Rose Tyler Idiot’s Lantern Dress- Sequin Progress Update

I know I said I was going to make more posts about my art, I decided to make another post about making Rose Tyler’s pink dress from the Doctor Who episode The Idiot’s Lantern.

A few days ago, I reached a milestone in sewing sequins on the bodice! As of a few days ago (Monday) I finished sewing sequins on half the bodice! Yippie!

Here’s what the front of the bodice looks like…

And this is what the back of the bodice looks like…

Since this dress has a different bodice than the other dresses I’ve made for myself, I had to change the way I sewed the sequins onto the bodice. Before I began working on the dress at all, I practiced sewing sequins on what should become River Song’s bodice from The Angels Take Manhattan…

For the first Rose dress bodice I used different sized sequins, but for my new dress I wanted the sequins to be one size and one color. This was a problem for me because when I sewed the sequins over a curve in the bodice, I could change the size of the sequins I was using at that time. That way I could add more sequins to the rows as the curves got bigger but still keep the rows in line and look uniform. Because of this, I decided to make a “test” project.

I really didn’t plan on making River Song’s dress from The Angels Take Manhattan, but when I was looking for a test project for sequin sewing, I realized the bodice of the dress had the same sequin sewing problems the Rose dress had, I decided to make it. It also helped that the fabric for the dress was on sale at that time. 🙂

I’m glad I did a practice project for the sequin sewing. I found out I could (And did) have trouble sewing the sequins over curves. The sequins tended to leave gaps as the bodice gets bigger to fit over the bust. Since I was using the same size sequin all over the bodice, I had to figure out how to sew sequins onto the bodice without depending on the smaller sequins to fill in gaps. I ended up overlapping sequins to cover the gaps. It’s not as smooth as I’d like it to be, but nobody notices it unless they’re looking really closely at the bodice. Otherwise the overlapping sequins blend in with the rest of the sequins. I don’t have a photo of how the overlapping sequins look on the bodice because it tends to blend in so well with the rest of the sequins my camera can’t detect it. Hehe!

I still have yet to finish River’s dress, but I think I might work on it after I finish Rose’s dress. Well, actually I’ll finish the costume as so as I find the bodice, which was put away in an unmarked box during a mass fabric cleaning I did a while ago. XD

The sequins I used for both Rose’s dress and River’s bodice are 10mm sequins. I don’t know how many I sewed onto River’s bodice when I took the photo of the bodice, but I do know I’ve sewn almost 3,000 sequins on Rose’s dress bodice. I’ll probably sew a few more thousand sequins on the bodice before I’m done with it, but that’s how many was on the bodice when I took the photos of it. 🙂

Well, I think that’s it for now. I’ll keep everyone updated on the sewing progress of the dress. Hopefully I’ll have it done by the end of the month! (Or two weeks into next month. Whichever comes first. 🙂 )