Stitching and Gluing for a Steampunk Wedding: Agony, Followed by Ecstasy

When I first heard that the daughter of a dear friend, Caitlin, and her wonderful fiancé Nathan were having a steampunk/time travel wedding, I was taken aback and began kvetching loudly to no one.

First, because the wedding was in April. Aren't costume weddings for Halloween?

Second, who ever heard of a costume wedding?

Third and the real problem: What would I wear? I have enough trouble shopping for acceptable contemporary attire, let alone swathing myself convincingly in garments of the past.

But then I recognized this invitation for what it was: A stitching/crafting/destashing opportunity. Specifically, to use up my teensy pile of rusted watch gears that I'd purchased years before, when Steampunk first became a thing. I'd paid $10 for maybe a half-gram of old watch parts like this.

My DH is also costume-challenged. It came to me that if I made us couple of Steampunk brooches, they could serve as 98% of our costumes. I mean, we'd go fully dressed in SOMETHING, but the brooches would automatically make us Time Lords (That's a Dr. Who thing.)

I also wanted to give the happy couple something beyond the check. They are such nice people that they would probably thank us sincerely if we gave them yak manure for their garden (if they had a garden). But time travel is such a great theme. Surely I could whip up something from my fabric stash, much of which has travelled over a very long time and distance to reach my house.

I went through my UFO pile and dug up this denim and lace composition, that I'd agonized over last year.

A tutorial for laying down the denim background and auditioning embellishments is in an earlier blog post.  In the last paragraph I grumbled that I didn't know what to do with it.

But now its destiny was clear! Everything on it was vintage: the jeans, the mother-of-pearl  buttons (and some made of ye olde plastick); the intense lace, especially those corner cut-out squares, which make me swoon!

(What were these lace pieces originally intended for? Collars?) Come to think of it,  I convinced myself, the piece was old, new, borrowed and blue - perfect for a wedding gift. 

I felt it needed something more - everything does - so I tried scattering my pile of rusty watch gears over it, but the result wasn't great, and what the heck would people do with a textile that had rusty old things glued to it?  (Don't answer that.)

I dug out my last fragment of a wonderful millenium print fabric, bought in the year 2000, with clocks printed all over it. I cut up some clocks and lined them up in the border. Not bad! I appliquéd them in place with (very modern) invisible thread. 

A little closer: 

A lot closer: 

So easy! So fun! Better present than yak manure! And it ended too soon! But by now my Steampunk pneumatic cylinders were churning. I dug out a circular and and an oval wooden shape, glued batting on top, and covered them with  plaid silk from an old upholstery sample book. I then glued my overpriced watch parts on top. I sprinkled on some buttons, keys and a cool old toy compass for good measure. Glued pins to the back. (Detailed tutorial, see below.) Here's brooch #1, which I wore to the wedding....

And here's #2, which I only took a really bad picture of (sorry), which my husband wore: 

As the wedding wound down, we pinned this one to our gift, as an additional present.  

Along with the brooch, I wore my mother's 1980s-era fringed white cowboy shirt. Thus I was a time travelling steampunk cowperson who was also my own mother (That happens a lot with time travel). My DH wore the other brooch, my mother's trench coat, my Dad's Irish tweed cap, and my daughter's large red bowtie (leftover from her Halloween stint as Dr. Who). He did look Whovian. 

The wedding was an absolute delight.  Any doubts I had about the idea of a costume wedding vanished the moment I set eyes on the bride and groom.

Are they not gorgeous? And it was soooo much fun to see the guests dressed creatively. Some eras were particularly popular. There were a half-dozen Starfleet officers, include the bride's tiny 93-year-old grandmother sporting realistic Vulcan ears, along with her Federation uniform.  She's an interplanetary firecraker! 

The mother of the bride, and several other women wore flapper costumes that they'd cleverly bought on AMAZON! I wish someone had told me that costuming could be so easy! Here's mother and daughter: 

There were gears hanging from the ceilings and strewn on the tables, along with pages from old books. In short, it was waaaay too much fun! Thank you for inviting us, Nathan and Caitlin, and mazel tov to you both! 

