Today, October 28, 2012

Today’s project: Recreate the past with modern stuff

More Steampunk!

(I know, I know, you are shocked and surprised!)

There is a fabulous piece on YouTube (find it here) from a museum in Nevada talking about Victorian dress.  The clip shows a woman putting on all the trappings of a 1860s era lady and is fascinating from a research point-of-view.

One of the segments has the curator showcasing different period bustles.  When I saw this one:

I totally fell in love and said, ‘I WANT one!’  It is a ‘collapsible’ bustle – for easy travelling.  And it’s just so durn cute!  I also felt it would be easier to wear throughout the day than a full bustle piece.  This one should sit right under the small of my back and will make reclining in a chair a more pleasant experience.

Well, since there isn’t a Victorian underthings store down the street, I realized I needed to create one.  I talked to a crafty friend of mine and he had some great ideas and advice.  One of the concerns we discussed entailed (no pun intended! Ha!) when I would sit down or bump into something.  You don’t want your bustle to crumple!  Oh the shame!

Ok, it needs to be made of something strong enough to hold up the fabric but light enough to wear all day and flexible enough to ‘bounce back’ when pushed on.

Let the hunt begin…

Tonight on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, our intrepid wild-craft explorer Rora hunts down a material cheap and workable for bustle creation.  Let’s check in and see how she’s doing.  What’s that she’s found in that cave underneath the kitchen sink?  LOOK OUT RORA!  Oh, my!  She’s found a discarded milk jug – clever gal!

Ahem.

Sorry, not much sleep last night – makes Rora a bit punchy. =)

Anyways, I cut up the jug into strips the longest way I could and fenagled them into a form that seemed to match the piece in the video.  I, of course, didn’t have exact measurements and such, so there was a lot of guess work and playing with my dress form to get a shape and size that seemed to work.  It’s a bit ‘lumpy’ because of the nature of the pre-formed material I was playing with, but as it will be covered by a big swatch of fabric, I didn’t think that would matter.

Here’s what I ended up with:

I used scotch tape at first to fasten everything together because I wanted to be able to adjust it without destroying the piece if I needed to take it apart.  Then, when I decided it was ready to be stuck together more permanent, I used staples at the joints.

However, I was concerned that the staples would catch on my fabric when I wore it, so I covered the whole thing in a layer of duct tape.  I also thought that it looked a little more ‘punky’ that way, too.

Finally, I had some grosgrain ribbon in my ribbon stash and I stapled two lengths to either side of the piece in the approximate same place as the original bustle.  Since this tie will be visible in my final outfit, I attached two d-rings to one end so that it will be adjustable and display something interesting when wearing it.

After working with this piece for a while, I figured out that the ties in the original aren’t just part of the collapsible part but helped maintain the shape.  What made this revelation for me was that my creation was losing it’s shape a little from the pressure of the ties around the waist pulling against the tension of the material.  Therefore, I added these little ties:

Here it is in action:

I needed to finish this element before I moved onto the next part of my costume – the bustle.  I can’t be sure I will get the look I want without having the support of this underneath the fabric.

So there it is!  The next element to my Steampunk lady!

I’m not sure what I had the most fun with, the creation of this or the research to find something that would work and would still be reminiscent of the history behind it.  I’m gonna go with both!