Dragon dress: Embellishment

Please zoom in, I didn't use 200+ hours on this
for people to look at a tiny photo.

After the official deadline for this project, I continued applying beads and such to the dress whenever I had a free moment. The last semester of school I wasn't very social. No life, only sewing.

I developed a burning hatred for pearls.
So pretty. But so fed up with them.

WIP

I started out sewing the bead appliques I made and the dragonscale smocking onto the dress, before applying beads all around them, working them into the fabric and such. Looking back, I think the beads I sewed directly onto the dress look more organic than the ones I sewed onto organza first, so there's something to remember if I ever decide to do anything like this again.

WIP: Started on the embroidery.

On the dresses worn by Daenerys Targaryen in GoT, the dragonscale smocking is worked into the fabric of the dress with an embroidery stitch called lock stitch. And since I was unwilling to shell out a whole lot of money for the pamphlet in which it is described, I looked to the interwebz to figure out how to do it. No such luck. In spite of having teachers who have sewn as long as I have lived, in addition to being blessed with a classmate who is a walking embroidery lexicon - we found nothing.

So I put off doing any embroidery for a long itme (in the meantime I just sewed more and more beads onto the dress). Until one day I realised I would just have to wing it and make it work with a buttonhole stitch or something - which I didn't want to do, I wanted to do it properly. So I googled it one final time, in despair I might add, and GUESS WHAT I FOUND. Not perfect, but a tutorial I could work from.

WIP: Back

It was finished in time, a week before our fashion show and exhibition. After graduation I wore it to Desucon. I don't know if you can tell, but while fire cannot kill a dragon, the sun scorched my collarbones quite a lot that day.

The design.

The result.

It's finished - for now. I think I'll redo the bodice seams, after working on it and worn it, there's some puckering. I also have a ton of beads left, so I could embellish the hips as well like planned on the design, but for the moment I don't want to see this thing again. So for now, it'll hang in my closet, hopefully reminding me to never do something like this ever again.

Dragon dress: Sewing

We had nine days to make the dress and the boards for the presentation. Nine days isn't a lot of time when you know every seam will be inspected and scrutinized - and it's not only sewing, things need to be ironed, cut, marked, overlocked and pressed, you have to sew zippers, hems, lining and handsew details, not to mention all the decoration this dress design called for.

During the last two weeks before finalization I always worked with this project. I made dragonscale smocking on the tube to and from school. When the school closed at nine in the evening, I sat at home and handstitched pearls a few hours before bed. Even when I slept, I dreamed about the dress.

I started handstitching pearls and pretties onto organza. By doing this, I don't have to wait with the embellishment until the dress is finished, and I can do a couple hours work each day. 

Dupion mounted on organza.

It was actually the first time I sewed anything in silk. (I thought the Victorian gown from last year was silk, but turns out it wasn't.) Silk dupion is a dream to work with, it presses so easily, but since I laid my pattern pieces so that the weft is diagonal, it frays like crazy. In addition I have to be super careful when I sew, otherwise the organza moves. I have taken up so many seams, and it irks me that I don't have time to hand baste everything together.

This was what it looked like after one day's work. There's a hidden zipper in the back, and the hip pieces are only pinned onto the doll. The colours proved to be hard to photograph, so please trust me, it looks okay.

Oh yes, low quality phone pics, but you can see what the dress looks like after I got the organza parts sewn onto it. On the bottom part of the prganza I have used a clear nail polish to seal it, and brushed on a gold metallic acrylic over. The colour of the organza and the dupion underneath, shifts wonderfully when walking in it.

Started sewing the embellishment on.

So. Much. Embellishment.

This is only the first layer of embellishment. The ultimate goal is to work it into the fabric, embroider around and make it look organic, like it's all one fabric.

And this is how far I got in nine days. There's still a lot left to do until it looks like I want it to, but for the moment it's presentable. 

Dragon dress: technical design and fabric

Pattern construction is very fun when everything goes your way. When you get unexpected difficulties, on the other hand... I had planned my construction thinking the slubs in dupion run down the fabric, but turns out they run across. Long story short, I'd done a lot of work for nothing.

When things like this happen, it's the end of the world time for a break. I printed some inspiration for the embellishment I was going to do on the dress and put it in the sketch book. It's very therapeutic.

There's going to be a princess bodice. The shoulder dart is  moved to the armscye.

I'm still pretty new to pattern construction, so to be sure everything looks like it should, I often tape together a test. The protuding shoulder part had been draped and then transferred to the paper construction. In 3D I was able to see that there was a sharp edge between those two parts, and then fixed it.

Making the pattern for the organza bits on the hips.

Some of the people in my class took a trip out to one of the largest fabric stores in Norway. For a person whose only options for getting fabric has been a craft store selling only quilting cotton or an interior store that sometimes has curtains that can be cut up and used for other things, entering this building is like Yule and Halloween on the same day.

I am fire, I am ... Death! ...Or maybe not. 

I went relatively berserk and bought all of the pretties. There's everything from studs, to pearls to sequins. In addition to the fruits of my raid, I already had loads of stuff lying around.

