Filigree bat witch hat

Wearing my new bat embroidered witchy hat

I was at Michael’s during the pre-Halloween period and saw a piece of home decor with a filigree-style bat on it. The home accessory itself was nothing I wanted to buy, (For the most part I’m only buying things that have some kind of “use” beyond just being cool.) but I really liked the bat design, so decided to reference it to create my own filigree style bat.

I took a photo of the item from Michael’s (Unfortunately no longer on their website to credit) and went into Adobe Illustrator to try to come up with my own design referencing it. Mine is obviously not the same… but I still really like the final result.

Embroidered pin-back buttons

Using the embroidery machine to sew death-head moths

At the maker space they have a number of pin-back button maker machines and the components to put together buttons.  Generally people bring their own printed artwork for pins, or tear pictures out of magazines to make mini-collages. I thought it might be interesting to use the buttons and combine them with machine embroidery.

I couldn’t totally decide which of my recent embroidered designs to use, but selected a death-head moth I had recently embroidered and really liked. I stitched it out to fit a 3″ button, (well actually two of them), traced around the motif using the acetate cover that is usually used over the paper artwork to get the perfect size, cut them out, removed the stabilizer from the back, and then took the fabric to the button makers.

Pentagram harness /body chain

Trying on the pentagram harness / body chain

I mentioned in an earlier post that when I re-made a Killstar Pentagram belt, I had some metal pentagrams left over.  Well…. I got around to making up a harness/ body chain using two of them, in time for an event I attended in October 2022.

It’s a bit long coming for a blog post… and I don’t have a ton of photos, so this is a super quick post.

Killstar belt – plus size edition

Wearing the re-made Killstar pentagram belt

I fell in love with this pentagram belt from Killstar… (ridiculous shipping and duty and exchange rate aside…) but alas, like so many things meant for the goth crew – it came in “one size” – which is always just a little too small for me.  (And proportionately wrong too.. I want the pentagrams to go ALL the way around, not just on the front…)

SO – shipping and duty and exchange rate be damned – I ordered two of them.

When they arrived, I kept the buckle and the strap with the holes from one belt, and started slicing up all of the fake leather straps between the rest of the pentagrams.

PVC and chain harness/bra

Wearing my new PVC and chain harness at an event

I’ve been loving some of the strappy harnesses I see on goth-stagram (Goth Instagram… I guess it’s like goth-tok..lol) and went to order one for myself, but… felt the same feeling I often do when I see stuff I like on size 2 models…  Even though the measurements SOUND like they’re going to fit – I always worry with “one size” – that the proportions will be all wrong.

Instead of placing and order, I decided to make my own.