Want to make your own Steampunk time traveller's brooch? Start by rounding up all your metal things, ideally old, broken,  and rusty....Don't neglect bobbins. If you don't have vintage embellishments, you can buy fake vintage at the craft store. Here are three small Steampunk-themed wallhangings I made years ago for an online craft swap.

Yes, that's a sewing machine light bulb, a broken bobbin, and some fake gears from Michaels....

A bow made from metal screening....

...A nest made from wire and a fake pearl....and whatnot.

Create a wearable backing. For the wedding, I used wooden shapes, but cardstock, fusible interfacing, or even faux leather or Kraft Tex(TM)  can work.  Cover with batting, and then interesting fabric cut larger than the shape, with edges pulled and glued to the back. Next....

1. Trace around the entire shape onto a piece of faux leather, real leather, or felt....(I really really should have done this before gluing the stuff on it). 

2. Cut out the shape....

 3. Plan the pin location, then mark where the sticky-outie parts are....

 4. Use an xacto knife to cut slits....

 5. Pray while pushing the tip of the pin and then the critical parts through....(sometimes it takes a couple of circles and cuts to get it right)....

 6. Smear glue liberally. Be more frugal as you reach the outer rim.

 Smack that thing on the back!

Let it dry and add glue as needed. Now you are a potential Time Lord, so have fun with your inter dimensional travels!

7 Ways to Use Rickrack, Life's Consolation Prize

People bring me all kinds of things that they think I might put on quilts - fabric, quilt, buttons, faux flowers - and most recently, a friend brought me several hanks (bolts? skeins? murders?) of rickrack.

Not that I needed more rickrack. I already have a little drawer filled with the stuff. (Technically, it's a half-drawer. The left side contains zippers):

Let's face it, rickrack is hilarious. It's like Sisyphus, drunk, zigging and zagging, back and forth, sound and fury, moving forward and signifying nothing but whimsy.

I was about to need hilarious because 1. I was soon to be in mourning, and 2. I was soon to make a bad decision  on one of my pieces involving 1" squares. It was this piece, a block leftover from a large quilt.

One evening, I impulsively decided to do a round of feathers in the border.

Freemotion feathers are hard. My odds improve only if I practice for a substantial amount of time for  weeks, and then again for at least a half-hour IMMEDIATELY before the final feathers, plus marking the quilt. (More feathers advice here.)

It's also a big mistake to make feathers when sad.

My beautiful mother was 90, and she died peacefully at the end of January. Mom had advanced dementia for many years; I believe that her passing was a liberation for her and she is reunited with my dad and with the family she lost in the Holocaust. Even so, it's shocking and miserable. In hindsight, impulse feathers are not good way to distract yourself in the week following a loss of this magnitude.

I know, that doesn't look too bad, but I won't show you the closeups. OK, I will. Some of the details were so awful that I tried to use a black pen on them.  As they said in Watergate, it's not the crime, it's the coverup.

After a minute of coloring, I realized that disaster was only spreading.  I put the whole thing aside.

A couple of weeks later, when I was breathing better, I ripped out the feathers. I also cut off the buttons in the central area. Then, I seized my new rickrack, cut little pieces to the same width as the squares (1" finished), applied Fray Check to the cut ends, and glued them onto selected squares. (There are also French knots on the squares).

I added large hand-stitches using embroidery floss, and in the outer borders, ebullient rick rack.

 The border rickrack is held in position with more big hand-stitches.

So it winds up being a happy piece! And there's nothing my mom loved more than happy. Of course, she liked everything I made. I was the luckiest daughter in the world.  I basked in her unconditional love, and still do.

This made me wonder what else I had used rickrack for in past.

I found this mixed media "100 Cups of Coffee on the Wall" quilt (blogged here), onto which I'd dipped lengths of rickrack into fabric stiffener, then stitched them to the left side of the quilt,

They're supposed to be caffeinated radiating energy lines....

I also used stiffened blue-and-silver, gold, and white rickrack as energy lines on this denim valentine brooch....

...and more white rick rack on the next one....

It's right above the silver bugle beads, below, held on with glue and pink transparent beads.

But wait, there's more!  I found this quilted linen cuff bracelet, blogged a couple of years ago, here. I used a huge, chunky rickrack as both embellishment....

