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.

Desucon Fantasy

100%  cool and comfy.

I shared a stand with leechdreams, who makes the prettiest flower crowns and fairy accessories. Because the mere thought of dressing up in victorian clothes and using an hour applying fancy makeup made me go nope, I wore my viking garb instead and was 100% comfier than anyone else.

I loved selling at the convention, mostly because I escaped having sore feet at the end of the day!

I made these stays last summer, just to have something to do. It used up the fabric left over from my own stays eget snøreliv. It was the first thing I sold and the person who bought it put it on and walked aroundwearing it! I was so amazed and excited about it, it's a bit embarrassing, but person! Wearing thing! I MADE THING!

Amulets with icelandic magical staves and bindrunes.

Cute armwarmers.

I finished my second pair of viking corgies during the day. They're a tiny bit bigger and way more dangerous than the first pair.

I didn't buy anything geeky, but what I bought is as nerdy as can get. Gudbrandsongarden had a stand at the marketplace outside the convention hall, and I bought this beautiful yarn made from spælsheep, the kinda sheep the vikings had. New viking socks, here I come! 

Viking corgies #2

If anyone's tired of seeing my embroidery they're on the wrong blog cause I started another pair of viking corgies. Wool yarn on linen.

HSM Challenge #2: Something Blue

Historical Sew Monthly is the same thing I sorta participated in last year, except this year there's only one challenge a month. (Despite having more time to do each project, I'm still almost two months behind on this post...)

I made a pair of tie-on pockets for Carlotta, cause a girl needs pockets. Since I have a lot of sewing to do for school, I don't have much time to make things outside school. So to qualify for the "something blue" challenge I snuck a blue ribbon into the embroidery. I used the pocket pattern from Simplicity 3536 without any changes.

My last embroidery projects (viking corgies and contortionist wolves) have been successful, so I leapt headfirst into this one hoping it should be easy. Shouldn't have done that, hubris and all that. I switched to cotton mouline embroidery yarn after getting used to wool thread, and I found the cotton is rather unwilling to cooperate.

I used hours on Pinterest trying to find the perfect motif, only to sketch down my own design. I learnt to do french knots and then did about 150 of them for practice.

The pockets were sewn together by hand, with silk thread because that was the only pink thread I had lying around. They're tied around the waist with pink organza ribbon.


Challenge #2: Something Blue 
Fabric: Cotton canvas.
Pattern: Simplicity 3536.
Year: Rococo
Notions: Silk thread, cotton mouline embroidery thread.
How historically accurate is it? 75%
Hours to complete: 7
First worn: Not worn yet.
Total cost: 30 NOK.

Viking embroidery: wolf contortionist

The wolf contortionists have been finished for a while. As this project was small enough to fit in my bag, I've taken it with me to school and embroidered in breaks or when taking the metro into town. (When I was going home one day, there was an elderly lady who sat down beside me to talk about embroidery.)

As usual, I've used woolen thread. The wheat-coloured thread comes from Skaar Tekstil, the rest is vintage, a gift from my grandmother. She had a lot of remnant thread lying around from when she embroidered national costumes in the 90's.

The motif is upside down in this pic. Oops.

The hardest part of an embroidery project is choosing colours. The vikings were colourful people, and personally I'm not. I think I should have chosen a stronger colour for the contouring?

I like keeping things tidy and this is acceptable. Later, I'm going to try another type of stitch,
that in theory will make the motif look the same on both sides.

Finished.

Viking embroidery

Embroidery is one of the things I'd really like to get better at, so when I was stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do, I used the time to practise.

The pattern I chose was a wolf, but with the stylized design and the colours I chose, the result didn't turn out very... wolf-ish. So I've decided that these are vicious viking corgies. Don't laugh, they are really bloodthirsty.

I've started on another one. I'm calling this pattern Wolf contortionist is stuck and would like some help, don't just stand there. 

Garters for a prima donna

This is a hint for one of the costumes I'll be making over fall and winter. It's very big and very pink, and that's all I'm going to say for now. I won't really need garters, because they won't show, but I wanted them nevertheless.

Rococo garters are simple to make. There are several examples with embroidered phrases, from poetry to cheeky quotes. I found inspiration in this tutorial and laughed heartily when I found this geeky one. However I sewed the embroidered panel directly on top of the satin band to avoid seams that could unravel easily.

Cotton emrboidery thread and fabric, satin band in polyester, sewing thread in silk.

I had to improvise a little - my embroidery hoop lies waiting for me at my aunt's,
half the country away.

It's a sad thing to confess to, but I'm a sucker for small projects that give instant gratification. This took me a couple of hours, and now they only need a little ironing to get rid of the pin holes left in the fabric, and they're ready to go!