A polite reminder what the design looks like.

Chosen fabrics, silk thread and some rhinestones.

The dress will be sewn in red and orange silk dupion mounted on silk organza. Because the embellishment will be rather heavy, the top will have an extra foundation layer of cotton muslin and shoulderpads made from cotton canvas. The floating effect one the sides will be done with silk organza that will be softened and crinkled by pouring hot water on it and letting it dry wrinkled up.

Dragon dress: sketches

For the draft of sketches I just come up with all sorts of ideas without editing anything. I ended up with about twenty sketches and tried to categorize them by what I was inspired by. Some of them have taken inspiration from the dragon itself: wings, fire and tail, and the glittering armour covering Smaug's belly.

I asked myself what I wanted, and with this dress I want a floor length dress with focus on the shoulders, and something that moves when the wearer moves. While the dress itself is pretty simple, it will be richly embellished.

We were tasked with sewing one dress, but we were to design as if this was a collection and come up with three designs, one basic, trend and showpiece dress. (Basic is something you could use at work, trend is something trendy and showpiece is either a galla dress or a garment where the designer has gone crazy.)

Of course I decided to make a showpiece. (As this was the first project where we were allowed to go a little overboard, I wasn't the only one who decided to make one.)

Final design.

I decided on a sleeveless dress with appliqued embellishment and some sort of thin, floating fabric that falls lightly over the hips and produces a sort of flame effect when the wearer moves. The front is sewn in dupin (hard) in contrast to the sides (soft). It's going to be embellished with pearls, embroidery, organza and everything interesting I can find.

Early on I knew I was going to make a showpiece, so I planned to finalize that design and then base the designs for trend and basic on it. Easier said than done. The designs need to have something in common, but they have to be different and I find it really hard to find a balance. (Twenty sketches later I was considering setting fire to something.)

Basic & trend, with an axe that goes with the trend dress.

But, somehow it worked out. Basic is in a soft leather with decorative stitching along the panels. Trend is in two different, stiffer leathers, one of them texturized, the other smooth. They can both be sewn as is without altering the design.

It bothers me a bit that this looks so easy. There's a week's work in those two sketches, frustration mixed with crippling doubt, second-guessing myself and being sorely tempted to crawl into a corner with chocolate. At the end I started doodling matching weapons to each dress, but looking back I am so grateful my teacher didn't accept the first sketches I came up with. 

Dragon dress: inspiration

bilde via lotrwikia

At school, we started off a new semester after Yule with an extensive design project. We were to make a dress inspired by an insect or a reptile. Even though my teacher doesn't think dragons exist, she graciously allowed me to use Smaug from the Hobbit.

I research by gathering everything remotely interesting, which I sift through when I have enough. What catches my attention goes into the inspiration/sketch book and this is seriously the best part of any project, starting something new and it's fresh and exciting - and I get to make collages at school, it's amazing.

Instead of linking to a source for each picture, I'm linking to the Pinterest board for the project. 

Sharing a few shots of my inspiration/sketch book.

In addition to Smaug, some other dragon related things came up. I made a few swatches with the dragonscale smocking used on the costume of Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, and used hot glue and paint to sort of recreate the organic golden armour she wears in Qarth.

Nothing exists in a vacuum. I have worked with beetle wings before, and they're easily re-imagined as scales.

Somehow a character strode forth: the woman who would wear the dress, a dragon in human shape. I could go on forever about empowering clothes and clothing as armour, but to keep it short, I'll quote Alexander McQueen:

I design clothes because I don't want women to look all innocent and naive. I want women to look stronger. I don't like women to be taken advantage of. I don't like men whistling at women in the street. I think they deserve more respect. I like men to keep their distance from women, I like men to be stunned by an entrance. I've seen a woman get nearly beaten to death by her husband. I know what misogyny is. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress. 

Collection 2014/2015

In April we had professional photos taken by everything we had made at school so far.

Photographs by Marit S. Wollan.

Autumn skirt in diagonally wowen sandcoloured wool, lined with forest green viscose. The design is based of autumn leaves - with lines in the side panel. I made the pattern from scratch, altering a skirt sloper.

Originally the skirt was going to be dark green, but when I was at the fabric store I met one of my favourite cosplayers and being starstruck I bought another colour. In hindsight I think this colour suits the fall-theme better.

Dress in wool, black plain weave and dark blue twill lined with midnight blue polyester.

Inspiration, sketches, figurine and technical drawings.

The guidelines for this task were pretty strict - the design lines used in the dress had to be from different photos we were handed, the finished dress had to have the same silhouette as the dress sloper and the school provided three different wools to choose from.

Mori inspired top with kimono sleeves in thick woolen jersey. It has its own blog post here.

And my showpiece, a dress inspired by the dragon Smaug from the Hobbit. It's made from silk dupion and silk organza with appliqued dragonscale smocking, and richly embroidered with pearls and pretties. I have WIP blog posts about it: [inspiration], [sketches].

The photographer took some detail shots of the dress. At the time of the shoot I had finished adding pearls, but I had yet to start embroidering, so these are WIP-shots.