Practicing Dragon Scale Smocking

Sorry I let my blog go quiet for a while! Although I was still sewing, taking photos, and drawing, I had too many things happen in my life that zapped any and all joy of taking about what I’m working on. Things have calmed down some so I’m going to try to start blogging again! (Lets hope everything stays calm!)

I keeping with my attempts to make a new costume to wear to the Arizona Renaissance Festival, I already picked out what dress I want to make and wear to the 2016 festival: Daenerys Targaryen’s white dress from season 5 of Game of Thrones…

Recently I’ve fallen in love with Daenerys’ dresses and really fell in love with her white dress. I’ve been looking for an excuse to make dragon scale smocking so it was the perfect project for me.

Although I decided to wait a few more months before I start sewing the dress, a few weeks ago I decided to practice making the dragon scale smocking. I used the tutorial on Michele Carragher’s website to make my own dragon scale smocking. It was hard, but I was able to do it.

Here’s what my practice smocking looks like…

Because I was more interested in actually practicing than keeping some sort of order to where the smocking is placed on the fabric, the top smocking is how its supposed to look like when ironed. As you look down the piece of fabric, the smocking gets messier and messier. That’s because I started to practice there, so its not that pretty to look at. 🙂

I still want to practice smocking so when I make the dress, a lot of smocking will be done and ready to be sewn onto the dress.

As for the rest of the dress, I narrowed down my fabric options to three different white fabrics, but I’m still weighing the cost of the fabric and how easy it will be to wash the fabric. (Since I’m wearing an all white dress to a Renaissance Festival and I’ll be sometimes sitting on the ground, machine washable fabric is a must.) I hope to finally pick a fabric and buy it in either August or September. I’m also trying to decide on what pattern to use for the dress. I’m considering using the jumper pattern from McCall’s 7184 for the bottom half of the dress, but I’ll need to make some adjustments to the pattern or probably just using a different pattern entirely. I’m not sure what to do about the sleeves. McCall’s and Simplicity do not have patterns in print that I can use for the sleeves so I’ll probably need to draft the pattern from scratch.

So, that’s about it for my Renaissance Festival dress! I’ll probably be quiet about making it, but it’s coming and I’m very determined to finish it by February. Let’s see if I’ll have the guts to wear it! XD