IT IS DONE!
Here's my entry for the
Steam Ingenious: Your Best 2172 Contest!
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| Steampunk Sultana |
It consists of (from the bottom up)
- Salwar (hammer pants)
- Kamiz/gomlek (long white chemise/undershirt) - I LOVE this pattern! love love love.
- Chirka (fitted supportive vest, in yellow)
- Entari (Simplicity 2172-style!)
- Fancy necklace from my collection
- 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:
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| Loop once, loop a second time, crossing over |
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| Cross under the starting place, over the next... |
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| ...then under, over, under... |
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| ...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.
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| Pinning down the first two petals. |
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| Three petals pinned. |
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| A few stitches (or 15) will secure the braid. |
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| 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:
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| ...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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
