Princess Dreams: Embroidering Tiana's Leaves

I figured it was time to do an update on Tiana progress. ;D I've started the task of working on the leaf part of her dress.  This is another part of her costume that I started on a LONG time ago, but embroidery by hand or machine isn't something I have much experience with.  However, I didn't let that stop me!  I initially had to figure out just how many leaves I would probably need, so I just cut out a bunch of leaves, and spread the skirt out on my living room floor, which was my craft area at the time.  Then I took the leaves and started trying to figure out how to arrange them so that I could figure out a rough estimate.

Back in 2014, yo.

My initial plan was to sew the leaves to the skirt itself, but since resuming this project, I came up with another idea.  My current plan is to make the entire green part of the costume, into its own dress.  I made a base skirt using the skirt pattern from Simplicity 1553.  Once all of the leaves are done, they'll be sewn on to the skirt, and then attached to the bodice.  :)  The leaves are made out of green faux suede that I got from Joann (same as the bodice).  Next came figuring out how to do the veins on the leaves.  A friend suggested embroidery, but I didn't have a machine, and the idea of doing them by hand did not appeal to me (and still doesn't, lol).  I've since gotten an embroidery machine, but I haven't sat down with it enough to figure out if I can use it for this.  I also found out that my regular sewing machine does a satin stitch, which is the type of stitch I need for the leaves.  I also went ahead and looked up how to satin stitch by hand in case it came down to me just doing them by hand.  By the way, I determined that I need about 26 of these leaves...  Shoot me. :P

There has been a good bit of trial and error while figuring out how to do the embroidery by machine.  I first had to decide on whether or not the puff paint method (drawing the design in puff paint then embroidering over it) was the way to go.  I found out that my machine isn't a fan of trying to stitch over puff paint, so I switched to just a flat gold glitter paint and paint the veins on the leaves.  Below is a comparison pic of when I first started painting the leaves, and the present when I went back and re-painted them to be more accurate to the picture.

On the left: 2014 leaf.  On the right: the revamp.

Something else I plan to do for this costume is give it a pocket or two.  I decided that somehow, I need to start finding ways to put my phone and stuff somewhere, so I'm going to try to start giving my costumes pockets.  I took a 3-month industrial sewing class last year, and learned how to do pockets, so I plan on putting at least one pocket on the back of one of the leaves so I can carry my phone, debit card, and con badge somewhere when I need to.

It did come down to me deciding that I'd have to embroider the leaves by hand.  Metallic embroidery thread and my sewing machine just were not getting along.  I spent a LOT of time researching how to do embroidery with a regular sewing machine, and nothing I've tried has really worked out, so I just decided to do them by hand.  *SIGH*

My current progress on the first leaf.  One

down, 25 to go...

The plus side about doing these by hand is that I can choose to embroider with thick thread, as opposed to single threading on the machine, which I could have potentially had to go back over a second time, since I was using flat paint instead of puff paint for my guidelines.  I think that if I'm diligent with getting them done, I'll definitely be able to have them all done for when I hope to wear this in 2017.  Even though hand embroidery does take longer, I've been finding that it hasn't taken me very long to get to this point with the first leaf.  Not too shabby for someone who has never done any sort of embroidery, eh? :D  Until next time!!!