Let the sewing commence!

[auntiemeesh]

Costume plans keep changing and changing but I bought fabric today so I'm pretty much locked in now.

I finally gave up on the Gangers outfit, for now, because I couldn't find the orangey-brown vinyl/pleather/what-have-you anywhere. So, eve11 did some brainstorming and thought about going back to femme Five and femme Turlough.

Now, there were a couple of stopping points for me on this originally. One was a difficulty in conceptualizing how I wanted to feminize the outfit. I kept coming up with little pleated school uniform skirts and skimpy sweaters. Being closer to forty than twenty, that really wouldn't look so good on me. The other problem I'd been having was just trying to find a sweater that gave the feel of Five, without spending hundreds of dollars on a cricket sweater.

But then, last night, I had a brainstorm. I came at it from another direction and POW! there it was. Instead of going with a modern female version, go with something a bit more period. That led me to looking at pretty Victorian dresses and then another POW! right in the face. Steampunk, baby. Oh yeah. I've been wanting to do a steampunk dress for ages and this is the perfect time to do it. I found a pattern that I like, which has most of the elements of Five's costume (in one way or another).

I did a little online research, found a hat and half-moon specs (the specs are on order, and I'm going to put the order in for the hat tomorrow) and a lovely breakdown of Five's costume on dw_cosplay which had great info on the fabrics and styles of his costume. Most of which I'm now throwing out the window. I was a bit concerned about finding a good pattern for the skirt, to match the strip on his trousers (this was another stopping point in the original idea - it's a hard pattern to match), but I did not despair. Eve and I headed out to Joann's this evening and after some searching I found this:



Compare to the actual fabric of Five's trousers:



It's certainly not exact. Mine is a little darker, the red and green are reversed in the wide stripes, there's a thin line of blue in the skinny stripes, and the texture is different (this is upholstery fabric), but the colors are very close and the pattern is almost exact. If I was actually doing trousers, the fabric would have too much sheen and texture, but I think it will work well for the skirt. Thank goodness it was on sale for 50% off, because that stuff isn't cheap. I also got considerably less of it than the pattern calls for. The one thing I don't love about the pattern is that the dress has a whole band at the bottom, probably about a foot in length, that is completely pleated with maybe one inch pleats all around the bottom of the skirt. So that is going and I'm just going to slightly lengthen the upper part of the skirt panels to compensate. I'm so short to begin with that I probably won't have to lengthen them much, lol.

The Doctor's coat is, I believe, some sort of wool, but aside from the fact that wool wouldn't work well with the dress pattern I have, I'm going to be wearing this thing in a parade in Atlanta in summer weather. Just say no to wool. I picked out a nice linen for the coat. It's slightly too buttery in color, but the more beige/taupe fabrics just looked dirty and dingy next to the skirt material, while the buttery color looks fantastic. Some concession must be made to how it works together. The pattern I'm using - Simplicity 2172 - doesn't have an equivalent piece to the sweater, which I'm totally cool with, because the sweater was killing me anyway. And the bustier will serve for his shirt. I picked out a clean white for that, and I'm going to put some red accents on it to replace the placket and collar linings.

We ran out of time at the store before I was able to pick out lining materials and notions, so I'll have to make another trip fairly soon, but I have enough to get started on the skirt and feel like I'm accomplishing something. DragonCon is fast approaching!

I'm really excited and pleased to have found a way to do the Female Five costume and to be able to combine it with the steampunk look that I've been lusting after for years. I just hope I'm able to make it look in reality at least close to what it already looks like in my head.

Comments

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

I think the bloomers/legging would absolutely still work with a more steampunky top.

Incidentally, I was browsing around, looking for some plaid tweed to see how close I could get to Seven's trousers and found a site with lovely tartans that came pretty darn close -- for $80/yd. Yikes!

[eve11]

Check out this person (I think it's actually a guy in drag? maybe?) who said they used the bloomers from that laughing moon pattern in this outfit. The jacket there also looks kind of like the one ripple pattern that has the panel in the front. I was thinking I could do something like that but make the panel there from the zigzag material and have the buttons be question marks :D

[auntiemeesh.livejournal.com]

The jacket does look really good with the bloomers. I think the pattern you have would work really well like that, with the zigzag pattern material for the panel. Also, did you see the sleeves pattern on Reconstructing History? (http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/products/TV495-1890s-Sleeves) The pattern gives you lots of good alternatives for how puffy you want your sleeves to be.

[eve11]

Yeah, I saw the sleeve patterns but honestly if I can get away with making a vest and then wearing a blouse underneath I think I will do that just for brevity. The ripple bodice might not be the right thing to do for that but I'll find something. I ordered that zigzag fabric so I'll see what it looks like in a few days I suppose :)