Steampunky stuff

I've spent the last few days on a steampunk costume. We're having a Steampunk Runway at the library where I work. The idea came from some of my colleagues as a way of having an event that was for young adults, as we seem to have so many that are child-oriented.  I've got a bit sucked into it, always having a liking for historical costume, but this has a fantasy element as well, and does not have to be historically correct, thank the Goddess. It's a hard thing to define, steampunk; it's what the future would have been like if it had happened in the Victorian era. (Google it). There's steampunk literature, music, clothing and jewellery, a sort of subset of cosplay I guess. I've aimed to do it on the cheap, using things that are around the house or that I already have that can be altered.

Cheap plastic hat from Spotlight, hopefully will look more like a top hat with a paint job of matt black.

Bits of jewellery I already own, combined with copper wire to make

this not-so-unconvincing steampunk brooch.

I used wire a lot, in case I want to take the stuff apart at a later date.

Clothing I already have. These need a bit of tweaking to get the right feel. The beautiful skirt was rescued from the cheap rack at my local secondhand store. It's Laura Ashley, it was only $15.00! and such beautiful fabric. The black is a velvet jacket that I rarely wear now, and the green silk scarf I bought in India. It's a bit faded now as I used it as a door curtain, but I hope to make it into a sort of steampunk cummerbund.

Detail of the brooch - fake cameo woman trapped in spider's copper wire toils. The cameo has a lot of holes in its design, easy for attaching other bits and pieces.

This is going to be a hat ornament for the front of my top hat. Old sewing machine bulb, picture hanging wire, copper wire and brass curtain rings.

Lucky me, I kept all of Mum's sewing stuff. Hooks and eyes, elastic, bias binding and a ton of needles, and a lot of old bits and pieces like wire and curtain hardware, all useful for this sort of thing. I've still got to do the sewing/tweaking for my clothes, which does freak me out a bit as I am no seamstress.

My persona for the event is Lady Mary Wortley-Bollinger, an aristocratic plant-hunter and explorer. "The first European woman to penetrate the 'dark canyon' of the Tsangpo river, Lady Mary discovered the fabulous Red Flame Dragon Flower, previously thought to be entirely mythical. The plant now bears her name, as Rhododendron bollingerii. Armed only with her hat pins and her modified pruning shears (patents pending) her travels have provided us with many wonderful plants to enrich our parks and gardens".

(From Hansen's Modern Directory of the Great and the Good, 18--)