1840s dresses are all well and good, but what makes this a Steel Inquisitor is having spikes through the eyes! These are meant to be heavy spikes that go all the way through the head.

Steel Inquisitor by Laura MacMahon.

While I am dedicated to my costume art, impaling my skull was slightly further than I wished to go, so I needed to have a way to stick bits on the front and back of my head to look like an impaled spike.

A friend of mine had previously done a Steel Inquisitor with toilet paper tubes and sunglasses so that gave me a place to start. His sunglass lenses ended up a bit reflective (and therefore not looking as much like solid metal) so my plan was to go with mesh over the openings instead. Construction pics ahead!

Pieces of paper tubes with rounded edges, which were meant to fit into the inner and outer curves of my eyes. The outer edge needed to be a lot deeper than I expected to fit flush. Made two for each eye in order to have backups!

Painted silver and mesh glued to the opening.

Crayola model magic around the edges to smooth and hide the join.

Glued to my eye socket with eyelash glue for a test run. After 30 minutes it still felt totally secure so I called it good! I could see pretty easily through the mesh.

The whole thing painted silver with a bit of black wash to make them look like weathered steel. The spike tips for the back of the head were formed entirely out of Model Magic and glued to hairclips.

For weapons, Steel Inquisitors carry obsidian axes while Mistborn use glass daggers. I split the difference with obsidian daggers. Luckily these are readily available on etsy these days due to obsidian daggers being a Big Thing in Game of Thrones!

I bought two but unfortunately didn’t think to say the dagger sheathes should be mirror images (you’d think it would be obvious…) and there wasn’t time to order sheathe or make one. So I quick and dirty cut the belt loop off, flipped it over, and used another piece of leather to glue the pieces together.

Fix from the back

And from the front! Looks pretty good if you don’t look closely.

Unfortunately this glue ended up ripping when I actually put the daggers on the belt the first time and I had about 5 minutes to sew through it with giant honking stitches before judging, but the dagger blocks the stitching when it’s in the sheath.

I made a belt using the dress fabric lined with a bit of crinoline for stiffness. It’s machine topstitched on the long edges, and is whip-stitched closed by hand on the backside. I added a rosette (matching the one on the bertha) to cover the hooks & eyes, and used decorative vintage black buckle on the front.

And that was the whole outfit just in time for Jordan Con! Final pictures in the next post!