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.