yesterday I went from hardware store to hardware store looking for steel mesh. I what I was looking for at Lowe's. Loui, a salesperson there, was a great help. He writes science-fiction short stories. He had a Mowhawk and tattoos. We talked about art and industrial goth. I never thought I'd be doing industrial goth. This costume won't be. It's more industrial than goth.

I drew a layout for the corset, and put the steel parts on top.

1 comment:

Kay said...

Wow of a project! Made me think of emillyladybird, who I follow on Twitter, whose steampunk jewelry site is http://steampunkjewellry.co.uk/
She would make ongoing posts of her story of the jewelry on Twitter and it made for super sales. I like the literary use of Twitter--and I love her site.
Keep us posted!