Steampunk: How to Make a Collapsible Victorian Skirt Bustle Cage

Don't freak out - just because it's called a cage doesn't mean it's some of kind of torture implement. Actually, a bustle cage is something that Sir Mix-a-Lot would probably appreciate, since its purpose was to create a kind of giant artificial derriere to emphasize the tiny waists that were all the rage for women during the Victorian Era.

You know how very complicated flower arrangements require a hunk of floral foam to support and shape them? Well, the idea here is the same - a contraption that sits under a skirt or dress to shape it into an exaggerated round hump just below the waist. Here are some ladies illustrating what I'm talking about:


(Image via Truly Victorian)

All of which is to say that we have started working on our steampunk getups for The Steampunk World's Fair!

My first project was a bustle cage to eventually drape a giant skirt over. And you too can make one!

Step 1: Find a hula hoop that you don't mind destroying. Exhibit A: several hoops from the dollar store:



Guess which one got the nod? That's right, the blue bent one that was irrecoverably non-circular.


Step 2: Cut the hula hoop into arcs of increasing size. If your hoop is like mine, hollow and made out of plastic, a hacksaw will easily do the trick.



The smallest piece I have is about 7 inches long, with each successive one being about 2 inches longer than the last. After cutting them, I bent each one every 2 inches or so (you can see the fold marks on the pieces), to help with the shaping process later.



Step 3:Sew a strip of fabric to the middle of each hoop piece. I just cut two long strips (each about 1.5 feet long) off of an old tshirt and sewed them very tightly around the first hoop arc by sandwiching the plastic between two pieces of fabric and sewing them into a channel around the plastic piece:



You can see from the picture how stretched the jersey is around the plastic. As much as possible, sew so that there is no slack in your fabric. You don't want the plastic piece to be able to wiggle around.


Step 4: Continue sewing your fabric strips tightly around each plastic piece. Leave about 2 inches of space between each:



Make sure to attach the pieces in increasing size order, and to face them in the same direction.


Step 5: Shape the plastic into semi-circles with wire. Run a length of wire through the smallest of the plastic tubes. Make sure the wire is strong enough to bend the plastic - anything below a 14-12 gauge should be fine:



Also, this is a good time to use this first wire to push a strip of fabric (long enough to tie around your waist) through this smallest tube. You can do this by bending the wire end into a small loop and then tying the fabric strip to a it before pushing it through. Eventually, you'll use this fabric piece to wear the bustle cage.


Step 6: Complete the semi-circle. Pull the wire through the hoop piece, bending the plastic into a U-shape. Use the wire to hold this shape by making a hook-and-loop closure:



Do this for each of the hoop pieces, and you'll end up with a contraption that looks like this when you dangle it in the air:




Step 7: Now, do the same sandwiched fabric thing running down the sides of the bent plastic pieces. This will both cover any jagged plastic edges, preventing them from rubbing your eventual skirt fabric, and will also give the right shape to the hoop cage:



If you want to, you can tape the hook-and-loop wire closures you made so that all potentially scrap-y places are covered. And that's it! you're done!

Here is a shot of the finished cage from the inside




Here is what it will look like tied to your natural waist with the fabric strip you slipped through the top tube:



Tie it on and then try to sit down - it's no problem because this contraption is collapsible!

And finally, here is what it will do to any skirt you put over it:



Don't you feel like you could go discipline some new housemaids and then have tiny tea sandwiches in the parlour while pouring over visiting cards?

Collages

As Ms42roads is back at it, I figured I'd post briefly. We made some fun collages out of old beat up books with some cool old etchings and art in them. Here are a couple:

Avoiding the Disposable Wedding Dress

You guys, I loved - LOVED - my wedding dress. It was a true work of art. It was a handmade, unusual, extraordinarily beautiful, flattering, and made me feel like I was floating around the entire day that I wore it. It looked like this:



(I'm the one in the middle, wearing white.)

But then, after one perfect, astonishing day, it was packed back up into its box - forever? When else would I be able to wear 20 pounds of beads and feathers? But, on the other hand, how could it just go unworn from that moment on, a one-use thing like a plastic fork? That seemed like a terrible choice, so I took my dress to a fantastic dressmaker and asked her to split into two parts: a top and a skirt. I don't have excessive call to go to fancy galas, but surely at least one or two would happen sometime.

And, lo, last April, we did get to go to an honest to goodness black tie event at the Barnes Foundation. I did the Sharon Stone thing and paired the drop-dead skirt with a simple tee:



Flattering, magical, floating perfection. Continued bell-of-the-ball effect. It was a wonderful night.



Now, if only I could ever fit back into that beautiful beaded top...

What Will Dinosaurs Destroy Next?