 And, with the addition of a buckle, as the closure. I just poked a hole in it for the belt prong.

 The metal diamond embellishments are iron-on. That's a vintage button and polka dot silk in the yo yo, and the bracelet fabric is linen. I love all the textures, including the ridged rickrack.

Here's a denim vessel made from a torn pants leg. I circled the top with a piece of vintage lace that incorporated fancy embroidered twisted rickrack. 

Women of yore were ambitious with their rickrack. Someone crocheted, twisted, and knotted this trim by hand, no? Yes, those pink and white stripes in the middle are rickrack, wound together. 

I did a little more searching, and found that I'd used patriotic red and blue rickrack to embellish  totes that my friend Marian Sunabe and I made as fundraisers for the 2012 election. It works great to accent pockets....

And then, just this week, I happened to visit Quilt'n'Things, a lovely quilt shop in Glendale, and they had a shelf full of rickrack in bright colors and gigantic sizes. But I didn't see any quilts with the rickrack.  

If you're yearning for more  rickrack ideas, here's a link to a Pinterest page full of ideas: https://www.pinterest.com/explore/rickrack/.

What are you doing with rickrack? I'd love to hear about it! 

Denim and Lace Quilted Wallhanging, and the Endless Audition

A denim-and-lace collage is a delightful way to spend time. If you don't have any unwanted jeans, and/or lace scraps, they're all too easy to find at flea markets and thrift shops. Once you acquire a little lace and at least two pairs of jeans (more is better), let the good times roll!

Lay out a piece of  backing fabric, right side down (I used white muslin). Top it with cotton batting. My starting piece here is about 15" square. Arrange jeans strips on top.

Use the back of the denim to create more shades. I recommend against using part of a thick seam, as I did below center (I later regretted it - too thick, too conspicuous).

When everything was pinned down, I quilted a grid with white thread. Stop before each overlap, and if necessary, use a pointy tool (awl, seam ripper, long pin) to guide the leading edge of the next piece under the presser foot. If you don't do this, the foot will get stuck under a piece of denim, and you'll have to jiggle and curse and rip it out, which is extremely annoying. (Alternative: Methodically zig zag over every raw edge before proceeding any further.)

I used tape as my  guide to stitch straight lines from upper left to lower right. The tape also helped the seams slide under the presser foot. I moved the tape for each successive row.

Next, wavy lines from upper right to lower left. 

The back: 

Collect the lace scraps, and fire up the camera. Now comes the time sink. Playing with lace on denim is enthralling. Taking pictures of every option is annoying - I hate to stop for photography. But it's worth it. If you're anything like me, you'll wind up with a zillion possibilties and it will be EXTREMELY difficult to choose (or remember) just one

Digital images give me a good sense of how things actually look, as opposed to how I wish or imagine they look. It's especially helpful to pause the project for a few days before looking at the  photos again. 

What follows is an abbreviated slide show of my many experiments, which range from the horrible to the sublime...

Experiment 1: Vintage crocheted doily square in a square.

Experiment 2: Three lacy pieces.

 Experiment 3: Variegated ribbon yarn, with painted-lace flowers (leftover from a years-ago party.)

 Experiment 4: Intricate vintage sun doily

 Experiment 5: Angled strips

 Experiment 6: Garden with lace and homemade crochet.

 Experiment 7: Overgrown garden (aka "Throw everything at it and see what sticks!")

 Experiment 8: Sideways overgrown garden


 Experiment 9: Sideways overgrown garden with flowers

 Experiment 10: Dug up the dang garden, and went back to the first doily, now on point

Experiment 11: First doily with lone beanstalk.

 Experiment 12: First doily, with colored lace background.

After a digestion period, I looked at my images, and the best choice was obvious. 

Plopped the vintage crocheted doily in the middle, surrounded it with buttons, and tacked four unusual vintage lace pieces in the corners.

Next question: What will I do with it? This would have been a lovely memory piece if I'd used only my own family's jeans and laces. But as it is, they are the jeans and laces of strangers. I think this would make an interesting table mat, pillow, wallhanging, challah cover. Suggestions welcomed! Whatever it becomes, it was a ton of fun, and my many photos of the alternatives may provide fodder for future denim-and-lace projects.