Embroidery: Duchess Ravenwaves

Updated January 23rd, scroll to bottom

I’m gunna do this a bit different. Instead of waiting until I’m done and then posting the finished piece, I’m gunna just continuously update this one post as I make progress. When I’ve made a significant enough update, I’ll send out a notification letting you folks know that the post has fresh images in it. Minor additions may not warrant the alert, so you might find some fresh #content if you check back to this post on your own. Who knows!

Now... ON TO THE SHOW!

This is Duchess Ravenwaves, who is the arch-nemesis of Lady Lovely Locks, which of course I don’t even need to explain to you because we were all wee girl-children in the mid-to-late 80s who were obsessed with the line of magic sparkly princess dolls of the same name.

I’ve given plenty of embroidered love to ol’ LLL, but the Duchess has been sadly neglected- until now! Using Photoshop I cobbled together these two nearly identical coloring book illustrations to get my desired pose and arm configuration.

Then I traced her onto some scrap fleshy-toned fabric with appliqué adhesive already on the back, left over from my “Prince and the Dressmaker” embroidery portraits from, uh, a while ago. They actually turned out really nicely, I’m still proud of them! If I find a link to where I posted them, I’ll come back and add it here U_U

This is why I save all my fabric scraps; you never know when something will be just the right size for a princess villain.

After holding her up against several different potential background fabrics, I decided on this one with a ✨ shiny gold ✨ ink pattern.

While I was cutting her out, though, I realized that I wouldn’t need to include the shape of her skirt since I’m planning on attaching separate purple pieces of fabric to billow out around her legs as a three-dimensional dress. In fact, I realized, it would make more sense if I cut out her individual legs so that they would look consistent if the attached skirt shifted and exposed higher than her ankle.

She looks kind of Sailor Moon-y to me like this, right? Then again, I’ve never actually seen an episode so what do I know.

Alright! Here’s where I’ll leave ya for now. Her adhesive back has been ironed onto the background fabric. Next up: EMBROIDERY.

Update #2 - The Embroidery Stage

December 14, 2020

I’m tracing the hair pattern lines with with three strands of a sparkly, metallic pink thread that is a nightmare to work with, but... it’s sparkly. I am helpless to resist its glittery charms 😭 Although I am wishing I had only used two strands, since three is perhaps more bulky than the piece needs. I’m also not sure if pink was the right color choice to go with her raven-blue-purple hair and I won’t know until the end if it works. Worst case scenario: I cut them off 😬 We’ll see how it goes!

January 23, 2021

After more than a month of neglect, I picked the Duchess up again last night. My period has rendered me a useless ball of grump, the only activity I am capable of doing is to embroider while cocooned in a blanket on the couch 😤 I! Am! GRUMPY!!!!! 😤😤😤