Steampunk Sultana and the Simplicity 2172

IT IS DONE!

Here's my entry for the Steam Ingenious: Your Best 2172 Contest!

Steampunk Sultana

It consists of (from the bottom up)

1. Salwar (hammer pants)
2. Kamiz/gomlek (long white chemise/undershirt) - I LOVE this pattern! love love love.
3. Chirka (fitted supportive vest, in yellow)
4. Entari (Simplicity 2172-style!)
5. Fancy necklace from my collection
6. Yellow linen turban.

So, most of these pieces are made in relatively historically-accurate ways, with the obvious exception of the 2172 coat.  It DOES, however, look remarkably like these ladies here:

For the coat, I originally bought four wooden toggle buttons thinking "Hey, bamboo is kind of oriental-looking, so that'll make this less Western European-looking!" but in doing more research about what kinds of closures the Ottoman Turks used on their jackets, I found lots of lovely braid frogs and thought I'd try my hand at it.  Having never done so before, I looked up how to make your own frogs and ball-buttons.  I have to say, it was a bit of frustrating work, since the illustrations obviously show smooth cord, and mine was fancy braided trim.  Well, I tried it anyway, and here's what happened:

Loop once, loop a second time, crossing over

Cross under the starting place, over the next...

...then under, over, under...

...and after much fussing and pulling: voila! A ball!

I then had to measure and mold my little flower ends for all the braid frog closures.  I wanted them to extend most of the way across the front of the jacket.

Pinning down the first two petals.

Three petals pinned.

A few stitches (or 15) will secure the braid.

Four happy sets of loops and ball-buttons!

I hand-sewed all the braid closures to the front of the jacket.  I had initially wanted to do five, because I thought four ball buttons would not be secure enough, but the decorative loops made it so four was the maximum allowance.

(Yes, I forgot to take a picture of the closeup of the front of the jacket.  I'll do that next week.)

I put on the jacket over my kamiz and it was VERY sexy... in that "Hey, I can see your nipples through your shirt" kind of way.  Not good for wearing in public, as far as I'm concerned.  Fortunately for me, my inspiration image had this nifty underjacket thing, seen here:

Turns out, THIS is the supportive garment, called "chirka."  It can be made with long sleeves as seen here, but can just as frequently be found sleeveless, which was ideal for my project, as the 2172 jacket has stupid sleeves that limit movement and are very narrow.  So, I measured my body, used a grand total of 1 2/3 yards of fabric and made this:

...and I made this FACE!

It's a little tight and a little high across the bust, but that's probably an artifact of trying to construct a fitted garment by myself.  That being said, I think it turned out really well.  It's DEFINITELY supportive.  It looks like it's binding, but really, it wasn't uncomfortable at all in the three hours I wore it.

I think it fills out the picture frame neckline of the 2172 coat very nicely, preserves modesty, adds support AND totally changes the flavor of the jacket from generic Euro-Steampunk to decidedly Ottoman.

There's a little weird coloration going on: I wore this trick-or-treating with my kids and it rained, so the lighter areas are those that stayed dry.

 The pattern has this loop-and-lace detail on the back (which is, admittedly, totally lost in the pattern of the jacket fabric, but here it is.

What a lovely backside!

So, an excellent experiment.  I will definitely be wearing this to the Middle Kingdom Twelfth Night, where celebrants in the Society for Creative Anachronism are requested to "dress up as someone you aren't normally," and since I normally wear 14th Century French attire, this is a change up!  It's not ENTIRELY accurate to pre-1600, but it's a costume for a holiday party.  The end.

Steampunk Salwar

I have finished Step 1 for my Hallowe'en costume.  As you have read previously, I am entering this contest, which requires that I use Simplicity Patterns' earliest attempt at mainstreaming Steampunk.  Now, I never do anything easily, so I have chosen to totally re-imagine what happens with this coat.  I had hoped to trick-or-treat along side my husband who will be dressing as Malcolm Reynolds, because Inara has an outfit (or two) that could, conceivably, be made with this coat pattern.  My dreams were dashed, however, because my local JoAnn didn't have any (ANY!) fabric that would have worked for the Inara dresses I was trying to make.  They DID, however, have these:

With me now: "Oooooh!  Aaaahhh!"

These are all 100% cotton and suggest Western Asia somewhere between 1500 and 1880.  So, I've now got my fabric and need to figure out how to make a costume that will (ha, right?) work both for a Steampunk contest... and won't get me punched in the face in the SCA.  I am basing most of my research on SCA-period Middle Eastern clothing (helpful stuff here at Mistress Safia's) because it's my primary costuming era.  That being said, many of the manuscripts and portraits I can find for Jews in that area of the world (I focus my historic recreations on Jewish dress, as my persona is Jewish) are a little outside the purview of the SCA (fortunately for Steampunk, this isn't much of a problem!).

So, this lovely Morocco-meets-Sugar-Rush block-printed quilting cotton is going to be my 2172 coat.  I've got wooden toggle buttons to go down the front (but I may end up doing cord frogs to match the portraiture better).  I'll have to figure out how to eliminate the pocket-flaps from 2172, because NO portrait I've seen of Turks, Persians, etc (Jews or otherwise) has an over-jacket with pockets.  Since this pattern has pockets built in, I can either just remove the flap, or cut the side front panels as one piece.  I haven't decided yet.  (Pockets are TERRIBLY handy...)  And sleeves.  Hmm.  Something.

