Beads, sewn to black netting, once adorned this dress.
Sans beads.
My DIL found and fell in love with this soft orange dress at a local thrift shop. It was decorated with tons of beads, some of which had come loose. She thought a patchwork of blue, cream and brown fabrics would be a great substitution.
The beads were fairly easy to remove, as they were sewn to a net base. Once I'd gotten them off, I noticed the triangles weren't uniform in size. My solution? Print a copy of the beads themselves and use it as a guideline.
Bead trim
That idea proved impractical. Next, I cut a paper pattern for the proposed patchwork and folded it into equal segments. Not a winner either. After fooling around with ideas for a while, I decided to do my own little Project Runway!
The dress was draped on a dress form (also found at the thrift store years ago). I was amazed at how much easier it was to design the patchwork on the actual dress. My prototype was finished tonight. After a bit of tweaking, I'll do the final stitching tomorrow.
This has been a challenge, as I don't usually work within certain parameters. But I enjoy figuring out how to make things work, so this has been fun.
Film at 11.
