I barely blogged about the making of these clothes, they were a part of the pre-CoCo sewing frenzy.

Actually, it all started with the boots. The American Duchess “Cambridge” boots cried “STEAMPUNK” so loudly I simply had to have them for our planned steampunk outfit.

As they were described as bicycling boots, I ventured closer into having a look at bicycling fashion at the turn of the century, found the Bikes and Bloomers project and then stumbled into just the perfect black, white and blue houndstooth fabric at our local fabric store. On the next visit to our usual Stuttgart hunting ground I found a perfectly matching deep teal wool for a matching coat.

And there we went. Bicycle Bloomers (Black Snail Patterns #0216) in blue and a sports blouse (Black Snail Patterns #0614) in a wonderful thin white cotton with thin blue and black pinstripes came first, then the waistcoat (Reconstructing History RH942), made from the houndstooth. In the next step I made up the button-up skirt following a self-drafted pattern based on the Bikes and Bloomers pdf and a necktie.

Costume College, where I wore the outfit first, proved that my guesstimate of the necessary length of button-up-strip was off by at least ten centimetres. Back home again I swapped it for a newly made one, and now the length was fine. At Costume College I had a workshop with Shelly Jackson from the Clockwork Monster where I sewed up a boater hat with a houndstooth hatband, meant to go with the costume.

This photo was made during the first outing at home.

And here you see the skirt in action ad Bad Nauheim.