Are you into painstakingly and meticulously arranging tiny objects? Do you find yourself with a free day that you'd like to spend uncomfortably perched over a large flat surface? Do you want to herd small children into doing something that requires the kind of extreme patience and extreme dexterity that they most likely don't possess? Do you relish the feeling of being deeply frustrated for prolonged periods of time only to experience tiny "a-ha!' moments every now and again? Then you, my friend, are just the sort of person who should be putting together jigsaw puzzles.



Luckily, we are a family of such people, and we spend our New Year's assembling this amazing 3-D version of Neuschwanstein, a replica of a castle in Bavaria built by King Ludwig II:



You know what's even more awesome? We've seen the real thing! It's built on top of a hill and thus has ridiculously beautiful views. We really caught it on the perfect day too - look at that sky.



I will say that it is hilarious to see pictures of ourselves standing next to this thing we just spent hours putting together. It's got kind of a Charlie Kaufman feel to it.



Anyway, our jigsaw castle is just like the 3D puzzle of the U.S. Capitol that was attacked by dinosaurs, which means this baby might just be the next setting for a rollicking stop-motion adventure!Until then - nice, right?

Handmade Hanukkah

You know what's hard to make by hand? Good presents. Oh, sure, you can whip up any one of the hundreds of crafty present ideas out there and pass those out to wild acclaim or muted gratitude. But what about the kinds of presents that someone will use and appreciate and delight in? What if you aren't a master carpenter or knitter or metalworker? This is what I ask myself any time I decide to give someone something that I made. Will this person actually want this thing? Will they enjoy it in some real way, and not just indirectly through the knowledge that I created it?

This Hanukkah I thought about these questions in an even more challenging context. What kinds of useful, gratifying things can kids make for presents - things that require effort and planning, initial failure and then success? This is the first year that the kids didn't simply dash off drawings for each other and call it a day. Instead, I helped them work and make for real.



For her beloved American Girl dolls, her brother made her a beautiful, delicate oven-baked clay tea set. He worked from these instructions, picked out colors she would love, and handled all parts of shaping the clay himself. I helped with brainstorming and with the oven (I'm pretty skittish about burns). She does indeed love them and was recently bragging to a friend how her brother had made them for her.



To liven up for the rather drab hat he recently received after growing out of his fun rainbow one, his sister made a pompom - from the old hat. She diligently unpicked the wool, rolled it up, researched how to guides, and whipped up this awesome hat topper. He super loves it.



Oh, and I made him a set of animal hooks by cutting a bunch of plastic animals in half with an X-Acto knife (they're surprisingly easy to cut through!) and gluing them onto a board with E-6000 glue. After some stain and poly - voila! Pretty cute and reasonably useful.

What did you make for the holidays?

Live from the Renaissance, It's Us

Ok, tell me honestly - have you been to your local Renaissance Faire yet? And if you have, did you go in costume?

We've gone to ours the last two years. Last year? Weak, last-minute costumes that made us feel like straight-up jerks. I mean, there are people there who look like they hand-wove the linen for their traditionally made sarks, and we bothered to show up with a couple of sideways bandannas and claimed to be pirates? Seriously uncool. So this year? No more uncoolness. We planned, we sewed, we painted, and we... looked amazing.



We crafted this dress together. The dark blue bottom layer was made from a very long, very billowy maxi skirt. The over-layer was first a dress that I cut very low on the chest, and then cut up the middle and laced up. To do nice lacing in the dress (and also in both knights' shirts), I used grommets. Her lovely diadem is some very basic wire work. She is no ordinary damsel, but a deadly and skilled huntress, with a bow crafted from the finest tree branch and quiver of arrows sewn from leather pieces and suspended by a belt. I actually strung this bow with enough tension that the arrows could fire a solid 25 feet or so!



This fierce knight wears a billowy shirt and a tabard featuring his Blue Pegasus sigil (with a stamp pattern that he made himself). His arms and armor are the envy of the shire: a wooden shield with leather handle, and a sword and helmet made from the finest cardboard and leather and spray-painted to look metallic. Here's a closeup:



We used this amazing breakdown of the process for both, and they came out truly excellent. Pro tip: to give the sword longevity, we put wooden dowels in the center, glued sword-shaped cardboard around them in a sandwich, and then used masking tape to bend the sandwiching cardboard together to create sword edges. It's been several months now, and the thing is still going strong despite having been in many a battle.



I was a Lady of the Woods, which meant a dress with very long sleeves and a headdress made from willow branches and beads.



The dress is actually extremely easy to make, and ridiculously comfortable to wear, since it's made out of jersey. I used this idea as the basis of the design, but added a wide corset-like belt.



