For my school's 2005 Recital (in February), it was decided we would wear our solo dresses and as I hated my rasberry one, I decided to make myself a new dress. I decided that 6 weeks before the recital and rushed at the last minute to make it, having started 1 ½ weeks before the event (Who did not expect that of me, raise you hand?). For a first time, I’m pretty proud of myself. Fabric        The main dress is made of teal strech velvet. The skirt is lined with red lame. The design on the dress are made of red lame, gold glitter dot and black glitter dot on velvet. I also used expensive gold embroidery thread for the satin stich arount the design pieces, and 12 m of heavy weight non-woven fusible intervacing (4 thickness in the front panel only, plus 3 in the side pannels and cape and 2 for the skirt back pannels). Pattern        I used Irish Threads dress pattern for the dress and Tess’ design from Colleens' of Canberra. I made up the cape design from the rest of the dress. Advice        You need to give your design pieces backing to embroider them correctly. I stiffened them before cutting them out. You can also use Heat n’ Bond so the pieces are glued in place before you start satin stiching them.

I always try the colors on Photoshop to see what it'll look like.

And here is the result of hours of hard work!