LoJ Costume in Progress! Annabelle Leigh Langly.

Labyrinth of Jareth is creeping up on me yet again! Luckily this time around was prepared and started work on my costume at the beginning of the month instead of oh, 2 days before the actual event. I'm glad I did too because this one is extremely different from anything else I've put together.
I'll be heading to LoJ on Friday night which is steampunk night. So I figured I'll put together something somewhat steampunkish for the evening. At first I was going to put together an old ornery prairie woman (and I still may do that for a future date). But then I drew this:

Above is a beloved original character I created named Annabelle Leigh Langly. She pretty much resides in a wild west steampunk world. I really had a blast designing her look on paper so I figured why not try to bring it to life?

I'm a masochist sometimes.

Here's some progress shots:

I wanted the blouse to be very light and sheer. I ended up stumbling onto this strange yet pretty gold netting. Its not really netting as much as webbing. The pictures don't do the sparkle justice.  Its a bit Frankenstein-ed from various patterns I had laying around. I'm not sure why I decided to get so fancy with the seams since you're not going to see them. %90 of the blouse is hidden by the corset.  The sleeves proved a bit of a challenge since they are so sheer and I didn't want the elastic to show though. I did some trickery with gold ribbon to hide it.

Here's where I left off last night. Everything is in dire need of closures right now. I foresee lots of hand sewing in my future this week.

Once again, I Frankenstein-ed a bunch of patterns to get the skirt right. I was originally going to go purple for the skirt like in my drawing. But I fell in love with this plaid while fabric shopping and went this route. I'm actually really happy with the choice. The original design tended to chop my body up into sections, making me look short and squat. Since the corset and the skirt are so close in tone, they really do a good job lengthening my body and making me look a lot less choppy.  I also changed the stocking colors to black and burgundy to keep with the tones.

The corset I got from Corset Story. They have amazing sales so if you're in the market for a corset I highly recommend them. Also, their shipping is very quick. The corset fits me far better than the form since I'm... well... squishy.

I'm going to need to punch some extra holes in the belt too.

I'm guessing I was standing on one leg when I took this photo. The bustle in the back is so far my favorite part of the costume. Its from a Truly Victorian pattern that is deceptively easy. I'll be adding some sort of steampunk-ish looking brooch/doodad on the butterfly part of the bustle to dress it up. To get the bustle to hang where I want it, I'll have to Macgyver it to the belt then attach the train sides to the apron front.  Honestly, I'm not looking forward to attaching that train to the leather belt.

So the big parts are done! WOO! From this point on its just finishing work and detailing. I still need to make a pair of brown fingerless gloves, find a steampunkish belt pouch, put closures on the skirt and blouse, and then do all the little details to make it look like a finished piece and TAH DAH! finished!

More photos to come soon!