The Prince and the Dressmaker - Part 1 - Inspiration

QUICK RECAP: I made fiber fan art of Jen Wang's graphic novel, The Prince and the Dressmaker. Part 1 explains my inspiration, how I created the design, and how I picked out my fabrics.  Part  2 explains how I used appliqué to construct the face and dress. Part 3 covered my embroidery stitches. Part 4 concludes with beading.
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I made something cool.

Ok, so starting at the beginning, there is this book that came out earlier this year:

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang.

I've known Jen since, christ, the late 90s/early 00s? Since we were teens on the same animation art forum where we met a handful of other precocious nerdy art teens who would, in time, band together to make a sweet little art collective to publish our black and white hand-stapled minicomics that we would give to our favorite artists at comic conventions. (Any Old Timers on here remember Pants Press?) During Jen's brief stint in Portland in our early 20s, we shared an apartment together where I got to watch pages of Koko Be Good come to life before it'd even found a publisher. She's always been a phenomenal artist but The Prince and the Dressmaker really took me by surprise. This book is just... wow. Wow Wow Wow. 

It really grabbed me by the  heart.

I had to embroider it.

Obviously.

First I went through and picked out a buncha my favorite illustrations-- it was hard to choose because they were all so goddamn beautiful. 

In the end, I liked the illustration on  the left the best, but I wanted to embroider the prince, not their mom, so I found a good profile drawing of them...

...AND PERFORMED SOME PHOTOSHOP MAGIC.

Then I digitally traced over my Frankenstein'd creation to get the final line art I'd be copying onto my fabric.

Cool, huh?

Book in hand, I went to my craft store to pick up some fabric for the dress and flesh tone, where I found THIS gorgeousness:

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a dense, botanical pattern.

Back home, I ransacked my own fabric stash to find a suitable background fill. Originally I'd been thinking I'd use this nice, soft denim-y blue I've had for ages, but then I saw this old t-shirt that I've been saving juuuuust in case I could ever figure out something crafty could do with it.

Look at that fucker. That's not a shirt you throw out just because you've worn holes into it and the arm pit area is kinda stiff and discolored because you are a human being who sweats. 

To help make up my mind, I photoshopped my fabric background options into my digital drawing to compare and contrast my different choices.

Denim Blue:

Back of purple kraken t-shirt:

Front of purple kraken t-shirt:

I  was afraid that maybe having TWO patterened fabrics on top of each other would be too busy, but once I saw this I was like "Nah, it'll be fine."

TO BE CONTINUED.................