Arwen's Blood Red Dress

Return of the King

The beta verson of this dress, done for Starfest 2003, was almost my first experience in sewing. The second version of the dress was completed for Starfest 2004.

I wasn't able to take any pictures of the work-in-progress while I was making this dress. However, at some point I might get around to listing information such as patterns used, sketches of the sleeve pattern (hand-drafted), and closeups of fabric, ect.

This costume is made of two separate dresses: an under-dress with the long sleeves, and a sleeveless overdress. The blue stretch velvet for the overdress, the red stretch velvet for the lower sleeves and the red lining for the lower sleeves were all purchased at Fabrics-R-Us in San Jose. The red "evening sensations" material used for the upper sleeves and the overdress neckline and straps was from Jo-Anns. Though hard to see in this photo, it has a darker red vine and flower pattern on it. The pink and gold of the underdress neckline is actually two materials - a pink lace with metallic gold flowers (JoAnns) sewn over a matching plain pink background (Hancocks).

Unfortunately, this picture was taken Sunday afternoon at the con, when I was just about to pass out from exhaustion. (Only the fact that Michael Shanks was expected to stop by to look at the Art Show's extremely awesome Stargate model kept me conscious. Semi-conscious. Pretending to be conscious.) I was also just starting to come down with a very bad case of strep throat. As such, I wasn't really together enough to straighten the neckline on the underdress. Oops. This is still one of my favorite pictures though, for the way it manages to bring together three of my favorite shows in one shot - Stargate, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars.