Caribbean Blue Dreams

I present to you project LR1084. Conceived and commenced in October 2017; completed finally in October 2022. Sometimes you just don't want to make something new, so you do the sensible thing - buy more fabric. Oh no, I meant dig through the phd (projects half done) bin and finish an old project.

I drew this design after trying on a dress at a dance comp a few years back, I was enchanted by the beautiful royal blue. I definitely am obsessed with blue, but I wanted something a little more contrasting for my skin tone. So I settled on Caribbean Blue. The skirt was a beautiful, long elegant design with two separate layers of very long fringe. I was also experimenting with stoned strips for design elements during this time and wanted to see if I could come up with something different from this last take:

I remember going back and forth with the idea of a nude bodice with the blue strapping. But I usually end up forgoing nude because when it comes to selling the dress later, I don't want to cut out candidates due to the nude not matching their skin tone. So ultimately I ended up going with blue on blue. To give it some texture and depth I decided I would do contrast stoning.

Anyway, I had this fabulous idea that it would be a marvelous long dress with two layers of fringe, based on the gorgeous long dress I had tried from the other designer. Unfortunately I didn’t quite remember how it was supposed to look. I also grossly overestimated my own height. I think I was bored with the idea at this point because it wasn't quite giving me what I wanted out of it. Also I was not enchanted with how much stoning I would have to do to make the impression I wanted. So this got scrapped for a generous five years.

I have been sewing a lot of late and I needed an easy win. Continuing my recent unintentional blue theme I pulled this girl out. First order of operation: revamp the skirt. I decided to make a one-layer fringe situation. I wanted something more flirty than elegant. I wanted to go for a happy, playful latin dress. The skirt was now more on par with that.

Stoning is my greatest deterrent for finishing a dress these days. Probably why I decided to do some evening gowns and everyday fashion more often. Stoning is not only expensive, but time consuming. But I really wanted to see the finished product so I bit the bullet and dug out my old packs of stones and purchased the ones I would need to finish. I started the bands with Crystal AB, so I had to finish with that. These are always lovely because they are economical and match everything.

Some sixteen hours and several horror movies later I finished the contrasting bands of the dress.

Homestretch was maybe four hours. I filled in all the little blue pockets with some Capri Blue. I used a smaller size stone, for the sake of contrast, but honestly it didn’t really come out visually how I was expecting. Overall though, I had to take a few days to marvel at my latest masterpiece. Ballroom dresses are still my greatest expensive hobby. Now this beautiful girl will go up on the website for purchase, unless I get to wear her first. I can say I got a nice little win from a job well done. Now I can go back to learning some new techniques with the evening dresses.