Embroidered underdress

Feb 202012

~Please also have a look at my other Star Wars costume reproductions! ~

Queen Jamillia – the embroidered underdress

Note:
If you don’t want to embroider the underdress by yourself, you could as well use this fabric from Spoonflower. The (in that case printed!) embroideries are accurate to the movie dress embroidery pattern; and you only need one yard of the organic cotton sateen to create the front of the underdress as well as have the embroideries for the sleeves and the collar!

I’ll repeat some of the things I wrote on the planning page:

I had to basically „piece“ the embroidery together from various exhibit photos (because some that were taken from certain angles show parts of the embroidery which are hidden by the overdress and / or the triangular piece when seen from the front).

Here’s what my pieced-up collage of the embroideries looks like. Note that the images, if you click them to see the full size, are HUGE – they’re basically lifesize:

Center front, complete – red line indicates the center; note that I only pieced up HALF of the embroideries (left side) because the other side is symmetrically mirrored:

Front side (left side, to be precise) turned straight – again, the red line indicates the center front (which, since I turned the embroideries, is at an angle):

Bottom center front:

And here’s the preview of the embroideries that I’ve digitized from that collage. Again, the images are huge, but not as large as the ones above. Red lines indicate a) the center front and b), in some cases, where I have to change the hoop for the embroideries (remember, those are MACHINE embroideries!). Of course you’re free to compare those previews to the original, pieced collages above; and, in case you find apparently huge mistakes, I hope you’ll point them out to me.

Front side:

Center front:

And now on to actually embroidering that monster.

I’ll just post progress pictures that I took every few frames that I’ve embroidered:

Center front and parts of first side embroidered (fifth frame / 8 hours of work so far in this pic)

Second side being embroidered (eighth frame / 11 hours of work so far in this pic)

When I had embroidered 15 frames (which took 28 hours…) on the center front piece, I pinned the fabric to the dress mannequin with all the other pieces of the costume, just to see what it looks like… here’s the result:

You can see where the embroidery basically ’stops‘ at approximately mid front.
Also, collar turtleneck still missing; and the trims on the sleeves aren’t basted down yet, just pinned.
As I said – just to see what it looks like so far… and I like it 😀

Here’s a closeup on the center front bottom embroidery up to that point (left); compared to an exhibit pic of the original Queen Jamillia gown (right) – click to see a larger version of the image:

There are a few spots where my embroidery isn’t precisely like the original embroideries, but I think I can live with that 😉

And now… on to embroidering the last 8 frames of that front piece!

Embroidery FINISHED! And yes, I cried when the last stitch was made.

The panel of embroidered velvet draped on the dress mannequin

Note that I’ve edited the top of the embroideries last minute. I thought it would be nice to have the typical Naboo symbol in the embroideries, too; so I digitized that and included it in the design. Also, I added a ‚Queen Jamillia‘, my name and the current year – 2012 – on top of the embroidered panel – in a Naboo font.
No one will ever see the Naboo symbol or the text. They’re both hidden by the beaded triangular piece. The symbol and text are just there for me; to „know“ that they are there. Also, since it’s a Naboo font, probably no one would ever be able to read it anyway.

Spot the Naboo symbol! Hint: It’s almost at the center of this picture.
The text I mentioned is on top, to left and right of the center ‚heart‘; embroidered in beige thread.