Mr. Forty-Two Roads had the least developed look this year, but he did look very dashing in this lovely be-ribboned shirt with a lace-up opening. We attempted a shoulder pauldron in the same style as the helmet, but it came out as a learning experience for next time.



Now is a good time to start planning your Ren Faire look for next year, friends - lest ye be threwn in the hoosegow for your pribbling guise. But we? We are busy thinking up outfits for a Steampunk convention this spring.

For Dad

With love always



I miss you every day



A new year without you in it weighs heavy

Hello from Halloween!

How did we four hardcore make-your-own-costume devotees celebrate Halloween this past year? Why by dressing up as this incredibly thematically connected foursome: Abe Lincoln, Leonardo Da Vinci, a ninja, and a mummy. What do you mean, you don't get how they all go together?! Ok, fine, yeah, me neither. One of these years, I will finally force my family to live out my fantasy of coordinating costumes - but this was not that year.



This take on Leo is basically this costume, but recombobulated for size. Nothing says "we are actually a community theater prop department" like already having a 15th century cap and cape ready to go when your 6 year-old suddenly announces that this year it's a Renaissance master or bust.

The ninja is all new. The main piece of awesomeness in this costume are the nunchucks, which are made from a pretty sturdy dowel, some leather wraps for the grip, and a piece of chain. Those things are seriously for real, and could probably take out an enemy. Luckily, our ninja is mostly peace-loving and not particularly keen on doing much besides posing. I made the wrap-style top in the simplest way possible, by sewing together this:



President Lincoln is easy - it's just a beard made of a few cardboard cutouts on a stick, and a cardboard top hat. The mummy was made by a crazy person who sewed a bunch of bandage strips to a sweatshirt for hours on end, and helped by black paper bugs of all shapes and sizes.



Why Abe Lincoln, you ask? Well, originally, Mr. and Mrs. Forty-Two Roads were going to go as Abraham and Babe-raham Lincoln, but someone chickened out of the whole thing and decided to go as the undead instead. I guess we could have piggybacked onto the genre-mashing books and decided to be "Abraham Lincoln: Mummy Hunter."

On our cruising for sweet treats, we learned that ninjas are agile enough not to need their hands:



and that Leonardo was best friends with a Minecraft Creeper:



By the way, have you ever wondered what Honest Abe would look like with a handlebar mustache? Wonder no more:

Our Gift to You

We had an amazing Christmas Day.

When I say that, I don't mean that we sat around a tree opening presents and high-fiving Santa - that stuff we do 8 days in a row every Hanukkah. No, our Christmas Day was spent in our basement, in a makeshift movie studio, knee-deep in Legos, cardboard, clay, markers and pencils. That's right, folks. The four of us spent twelve mostly uninterrupted hours on making the world's latest and greatest stop-motion animation Hanukkah movie.

This movie was our gift to our families, and now it is our gift to you, random internet strangers. Are we the next Ray Harryhausen? Probably not. But the kids loved working on this so much, they have demanded that this become an annual tradition. That counts as an unqualified success in my book!

So without further ado, allow me to present "Shamash: The Hero of Hanukkah." Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone out there in the series of tubes that are the internet a peaceful and healthy 2016!

Rainbow cloud

This photo does not at all do it justice:

Driving we saw this sliver of a cloud showing the whole color spectrum! And as we drove it changed, from more red-heavy to more purple-heavy. Truly beautiful natural phenomenon. Also, it's a thing! (Hmmm... I can't figure out how to hyperlink while using blogger app on mobile device... Here's a link: 

http://earthsky.org/earth/i-saw-a-cloud-with-rainbow-colors-what-causes-it

How ivy held on to bricks

This is a picture of little bits of ivy where it had been holding tight to some brick, before some spring cleaning. I think it's pretty. The little ivy curls look like exotic pseudoanimals!

Shoes to Dye For

Did you know that it's apparently extremely easy to dye shoes?

Take, for example, this sad knockoff pair of Keds (in this case, $5 kids ones from H&M):



All you need to add is some Rit dye(Lara went with fuscia), a plastic bucket, some hot water, rubber gloves, and some kind of stirring implement that you can throw away immediately after.

The result? A deliciously bright pair of happy spring kicks fit for the effervescent 3rd grader in your life:



I love that the nylon thread didn't pick up any of the color - it really makes for a great contrast on the seams.

In the Show

While I definitely haven't lived up to my promise to myself to paint once every two weeks after my art class ended, I did manage to paint once. The result:



The painting dried just in time for me to submit it to PAFA's juried exhibit - and it was accepted! Today we went to see the show. (I think I need to start working on bigger canvases? Mine seems tiny somehow...)



Oh, and I also remembered to take a shot of the painting next to the setup while I was still working on it: