Of Tinkering and Teapots

Sorry for such a long hiatus and in the mind of not drawing anything out further… let us just jump right back in:

I was reading Runaways.
It’s a good read, by the way.
At some point early in my reading the series, I decided I really wanted a pair of time traveling goggles.

Being, that I had no clue where one would buy such goggles, I surfed the internet for them. After finding many gothic looking ones, and even more functional ones, I became a little disheartened.

I didn’t want to pay too much for them.

I didn’t want to look like I was having a rave-of-one.

Somehow, I stumbled upon Steampunk Goggles. Steampunk? What’s not to like?

Wouldn’t you know it; there is a tutorial out there for making them. Goggles that is, not steampunk in general.

That tutorial is really great. It was completely my jumping off point for what I did next. It is also, where I plan to go back to as soon as I am done with this pair. Hey, can a girl really have too many goggles?

Being frugal, the first place I hit for supplies was Daiso. I couldn’t find the escutcheons that the tutorial called for. However, I did find some shower curtain railing mounts. They were silver, and not brass, but I figured at $1.50 a piece, “why squabble?”



Daiso, actually was a great place to go for this stuff. I scored everything I needed for less than $10!

As you can see from the picture, the mounts are shaped different than the escutcheons; however I felt their shape lended to a more microscope goggles feel. Plus, it’s nice to have something different.



The first thing I did (per the tutorial) was measure the circumference of the mount and free handed a paper pattern for the eye cup. Once I was pretty happy with the paper pattern, I made a muslin pattern for the actual cups.



The cups were made of red suede and red cotton duck that I already had in hand. Laying the cups along the lip of the mount, I used my awl to poke holes in the cups, for grommet placement. I simply placed the cups where they belonged, and pushed the awl through the fabric and into the screw hole.



I sewed them right side together along the curve, and then turned them right sideout. I didn’t sew both the “top” and “bottom” shut, because I didn’t want to bruise the suede when it got turned inside out. The rough edge on the bottom wasn’t going to show anyhow, because it is hidden by the mount's lip.



My next step was to attach the eye cups to the mount. I planned on taking advantage of the screw holes that were already there. Having already made a hole in the eye cups, I pushed the grommet through the fabric and into the screw hole. I then used my awl to bend the grommet back and secure it.



I had silver grommets, but unfortunately they were not quiet long enough for the screw holes, and two layers of fabric. I switched it up the brass ones I had (how ironic) and they did the trick. Since the grommet was coming from the backside, one has to look hard to tell the color difference.



I grommeted two of the screw holes, and left the third open for nose bridge. Then, I took the two open ends of the eye cups and sewed them together to close the cup.



Next, I implemented the silver grommets. On each of the gogs (is that the singular?), I punctured a hole, and hammered a grommet into place. These would be used to attach the ear chains, which would hold the goggles on my head.



At this point, I took some silver Daiso chain, and began linking everything together. Stringing an end of the chain from the outside to the inside of each eye piece, I used a silver jump ring as an anchor. With a pair of needle nose, jewelry pliers I opened the jump ring, pushed it through the last link of the chain, and then closed the jump ring back up.



For the nose piece, I did the same as the ear piece, only with a much shorter chain. Also, instead of using grommets, like in the eye cup, I used the screw holes on the mount it’s self. Again, I used the jump rings as anchors, so that the chain would not pull through.

At this point, I found that the suede was gaping from the lip of the mount more than I liked. Furthermore, I had wanted to reinforce the grommets holding the cups to the mount, so I contacted Deuce and LLC to see what their opinions were for the best way to go about fixing this.

Deuce, being a man, suggested welding. Which would work…
...but I went with LLC’s suggestion of epoxy. Epoxy, although not safe, is a saner instrument in my hands.



The epoxy worked well, however it seeped into the suede a bit, and stained it dark around the edges. Luckily, I had bought some redish suede, cell phone accessories (I guess that’s what they were, the package was in Japanese), which I took apart and used fabric glue to cover the stains.



I still have to figure out how I'm going to attach and what I’m going to use for the lens. I would like to find some sort of lightly red tinted plastic or glass. Something that I could sand or Dremel I suppose?




So far this was a pretty easy project. If you already know how to sew, place grommets, and do some jewerly work, you could easily knock this out. The most frustrating part was the the epoxy (the stains and trying not to attach myself to the goggles).

If you're not that experienced, I would suggest you go to Tom Hudson's tutorial first (actually one should just go to see simple genius of it). However, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions on what I've done so far, PLEASE SHARE!


UPDATE for Christine: TEAPOT