Rob: What's up DIYers, Thread Bangers, and Makers!
Corinne: In honor of attending the Maker Faire last weekend and all of the wonderful Steampunk fashion there, we are going to grant the request of Dziga Vertov, Spad Monster, Disruptive Girl, postmodern-mango-salsa, Jana Banana, Gregory M Ricardo (ph), Spike, Amet (ph) and Nancy sites and give you more Steampunk clothing.
Rob: So this week Zoh from Morrigan NYC is going to hook us up with the tutorial which is a Steampunk Essential. Check it out.
Zoh Morrigan: Hi! Thread Banger, I am Zoh from Morrigan NYC. Welcome to my studio. For Morrigan it's really influenced by a sort of new Victorian silhouette and we are also really interested in the elegant Gothic Lolita sub-culture from Japan. Actually my most popular item so far is going to be the one that I am demonstrating today. It's a spat.
So for this project, the key ingredients that you will need are scissors, a ruler, a little rolling guide or you can use a small hammer, you need some scotch tape, either a little buckle or you can use a piece of elastic and then here are some buttons, a seam ripper, a ball point pen, a number two pencil. For making the custom pattern for your shoe, you should have some type of woven scrap fabric pattern paper, and you need your shoe of course.
The type of leather that you need and you should look for this in vegetarian leather as well is a sort of buttery texture that will drape really nicely. What's nice about leather and vegan leather, and wool is that you don't have to line it so it just makes it a little easier to make. For gluing the seams on leather, you would want to get this rubber cement, you also want index card.
So the first step is to get the shoe that you want to make spat for. Then we are going to make custom pattern for that shoe. Basically, you take your woven fabric and it should just be in a shape that's longer than your shoe, and a little bit taller. You are going to take your little binder clip and just clip it to the top of the boot make the fabric, so that you can make little line with the back of your shoes.
After you do your back seam, what you want to do is flip it over and do the same thing to the front. Center front is just right in the middle of the laces here, take scissors and cut off any of the excess fabric outside of the line. Then, you want to tape the pattern that you are making to your shoe in the front. You can bring your hands along the side, so take out any bumps.
You have to decide how far up you want the spat to go. I have kind of decided that I wanted to go not all the way to the top but just a little bit below the top. For the bottom of the shoe, if you lift up the pattern, you can kind of see how the shoe curves with the heel.
So what you want to do is start from the centre front line, wherever you want the spat to end and you want to just draw a curving line and we are not going to go all the way down to the corner, because that would make a rectangle edge, and we wanted to be smooth and curvy. We are just going to draw like this going over, and then here, we are going to follow the shape of the foot going out along the scene.
After you have your spat outlined, go back in and decide where you want your buttons to go, and then draw a line wherever you want the opening for the spat. As you can see, the lines that I drew on the shoe are kind of shaky. The next step is going to be taking your pencil, and drawing over the lines again, and the next step is to actually trace this pattern onto a pattern paper. You can just cut out along the outer lines, and then just trace it with a pencil like directly onto the pattern paper.
I find it's really helpful to use weights to hold the fabric in place. So the next step is to cut the spat's piece that you have made into two pieces. Now we want to trace around both sides in these new pieces to make the other side of our spat. On the part of the boot where it's sewn together in the front and the back, we want to add a half inch seam allowance, and then the part of the boot that has the buttons and the buttons holes; we want to add an inch-and-a-half seam allowance.
Now we are ready to cut out the pattern, and I am going to show you one extra step to adjust the pattern near the button holes. Fold the pattern along the button, and buttonhole line with the seam allowance, cut off the excess on the bottom of the seam allowance.
So now you should have all three pieces of the pattern cut out, we are ready to cut out our spat from leather. We are going to weight them down, and trace with a ballpoint pen around the edges of the pattern. And also remember, since you are cutting out two spats, one for each opposite foot, you want to make sure that you flip your pattern over when you cut out the second pair of spats.
Now we are going to cut out the spat from the leather. So now we are going to sew together the three different pieces of the spat. We are going to use a half inch seam allowance and 2.5-4 stitch length on your machine. We are not going to use pins, because the pins make permanent holes in the leather. So we are just going to hold it together, and feed it through. We are going to sew the back seam of the spat in the same way that we sew the front seam with a half inch seam allowance.
Now all three pieces of the spat are sewn together, take the front seam where it's curved, and the back seam where it's also curved. And to make the seam lie flat, we are going to make little cuts in the seam allowance, just so that when we fold it over and glue it, it looks really nice from the front side.
To make a nice seam on leather instead of ironing it down, what you are going to do is actually take a small amount of rubber cement, and put it on the index card and just make a really thin layer on both sides of the seam. Wait until both sides of the seam are sort of sticky and semi-dry, and then you can go ahead and press it down using your finger in the middle of the seam, so that it last flat.
You can use a little roller to apply pressure to the seam, and make sure that the bond is really strong. So next, we are going to make a reinforced area for the buttons and for the buttonholes. We are going to take the ends and fold them over one inch, and then glue them down.
We are finished with the basic construction of our spat, and we are ready to put on the buttons. Go, find the center, and make a mark, then you want to put them about one-fourth of an inch from the edge.
To make the buttonholes, you can make a simple buttonhole just within an X-Acto knife, or if you want to make a more sturdy buttonhole, you can use the Buttonholer Attachment on your sewing machine. If you use machine buttonholes, you want to cut them open with the seam ripper. Maybe you want to use a ballpoint pen, and poke through the buttonholes, and mark where the buttons are going to go. Then I am going to sew them on by machine or you can sow your buttons on by hand if you want.
For the last part of the spat that we need to finish is adding the buckle at the bottom or if you want a piece of elastic, what you are going to do is button up the spat, and put it on the shoe, and then mark the place on the spat where you want the buckle to go.
Thanks for stopping by Thread Banger. If you have pictures of your finished spats you can send them to tips@threadbanger.com or you can post them to the Thread Banger Forum.
Rob: Now speaking of the forums, it comes with a great spat over there as well. Cristophine made these for a costume, Eyespiral created these boots with a tutorial to boot, get it boot, and Steampunk uploaded this pair to our website.
Corinne: We always love to see the things you have made, and how you made them, and we really want some videos. So upload them to us using the Upload button on our website. And if you're watching us on YouTube, leave a video response. It's easy.
Rob: Tomorrow is the eye candy, that is the Maker Faire. Tune in, you don't want to miss it.
Corinne: Till then, see you.
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