Creating my Costume - Daenerys Qartheen Gown

When I first set out to make a costume, I do a lot of Internet research (that is a lot of Facebook interspersed with Google searches) - namely looking at pictures of the original costume and the interpretations of other costumers who have recreated that particular costume. My intention is to do the best reproduction I possibly can, and I believe by reading the experiences of others and looking at their creations helps form my ideas and shapes my plan of attack to the costume.

With that philosophy in mind, I would like to share with you my process for recreating my Daenerys costume from HBO's Game of Thrones.

Warning!

If you are looking for me to tell you how I made the belt and shoulders... I'm sorry but I can tell you how I made them... Because I didn't make them ;)

You are welcome to ask me where I obtained them and I am more than happy to share my creative friend's contact email if you wish to contact him yourself.

What I will be able to show you however is how I attached the shoulders to my costume :)

Let's Start with the Dress Design...

First of all, from studying the dress Daenerys wore in Qarth; I determined how her dress goes together. It is actually a very simple yet very effective design. It did take me a while to get my head around it, and a few quick sketches in my drawing book I came up with this (and coloured it in Paint for your viewing pleasure): 

Let's break the above illustration down. On the left, it is a side view of the costume. The biggest things that we can see is that the front of the dress is not the same as the back. The front of the dress is attached to the golden shoulder pieces, but the back of the dress is quite low and the top of it sits at approximately the small of Daenerys's back. 

2ndly; it is the cape only that is attached at the back of the dress to the golden shoulder pieces, and this in turn is sewn into the side seams of the dress. It does not flow as a loose entity from the rest of the dress - it is attached.

Now if we turn our intention to the right, we see the back of the costume - the cape (admittedly there is not much to see). This was the intention of what I wanted to illustrate to myself with this sketch, however it could also represent what this dress would look like without the belt being worn - very billowy indeed! The belt is what cinches in the dress and gives it its feminine allure. the picture below gives you a bit of an idea of just how much fabric is there in the front!

Was testing for transparency when this picture was taken!

Let's Talk About Fabric...

On occasions I have received an email asking where I purchased my fabric. Here is an excerpt from one of the replies I have given:

This is the email I sent them:

I came across information that fabric from your company was used in the creation of a particular gown created by Michele Clapton for the use in the series Game of Thrones. More specifically, I understand it to be a blue silk chiffon with metallic thread. I hope that I am being specific enough. If necessary I can provide further information.
My query is I was wondering if the fabric was in stock; with the intent of purchasing approximately 5 meters.

Thank you kindly for your time and assistance! 

This was their response:

Thank you for your email. You are correct that is one of our fabrics. It is £25/m and a grey/blue with a silver metallic thread. Please find attached a photograph. It is currently in stock. 

On the invoice that they sent after the fabric arrived, it was called:

Blue/Silver Silk Chiffon

To help avoid repeating myself too much, read more in this post about what I did with this fabric to make it Daenerys-ready. It is important to note however that this fabric was actually lightened for use in the show, and the golden print is not on the dress, that is something you would also need to do to the fabric yourself.

PS I actually ended up ordering 6 meters of the fabric, not 5 such as in my email enquiry above.

As you would expect of a dress worthy of a Khaleesi, the fabric has a steep (but understandable for its quality) price tag attached at £25/m.

Today, whilst browsing in my local Spotlight, I came across the fabric below:

It comes in at a much more affordable price of $6.99/m. I believe that it is similar enough in colour to the fabric I used in making my dress. Of course you will still need to add the golden print to the dress, but I will definitely show you the process that I used and I will do so in a later blog post.

To close on this post, can you guess what this is for:...?

During my search for other people's creations of the Qartheen gown, I came across what I thought was a brilliant idea - as made by another fan. For her recreation of the dress, she used bracelets as the shoulder pieces. Such a fabulous idea that it got me to thinking...

From there I decided that I was going to make another version of this dress, but rather be inspired by than trying to do a reproduction. With this image in mind, I set out to find some bracelets that I could use as the shoulder pieces; and if I was truly lucky to be able to also make a matching belt from deconstructed bracelets (something I have never before attempted...). To my delight, there on sale in Lovisa was six of the bracelets above, at $5.00 each... A massive saving of $20 each. Just enough materials in there to de-construct (I think) to make the shoulders and belt!

The midnight blue fabric is what I have chosen for the fabric of the dress. The beads in the bracelets are an antique pearl and diamontes whilst the setting is antique silver/pewter in colour. The bracelets were purchased first, and the fabric was chosen to fit the style of the dress first and foremost - but also because the colours look great together!

So how does this benefit you? Well the answer is I will make this version of the dress and take photos along the way to show you how the original dress was made. The principals of construction will be the same, it will just be the outcome will look different to Daenerys's (of course ;)) On occasions, I will use pictures from my original construction of the dress so you can see how the process is identical. 

I may learn some new tricks on my 2nd go-round, which can also only be of benefit to others so you can learn from my mistakes ;) hehe Luckily, as I've mentioned earlier - the design is really simple so I'm sure we'll go just fine.

Until next time! (Whew, so feels like my longest post!)