Valentine Costuming!

The Steampunk Society of Nebraska is making plans for their annual Valentine's Day ball, and I am working on my costume. A few days ago, a friend and hied to that epicenter of steampunk: Goodwill. I was lucky enough to score a lovely dark blue skirt and a snazzy red top for under $6.

I am already loving my dressmaker dummy form for costuming purposes. It is so much easier to work on it in 3D form rather than trying to put in pleats and hem the edge while the garment is dangling flatly from a clothes hanger. However, my new weight-loss goal is to perfectly fit the constrains of the dummy - so far it is about two inches too small in the bust. I had lost some weight due to waitressing, but alas the gluttony of the holidays ensured that the abandoned poundage quickly found its way back to my thighs and hips.

Ahem, back to costuming. The red jacket was originally longer - I whacked off the bottom and made it into a bolero jacket. Now I have a nice strip of red fabric that will soon become a Victorian teardrop hat. Teardrop hats look like this.

Never having made a teardrop hat (or any hat, come to think of it) I turned to the internet for inspiration and discovered this wonderful blog that offers a tutorial for making a teardrop hat. Lorie, who maintains the blog, sells the form for the hat if you don't or can't make one of your own. I will be ordering a form this week and starting work on the hat! I am thinking that the hat itself should be red, then I will have black roses, black ribbon, and black tulle on it. We shall see what inspiration strikes.

I'm also planning on hunting down a hearts pattern fabric like this...

and making a wrap around bustle to add some Valentine's Day color to the dark skirt.

However, I still have Draft 2 to finish! I finished up Chapter 27 the other day and will be starting Chapter 28 today. Most likely, I will have Draft 2 done by next week. Then there is the exciting moment of discovering what the word count is for Draft 2 and printing the sucker out for more editing! I'll edit and revise Draft 3, then beg/borrow/steal money so that I can put the draft in the hands of a professional fiction editor. Hopefully the editor will not suggest too many changes and one day in the future, the draft will be ready for publishing...

after I work with a graphic artist to create the cover illustration, figure out a marketing campaign, and arrange for a million other things. Sigh.