Cyber goth dress + my favourite way to make patches
I thrifted this dress a couple of weeks ago for £1. I believe it started life as some sort of costume, possibly a sexy firefighter, but the fabric is really good quality cotton, and I thought it had some cybergoth potential with the yellow and reflective bits. I also really like the metal fastenings.
I already had a high-viz coat in my wardrobe from when I used to go bicycling more often, so I was able to steal more reflective bits from that. Not yet sure what I'll do with them, probably cut interesting shapes and glue or sew them on. Photos with and without flash.
And then yesterday I got a half meter of cotton fabric for £1 which is an almost exact colour match, so I can make some stencilled patches.
I already had fabric paint at home, so this entire outfit has only cost me £2! Cybergoth clothing is usually super expensive.
There are lots of tutorials for making stencilled patches on YouTube, (@rattusrattus3 has some excellent ones) but I lack patience and don't like cutting out intricate pieces, especially for lettering, so I had the idea to use alphabet stickers. You can pick these up really cheap from your local pound shop or dollar store depending on where you're from. I think mine were 40p a packet.
Stick them to your fabric, use fabric paint and a sponge, then when you peel the stickers off you'll have the words in relief. You can go thicker than I have here to make the surrounding area totally opaque, but I like the edges being messy and faded out. These are both song titles from cyber/industrial bands that I like.
Here are some other examples that I've done in the past. These were all done with pound shop spray paint which isn't ideal for fabric, but it's cheap! You'll also get more of the original fabric colour showing through with this kind of paint, which is nice.
If you're using black fabric, gold or silver paint will generally work better than white. These are all Devin Townsend song lyrics.
The only negative to this method for some people may be that the letters will be very uniform, but I like that. And if you want to you can space them irregularly to break things up a bit. Or you might be able to find more interestingly shaped alphabet stickers than I did!
When I wasn’t here, I was discovering my new passion. I’ve bought an old camcorder. Analogue videos have something mysterious about them.
This video is from a concert of Marie Laveau. Awesome group of the sweetest human beings you can imagine. You can check them out on instagram and YouTube.