made by Julianne

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DISCO JUMPSUIT

19 January 2011 by Julianne

And I thought it was hard keeping last year’s birthday gift a secret! It was quite a challenge to make this jumpsuit for my boyfriend Jason. We live together and he works from home, so pretty much the only way I was able to get this done in secrecy was by skipping our Sunday game of ultimate frisbee for a month.

I’d talked about making Jason a fabulous jumpsuit for about a year, and I felt pretty bad that I hadn’t done it in time for Burning Man 2010. The design for this jumpsuit is a cross between 70s gear and mechanics’ coveralls, since throughout the night on the playa Jason has to do some tweaks and repairs on the Sensatron, our art car.

I used two similar silver fabrics for the body of the suit–one based on black, the other on white. I ran out of the white silver and wound up using a lame from Joann’s (Lincoln Fabrics had the exact fabric, but I thought $12/yard was too much). Although Jason’s pretty warm-blooded, I lined the suit with some peacock-blue jersey for comfort. Of course all the fabric (except the lame) is from Fabric Planet.

Since this was to be a surprise, I did the sizing based off of a jumpsuit he already owned (that is way too big for him) paired with pants and a dress shirt, both of which do fit him well. I have trouble sewing for him sometimes because he is so much bigger than I am, but when he put this on for the first time at his party it was perfect! I didn’t need to make any alterations at all, which is pretty rad!

It’s got snaps up the front, which of course is fun to rip open, and snaps on the cuffs. The two chest pockets are embellished with his name and an atomic symbol. I thought about using a nuclear sign, which he uses more often himself, but in this case atomic just felt right.

Fabulous man that he is, he wore his suit when we saw Tron opening weekend at the El Capitan in Hollywood (VIP tickets and a laser show!). We all had a great time and he got lots of positive feedback from everyone.

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FUNGITRON

30 December 2009 by Julianne

So I came up with this idea on the looong drive back from Burning Man (2,500 miles=lots of time to think). Fungitron debuted at Halloween but its real venue is Burning Man, with a planned appearance at Mardi Gras along the way.

These Smurfs and I danced in the street to the Fraggle Rock theme song.

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I wore it to Voodoo Fest during the day, which was awesome! People kept coming up to me to pose for pictures; I was the unofficial mascot of a music/head shop called The Mushroom; at the Gogol Bordello show I really stood out and was easy to spot on the jumbotron, as well as by the band! Also I was interviewed for a spot on Fuse TV, which was pretty cool.

The bodysuit is silver sequins lined with nude spandex. I added silver rick-rack and some rhinestones for extra pizzazz. The hood is not attached to the suit.

The cap is paper mache! The white spot are cut out of milk cartons and actually cover little bowls, which eventually will have LEDs in them. For Halloween I put in glow sticks, so I really stood out at the festival and on Frenchman Street later that night.

Of course, there had to be a utility belt. My friend came over and borrowed another bodysuit. My boyfriend bought our socks.

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suiting up

30 December 2009 by Julianne

For about a year and a half I’ve been eying some glitter Spandex at Joann’s, knowing exactly what I would make out of it if I could only find the excuse. Well, this year I went to BURNING MAN. It was insane; it was incredible; it was indescribable! And I was well dressed.

First, here’s a shot from the desert, with the fabulous Cosmo:

As it turns out, you don’t have to have a great body to prance around in a bodysuit. Stick anything in 2 yards of sparkly spandex and it’s fabulous. I got more attention wearing these than when I walked around naked.

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The outfits were interpreted in so many ways, as a fish/mermaid suit, as an astronaut, as an alien (especially when I was in the rocket), and a superhero. It was actually pretty cold at night and my silver fringed arm warmers didn’t do much, so when I wasn’t dancing my tushy off I was snuggled up in a teal robe.

I didn’t use a pattern on these but they fit perfectly. I loved being able to change the attitude by the height of the zipper (I did wear it around with the zipper completely open). Also I whipped up a silver utility belt, which was so useful! I kept food, a camera, toilet paper, a knife, and all sorts of little essentials on hand.

The blue one was second and came out much better. It only took 90 minutes from start to finish (excluding the sequins at the collar). Also on this one I figured out to use the 3-stitch zig zag, which worked so much better than the regular zig zag!

Since I didn’t get a lot of shots at Burning Man, yesterday I suited up again and played in the neighbor’s tree house.

For next year I am going to have a different color for every night. Also, I’m thinking about putting in a much longer 2-way zipper to go from the neck all the way to the back, so that using the porta-potties isn’t such a hassle.