Steampunk chatter, project of the month excitement

I am working on my steam punk skirt, the one that I am hoping to have finished before Phoenix comicon ( You all should totally come out see me in my fantastic outfit, and drop by my hubbins booth 70B, it is on the way the to the bathroom and will have one very sexy comic artist as well as on attractive and stupidly talented artist. Buy a sketch, trust me they will be worth bunches in a few years /) Though I kid I really do encourage you to stop by at the very least to say "Hi" and pick up a business card. I will also have business cards there as well as a portfolio of my photography that is for a different post. Back to steam punk goodness.

As I am a firm believer in mixing up time periods and costume ideas until I find one I like, usually my costuming will be a jumble of different things that just make me happy! So any costume purists out there that see my costume can in the words of a very good friend "SUCK IT!" I am not going for historical accuracy, I am going for a design look. That in mind I am starting off with my basic under pinnings. Or stuff that goes under the clothes. The first such thing is a bumpad, sort bustle thing. I am not building the wire and horse hair nightmare I have seen, instead I am making a sort of layered look. It is a three tiered system that has the smallest amount of padding on top, the most in the middle and tapering in the third. This gives me the "lift" of the skirt where I need it, but helps prevent my rear end from creating it's own weather system. The purpose of the bum pad is two fold, one for the line of the skirt, and the other is to have something attach the things I am bustling too. Trust me due to the weight of the material it is best to have something other than itself to bustle it too. Now I could buy myself a bustle at a wonderful store Wild West Mercantile
Bustle seen here
And as nice as their bustle is, it is just not quite enough to get the look I am going for, they have beautiful victorian calico, that if I wanted to go period I would. But for one, I am not going to put lace and make pretty underthings that will never show, and if they do, the person would be distracted enough to trying to get me out of the layers that if they looked pretty. Which brings us to the other under thing I will be working on. Pantaloons.
Pantaloons are the traditional undewear of the time frame, They had a hole at the crotch so a woman would not have to completely undress to use the privy. This was exploited during the famous Moulin Rouge Can-Can days, as when a woman kicked her leg up high, that slit would offer tempting views of the dancers naughty bits. I am here to assure you, I will be able to use thep privy just fine without said slit and it will not be a part of my costume. So for the next couple of days I will be working on these things, deciding if the pantaloons should be a fantastic color of peacock blue, blood red, or some other not included in the project color. But it will be lacy, oh yes it will, for now the pictures are a sneak peak at one of my costume materials and one of my costume accessories :)
For those that ask, yes those are antique glasses for someone who was patently blind. I was told they were opera glasses but they lie. it is a pot metal of some sort, possibly brass with smaill pearls, it has chain to go around the neck, but I am going to change that.