That entire dress is knitted, with plastic scales from The Ring Lord (black scales that we spray-painted, because it's cheaper than buying the colorful scales and you can get the exact color you want that way).
I don't have any photos of the back, but there's a neat criss-cross of leather lacing providing a lot of support because the dress is crazy heavy. (It actually stretched out over the course of the day as I stood and walked, which was an important lesson for us to learn.)
The lights are EL wire coiled up inside a packet of vellum paper and covered with thin white foam packaging I had sitting around. The battery packs are tucked into the gauntlets past my wrist, and one inside my bra.
When I walked, it sounded like a staccato rain stick (it's the best comparison I can come up with, but pretty accurate) and I couldn't hear the high-pitched buzz of the EL wire all day (ambient noise from the con was enough to cover that up, even with three of them).
The common questions I got (other than photo requests) were:
- Is it heavy? (Yes, I would guess about 10-15 pounds.)
- How many scales is that? (About 10,000.)
- How long did it take to make that? (About 5 weeks of intense work.)
- Is it warm? (Yes, I'm basically wearing a fitted afghan.)
So this is just to say congratulations to Beth for doing a TON of work on this thing, and to say that I had lots of fun wearing it. You'll see it again in several months... we want to make some changes to it for May (and hopefully it won't be insanely warm then).
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