Custom - Queen Alicia Finnston II Bead Dress

This dress was featured in my interview for the June/July 2015 edition of Bead Magazine!! www.beadmagazine.co.uk/
She's done, she's done!! This is my very first collaboration piece ever and I couldn't be happier!! This piece has been done in full cooperation with my good friend, the ever-busy, the legendery, the almighty GraniteFire! Alicia is GF's Original Character and is a (the?) reigning queen in GF's universe. Alicia has remained unposted because the final presentation is going to be altered to include the detailing I used in my beading. This particular dress is based on Hungarian styling (I'm told Alicia has a grand wardrobe). GF first described Alicia to me via a text message with oodles of descriptive words back in January. I received Alicia's design artwork at the end of January. By March GF had provided me with the turnaround sketches I needed to get the dimensions as accurate as I could. From there it was juggling GF's schedule to match mine long enough to pick out the correct shade of blue beads needed to create her. After a few months of being unable to do so I sat GF down and said "THIS COLOR OR THIS COLOR" and we settled. A week more of waiting for the bead shipment to arrive and I was starting in May!

The first process was starting pattern creation. I tried multiple bases for the bodice but decided that Eumelia already had the majority of structure I needed to use. I repurposed the design to fit Alicia's needs, mostly color placement, but removed about a dozen beads from the structure as Alicia didn't need them.

Last night I estimated that I'd spent 26 hours on pattern creation for Alicia ( makeitpink.blogspot.com/2014/0… ) but I had forgotten to figure in the time I spent on the bodice. What I know: 8 hours designing the skirt, 15 mins designing the bow, 1 hour modifying the lace, 3 hours designing the sleeves. How long did I spend on the bodice? I just don't know.

After fiddling the bodice together I took a long pause from posting progress shots. The skirt was scary for me to tackle and it took a lot of planning. As I said above, eight hours of it! The first difficulty to overcome was how to structure it so that the shape would remain consistent but still allow for the apron without the apron becoming a separate piece of beadwork. You'll note that in the turnaround sketch seen on Facebook I asked GF to include a version without the apron in case this became the result. I played with the idea of the Long Layered Skirt fav.me/d4pm5cr because of the triangle shape, but found it wouldn't give me the poof I wanted. I considered the Wedding Skirt fav.me/d6zbe3e since the back is much fluffier than the front. In the end I settled on modifying the Ballerina.

This would allow her to gain as much width as required, keep the apron, and the natural curves continue the wavey appearance of Alicia's concept art. In the final pattern the apron goes to the very end of the original Ballerina's pattern and the stripes begin for everything after. The Ballerina skirt gave me the most flexibility and I decided to go for it despite the pattern requiring more beads than any dress before it. I came close to running out of blue beads near the end! A challenge arose when I was near the end of the apron which is the coloring. I had searched near and far across both the land and the internet to find contrasting red beads for her stripes, but alas, none were to be found. I have my silver-lined red beads and a silver-lined brown leftover from my Western collection fav.me/d6rkhuk . GF told me that the stripes were originally meant to be much less apparent and approved the brown selection.

After the monster of the skirt I modified the lace from the wedding gown to work as the ruffle for Alicia's apron. fav.me/d5h8gq4 It's done in a faux layer over the top of the main skirt. From there I created the back bow. It was nothing like the ridiculous beast Eumelia's back bow was and, as stated, just fifteen minutes to plan out. I used the ribbon patterns to create a much smaller, stripey version and sewed it onto the middle of her apron back.

The very final touch was the sleeves! They were something I had been avoiding since the very beginning because of the difficulty I went through in creating Eumelia's puffs. I spent a good few days working it over in my head. I looked a lot of reference images for sleeves, including a lot of seamstress instructions, and of course studying the artwork GF had provided. I settled in the end to modifying the Suit Dress's sleeves to meet my needs.

I started trying to do the whole sleeve off-dress as the suit dress originally instructs but found that because Alicia's sleeves are so short in comparison this method would simply not work. This forced me to fallback on my reverse-engineering techniques I developed while working on Eumelia. I created a faux sleeve...hole... I have no idea what it's really called. The section of the bodice where the sleeve would be attached! I created a faux one and then, as with Eumelia, started to bead freely on it until I got the shape I desired. It worked perfectly! The ruffle on her sleeve had gone through many stages of types as well (such as borrowing from the Long Layered Dress's bodice lace fav.me/d4pm5cr ) but I decided to, yes, use the wedding dress's lace again! That's correct: the lacey ruffles you see on the sleeves is the exact same pattern as on the apron ruffle!

She is created entirely from glass seed beads and nylon. Her dress form is not removable without permanent damage and attempted removal may cause sudden death. Glass seed beads in size 11 and size 15. Bronze-lined sapphire with rainbow coating (AKA "do not photograph me" beads), silver-lined red, silver-lined brown, semi-transparent cream, shiny luster cream, and solid white. The brooch is real gold and red crystal Crystaletts from my friend Sharon: www.etsy.com/shop/YadasiBeads Threaded together with blue Japanese One G nylon. The bow is done in white Japanese One G nylon. Almost entirely herringbone stitch with bits of netting and Right Angle Weave (RAW). The bow center uses peyote stitch. Over 54.5 hours of total work time.

Color Total: 6
Bead Sizes: 2
Size: 5 1/2 inches tall, 1 inch waist, 1 1/4 inch bust, 4 inches hem, 1 1/2 inches wide shoulders, 1 inch long sleeves
Size Bow: 1 1/2 inch long, 3/4 inch tall, 1/4 inch wide
Time: 28.5 Hours