Wednesday, April 22, 2015

New Steampunk Sewing Patterns, umm, yeah...

Sooooo.  McCall's has a new steampunk pattern out.

It's umm, interesting.

It includes chaps, harness thing, some pouches, gun holster thing, piece of leather tied to your arm, and two sizes of top hat.

I mean, I get that leather is a big component of steampunk, but I think someone got that confused with a leather fetish scene or something.  This really feels more Leather Bar than steampunk to me.

It could just be the obviously shoddy material used for the sample, but...seriously?

Why is there a piece of leather to buckle on your arm?  Just a rectangle of leather.

The hats are not really bad, though I doubt the actual construction instructions are worth much, judging from the way his hat looks about to crumple in permanently.  But it might be worth paying $1 for some top hat patterns.  And usable pouches, I guess.

I just really hope poorly constructed faux leather chaps are not something I start seeing everywhere in steampunk.

None of the other major brands have released their summer patterns yet, so if there's anything to report I'll post again.  But I HAD to share this ASAP.

4 comments:

  1. The hats, chest harness, and arm thingies are workable, but wow. Those chaps. I concur...I hope we don't start seeing those all over...

    ReplyDelete
  2. lmao What a hot mess, they look like cowboy plumbers. It seems like someone in their design department was told to "get on top of this steampunk trend" but didn't even bother to look it up online. "Ohhh, *steampunk*? That's like leather, harnesses and hats right?"

    ReplyDelete
  3. O.o Chaps for rounding up clockwork cattle?

    ReplyDelete
  4. If that's the best they can do for the presentation versions of the pieces, I'm not touching this pattern with a stick. The proportions on his hat look weird (beyond the slanted crown, I mean - it looks too small at the base and too large at the top and it's not all the visual trick of the slant), and the construction throughout looks like crap. Some of that is the material, because I would bet money that's all vinyl and vinyl makes thicker seams that aren't as sharp as you could want, but if you can't play to that as a strength, don't make it out of vinyl.

    Butterick has a couple of generically-fantasy pouch and accessories patterns that I'd rather spend my money on.

    ReplyDelete

>