I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term “parawriting”—I myself can’t remember where I first heard it, but I think it was from David Levine. Anyway, parawriting is all the writing that surrounds a project—for example, notes, synopses, character sketches, etc. Anything that’s not actual prose. I mention this only by way of explaining the first step in the process of creating my Nebula Dress—paracostuming. That is, making sketches, adjusting patterns, creating trim samples, testing processes, etc. This weekend, I paracostumed.
First, for those who may have come into the theater late, let me explain the project. I’m sewing a full-on Victorian dinner dress to wear to the Nebula Awards in May. The reference image is here. Now, I’m not making *that* dress, I’m making a dress inspired by that dress, except sparklier. We’re talking emo-vampire sparkly, people. It will be 2 “colors” of black (straight black and a changeable blue-black) with cobalt-blue highlights. I’m making it out of my old friend poly taffeta, the world’s most luxe and luxurious fabric! (Or rather, the most luxe and luxurious fabric I can buy for $2.49 a yard on Ebay.) So, you’re probably asking yourself, how does one go about making 20+ yards of poly taffeta look elegant and classy instead of like a Goth prom dress? That’s a mighty good question. In my mind, it all comes down to trim.
Here the first trim sample I made up; it's basically ruching with a contrast-color down the center and criss-cross bugle-beading down the middle. It's a bit on the sloppy side because I didn't mark out sections for beading, but you get the idea. The contrast color will be the color shown below. It will certainly not be purple. I've had enough purple to last me the rest of my life.
There's going to be a lot of beading on this dress. Beyond the beading on the trim, I'm going to be beading on the body-fabric as well. In fact, I'm bugle-beading a plaid. Again, please ignore the sloppy beadwork, I was just messing around to see how I could make the beads sit on the fabric. Note the proposed bands of contrast color. The contrast color will also run perpendicular, but I'd already beaded that section so ...
Finally, I'm committed to using every part of the taffeta except (or including?) the squeal. To that end, I came up with a really cute way to use the frayed selvage edge ... little 4 leaf clovers! Much more adorable than ribbon roses. I'll sew them on with a little row of beads and voila! Sparkle sparkle!
Well, that’s it for now. More as the project progresses. Hope you all had a great weekend too!