I could NOT get a good picture of this fabric to save my life.  I tried, like, fifteen times.  Anyway, this was the best approximation I could get.  It's a lovely sunshine-yellow (which was a color expected of Jews throughout much of the Middle Ages and later - think "Yellow Star" as late as WWII) and it has tone-on-tone tiny flowers all over.  This will be for a second coat, with a higher neckline (so, more supportive, right?) and a shorter hem.  It will be visible at the neckline and front center, and possibly at the sleeves, depending on how that all shakes out.

This fabric also wasn't very photogenic.  It's a white woven-stripe cotton that's relatively sheer (I put the black wool in there to give greater contrast).  This will become the kamiz (chemise; undershirt).  It will be visible in the bowl of the neckline, poking out at the cuffs and draping below the yellow coat.  I'm really looking forward to this one, because this fabric just feels SO GOOD TO TOUCH!  I wanted to buy it all.  I wish I had all the money in the world.  :(

This is fabulous cotton pinstripe shirting in turquoise and brown.  It felt more synthetic than the white cotton when it was on the bolt, but washed up really well.  This will be used to make salwar, which are (totally legit) MC Hammer pants.  Yes, really.  I actually made some salwar (using this pattern) only I mis-cut the leg: I forgot to halve the leg measurement at the foot, so I have really baggy pants instead of baggy-crotch pants that fit closely at the ankle.


Anyway, let's compare:

Legit.

2 legit.

And now I quit.

See you next time!

Hallowe'en Projects: Wreck-It Ralph and Steampunk

So, my children LOVE the movie Wreck-It Ralph.  Li'l Miss, who is two, wants to watch it ALL THE TIME.  Fortunately, since my husband and I are vintage game literate, it's nostalgic for us, so we don't mind.  To that end, we thought it might be fun to all dress up for Hallowe'en as the four main characters in the movie, as seen here:

So, obviously the 2-year-old girl will be Vanellope Von Schweetz, the 4-year-old boy will be Fix-It Felix, the 9-foot-tall dad will be Wreck-It Ralph, and the US Army Veteran mama will be SGT Calhoun.  Works out great for everyone, right?  Yeah, except for the fact that Veteran Mama has NO IDEA how to craft armor.  In two months.

I DID, however, stumble upon this AMAZING tutorial for Halo armor out of EVA and craft foam (cuz sculpting fiberglass and/or metal is totally everything-prohibitive for me) here: http://www.405th.com/showthread.php/35790-KAT-ARMOR-BUILD-with-custom-undersuit.  Not only is it a build from the game I believe Hero's Duty is emulating, it's a FEMALE build from that game!  SO AMAZING!  This gal builds her entire suit, including a custom undersuit FROM SCRATCH!  And she takes photos every step of the way, so it's very user-friendly in terms of re-creating her work.  "So?" you ask, "Why haven't you started yet?"  Well, my friends, this gal took ELEVEN MONTHS to make her suit.  So, since I have no idea how EVA and craft foam reacts when you try to build with it, I can't cut any corners, so it'd reasonably take me that long.  And I just don't have the time.

I had to make my peace with giving up Calhoun, because I'd really LIKE to learn foam armor crafting.  But perhaps another time.

Then, I was cruising around Pinterest and found that a friend of mine pinned a contest for Steampunkery.  Now, this contest is mostly fabric manipulation and THAT I can do.


For this contest, you must create an amazing costume using the very distinctive jacket from this Simplicity pattern.  She says the bustier and skirt are totally optional (as they're not particularly interesting in really any way) and you can modify the jacket as much as you like, so long as it's still recognizable as the 2172 pattern.  The deadline is November 1, which means that I have to get it done for Hallowe'en... and that gives me my replacement for Calhoun!

Now, I just need to decide what shape I'll do (I'm thinking Persian/Turkish or Moroccan Jewish), and ask my husband if he'd prefer to go as Wreck-It Ralph or as my Steampunk Sweetheart.

Ciao!

Long time no... see?

Wow.  It's been a million years.  BUT!  I've done a lot of learning in the past three (gasp!) years and am looking forward to chronicling more of my adventures in stitching.

Since my last post, I have entered the Golden Seamstress competition twice more, only at the Advanced level.  After sweeping the Novice category twice, I was informed by one of the coordinators that I, personally, was banned from the Novice category, no matter how I adhered to the rules in terms of other participants (as the rules are written, if less than half of your group has never won the division, you may enter as novices).  So, I moved up.  In 2012, my mother and I put together a Viking-era kit for her.  We learned a lot of new techniques: herringbone stitching, nålbinding (a sort of one-needle knitting), tablet weaving.  We had a lovely time, got everything completed (mostly) and were beat out in ranking by a group whose outfit wasn't as well-fit nor as historically appropriate as ours was, but their documentation was better.  From this, I learned that the Advanced division requires proper WRITTEN documentation.


In the spring of this year, my mom and I brought my sister on board and we made a set of clothing for me to reflect my personal armory as used in the SCA.  Having learned from my previous year in Golden Seamstress, I took a stab and writing my first Arts & Sciences Documentation.  This was all completed before the actual event, of course.  It included notation on why I chose this style of dress to reflect my armory and what changes I made from what the research indicated.  The only thing the judges could find fault with was my bibliography.  I, foolishly, didn't keep track of my resources AS I USED THEM, so when it came time to write everything up, I came up short.  That being said, it was an excellent first attempt at documentation.  Our team of three achieved nearly as much as the groups against which we were competing, and they all had six members.  So, we won the "late period (1200-1600)" Advanced division.

Now I'm trying to decide if I'd like to enter my own team in 2014, or if I'd like to try learning from someone else's vision.